There were moments last week, in the middle of the 11-day work marathon, that I thought I wouldn't survive to start the weekly thread today. But yay, it's over and I'm still standing! Ugh, I never want to do it again though, not even for time and a half. The worst part was all the days missed at the gym. Got to make up for them this morning!

This week's challenge is because I only had one day off, I spent it cleaning the house top to bottom and catching up with laundry. So I didn't have a chance to do my usual bulk cooking for the week. I'll get groceries when I'm done at the gym this morning and just have to plan, plan, plan. Fortunately the freezer is still pretty well stocked.

I'm dying to try butternut squash fries, prepared the same way as sweet potato oven fries. Has anyone made these? Any tips?

After the gym and groceries this morning, it's off to the doctor's to get an ingrown toenail dealt with. Double ugh. Then off to work. I may be wearing sandals! Hopefully whatever he does to my toe won't keep me out of the gym tomorrow. Worst case scenario: the exercise bike.

How were everyone's weekends? I sure hope you all had more of one than I did!

Thanks for getting the thread started, Meg, even though it's hard to remember that it's Monday during the three day weekend.

Congrats for surviving your work marathon without resorting to eating.

My maintenance triumph of the weekend was to turn down the FREE "Energy Drinks" being handed out at an outdoor Oktoberfest. They're just Kool-aid with caffeine but the young adults were grabbing them like they were the magic elixir of good health.

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Good morning, maintainers! It's raining cats and dogs again here today and I am feel like I might be catching a cold. It may have something to do with a certain 5 year old who has been coughing and sneezing all over me for the last week or so. I had planned to do two classes this morning but I think I might just do one.

On a happier note, I won a new pair of spin shoes on eBay last night!

I am celebrating Thanksgiving today. The big indulgence will be a piece of chocolate cake. The rest of the meal is well within low cal cooking parameters.

Congrats on getting through your work marathon Meg. I know I wouldn't have had the energy to clean the house on my day off (or the desire). Hope your exercise is back on track despite the toenail and that you get all your meal planning done.

Good job on turning down the energy drinks Bill. I found the two free samples I've tried at the supermarket were like cough syrup. I'd rather have a cup of good tea.

DH and I will go for another walk today. The kayaking was a disaster. We fight less on land it seems. I don't know how his meeting with the band went but he was up past 2 a.m. so I imagine it was not good.

It's sunny and bright here today so I will enjoy the holiday Monday, no matter what mood DH is in.

Have a great week all!

Dagmar

Hi all,

I'm tired after working all weekend. Really, the "tired" part comes in b/c I was so tense much of the time with these people, but luckily (probably more for them than for me ) everything went pretty smoothly for their sampling. There was a moment when I feared it would rain on us all day, the prof started whining about it, and I almost threw her off the boat, but we got past that. Did I mention I've told her repeatedly to bring rain gear and she never does? Just a few little incidents like that over the past 4 days. Anyway... I'm done with that now. Back to more pleasant work this week. I've got a book club meeting tonight, and chorus rehearsal tomorrow.

Friday night I had another one of my "food dreams." I dreamed about binging on cupcakes this time, cupcakes and quick breads with frosting of all kinds, and woke up feeling terribly guilty and thinking of cupcakes all weekend! It was funny and true-to-life that in the dream I kept eating and wasn't satisfied by any of them. I'd been thinking of having a higher calorie day and let myself have it Saturday, 2100 cals, but only healthy stuff, and I think that was a good idea and my body needed it. I worried that if I didn't let myself have the healthy stuff I would have a big binge on unhealthy stuff.

Meg, way to stay OP despite the busy schedule. I had an ingrown nail cut out by the doctor and she numbed me up so well I probably could have gone and run a 5K after the visit. But even after the numbing agent wore off my toe just felt so much better and I could work out with much less pain than before I'd gone to the doctor! As long as you can fit the wrappings in your workout shoes... Hungry girl raves about her recipe for butternut squash fries, though I've never tried them.

Bill, I agree! Those energy drinks taste gross to me! My BF drinks them if he has a lot of early mornings, but I'd rather drink coffee in the AM for my caffeine. After that, I might drink one diet coke per month, or take a nap if I'm able! Have you read the labels? I don't know if those ingredients are found in nature!

