Happy New Year to all of you.

The eating season is officially over now that the Christmas tree is down and out on the curb. Looking forward to not seeing stacks of food everywhere.

There's cold headed our way; might have some exercise shoveling snow in my immediate future.

Happy New Year bill and everyone else!

I am on Day 9 of no diet soda (with one transgression on Saturday) and Day 2 of 2 caffeinated bevvies per day. I am curious to see how much the stress of "officially" going back to work tomorrow (I'm walking one dog today) affects me re caffeine. I was using it to fuel my way through the afternoons.

I am one lb. over my red line after all the holiday eating. Not bad. I am throwing out all of the remaining goodies, except my belgian chocolate santa. I will consume him this coming weekend and that will be it!

Tomorrow is supposed to be - the high is minus 12C. But it'll be brilliantly sunny so that helps.

Good first week of the new year all

Dagmar

Please tell me it is not January 9th yet!

Edited title, but I am also pre-coffee!

Happy New Year all!

I'm on day 1 of my new diet. Yesterday's lasagna-fest has me up 2 pounds, so this is really needed.

Christmas wreath is at