Ward, congrats on the spin shoes! I hope they lead you to lots of calorie-burning spinning!

Dagmar, have a very happy Thanksgiving!

Have a great week everyone!

Good morning everyone. It is pouring down rain here, which fits nicely with my run down & irritable feeling from my overeating this weekend.... I talked about it a little in last weeks thread last night, it boiled down to bad for me meals and candy/pb&choc pretzels from the grocery store. I'm not too bothered by the meal choices, one was homemade pot roast at my MIL's house, but I am pretty annoyed with myself for getting out of control with the candy from the grocery store. I can recover from indulgences, but when I feel out of control it sometimes takes me a little time to get past it. I started the Brach's bag with the intention of just a couple of things, maybe two each of four different thing, and I should have recognized the danger when I kept putting more into the bag. It had already started feeling mindless in the acquisition of the candy, there was no way I was going to be able to shake the mindlessness with the eating... I did throw it & the pretzels away as soon as I came back to my senses.

Dagmar - Enjoy your holiday today!

Ward - congrats on the shoes! Hope you feel better, and that you stay dry in this mess! Water is already starting to leak into my office again... urgh.

Bill - I hate those energy drinks. I picked up a coffee one at the store this weekend and looked at the label, 400 calories in the container in my hand. And I'm sure people would buy it and drink the entire thing in a minute thinking it was okay for them because it said 'natural' on the label on the front. Good job passing them up!

Meg - I've had an ingrown toenail cut out, too, and my experience was like Megan's. You should be fine tomorrow as long as you can keep it clean and dry in your shoes. Hope it goes well!

Megan - weird dream about the cupcakes. It is interesting that they didn't satisfy you in the dream. Did the higher calorie Saturday help?

Good day everyone!

Good morning everyone! It's cloudy with a chance of rain here. I don't think we'll even get into the 80's. Brrr!

I woke up this morning at about 1:30 and never got back to sleep and finally got up at 4:30 to exercise which only rewarded me with a headache when it was all over. Due to the lack of sleep, I was starving and really overate at breakfast (2 servings instead of one plus 2 handfuls of cereal). ugh

Pat~from the past thread, I do have speakers for my iPod here at work and I love it. At home we have some cables that hook the iPod directly into our stereo. I still have about 100 disks to download and then I need to tackle the Christmas music (I think I have 20 or so disks in that category). It's really slow going, but I hope to finish in a few weeks. It will be really nice getting rid of all the CDs--then we'll have more room to store all the DVDs we've been accumulating!

Energy drinks are horrible! My friend drinks one every afternoon. I look at it like a waste of calories (like soda) and a waste of my tastebuds. I agree--a nice cup of tea or coffee is much more welcome!

Well, I need to get to work. Take care everyone.

Happy Thanksgiving to the Canadians!

Meg, glad you made it through! I hope the toenail doesn't hurt too much.

Dagmar, sorry the kayaking didn't work out. Hopefully today will be better!

Shannon: "I did throw it & the pretzels away as soon as I came back to my senses." THIS is the difference between maintenance and weight gain! Great job throwing it away.

Megan, I'm glad to hear the researchers weren't too irritating.

Bill, I don't get energy drinks either. Maybe if people spent more time sleeping and less time overworking themselves they wouldn't need energy drinks.

Ward, I hope you feel better soon! Is it bad that I sometimes think I wouldn't mind getting sick because then I could take a sick day?

Allison, make sure you have a comprehensive backup scheme in place before you toss all your CD's.

I had my one "cheat" meal this weekend at a steakhouse. DH and I had planned to go out after going to the symphony, and when we were discussing where to go the day before I was like, "I want a big fat steak." He had done the shopping the previous week and neglected to buy any meat for the second week in a row. Not that I have anything against vegetarian meals, but a whole week without even some chicken left me craving it (well, that and TOM always makes me crave red meat). In any case I bought quite a lot of chicken for this coming week when I was at the grocery store!

Yesterday I went swimming in the morning. I'd planned to ride my bike to the apple orchard to go apple picking in the afternoon, but then I decided I wanted to roast a chicken for dinner which meant I didn't have the extra time that the bike ride would have taken, so I drove to the orchard instead. Man, that place was a zoo! People were having fights in the parking lot about getting blocked in! I got my apples and got out as quickly as possible.

Jessica~right now I have a backup on one of DS's old external hard drives. He wants a copy of it, so I'll give him a copy on his 1 terabyte (sp?) external hard drive. I'm going to go out and get myself a 1 terabyte hard drive as well so I can also store my photos on it. I bought DH a 1 terabyte hard drive when he got his Canon Rebel camera because he didn't have enough room on his computer to store the photos. I think having 2 copies myself, plus my DS having a copy will be insurance enough!

Good afternoon maintainers!!

I'm hoping to be able to get back to normal this week and get back on this thread routinely.

Jessica-- yum on the steak! I know what you mean about craving red meat once in awhile. I'm not sure when the last time was I had any red meat.

Shannon-- you did great throwing away the candy and stuff. I know what you mean about mindlessly buying and eating food and then coming to your senses. Thank goodness you did come to your senses.

Funny dream Megan! I am going to send designer cupcakes to my best friend for her birthday. I've had such a hard time deciding what to send her. She will be 42 and has a severely autistic son (12) and daughter (10). She recently found out she is pregnant. She has plenty of money so she indulge in massages, pedicures, etc. So..... I bought a cookbook for her for fast and easy meals and I bought a cute baking kit that comes with a baking kit. I found a place where she lives (Houston) that does amazing looking cupcakes and I'm going to have them delivered.

Happy Thanksgiving Dagmar!! I have a question for you. What do Canadians eat for Thanksgiving traditionally? I'm wondering if the foods are similar to what we Americans eat. I hope the walk goes better for you than the kayaking did.

WardHog-- enjoy your shoes! I'm still using regular shoes for spinning at this point. I hope you feel better.

Bill-- I've never tried the energy drinks and don't plan to. I thought they were calorie free and just had caffeine in them. What do they have that adds calories to them?

Meg-- I hope your toe surgery is minor and you feel much better afterwards. I also worked a huge number of days straight-- I can't remember how many... I had Saturday off but I still went to school to work for a few hours. Now that I think about it I have a huge number of days in a row to work actually as I'm working all week plus Saturday and Sunday... hmmm..... great.....

I am done with my book fair and can't wait to get back to normal. Unfortunately my daughter caught a stomach virus and was very sick this weekend. I caught a minor version of it and am trying to suffer through. I'm still hoping to go to the gym today but I have a killer headache. My weight was *almost* too low this morning. It was 121 which I haven't ever seen. When my weight is low I tend to sabotage myself by telling myself I better eat or I'll be too thin and then I go the other direction! So, I'm going to try to just keep to my food and exercise routine and let the weight gradually go back up. I realize that the tummy thing probably knocked some weight off....

I have a project to get to. Talk to everyone later!!

Wow, busy thread already this week! I'm just going to pop in for now - something started bugging my stomach while I was running tonight and I've been in and out of the bathroom since... ick.

Happy Thanksgiving Dagmar and any other Canadian chicks here!

Michele IMHO Canadians are basically somewhat subdued Americans (some people would kill me for that).

We eat what you eat for all the holidays, with some regional differences like you have.

Dagmar

Dagmar, we are all North Americans after all.

Twice I've had something happen and lost my post.

Dagmar - LOL

Iris - hope you feel better!

Michele - DH drinks diet energy drink, Rockstar maybe? It has 20 calories per can, the regular has 280. Sugars and such I think.

Allison - I couldn't give up my CDs even after putting them all on my hard drive. The transfer didn't always sound as good, plus the playback on the iPod wasn't always consistent. Are you using the lossless transfer? DH wants the 160 GB iPod classic for just that reason.

Jessica - you don't expect that much drama in the parking lot at an apple orchard. Funny!

I had a better day yesterday. Got my exercise in, ate well, got to bed on time and slept better. Hope this week stays on track.

Good day everyone!

Shannon~I don't know what transfer I'm using. I certainly can't determine any difference in what I'm hearing (CD vs iPod), but then I'm no audiophile, either.

Yesterday's headache and lack of sleep must have caused my jawas to over compensate and my scale flashed a horrible number at me this morning. Time to buckle down.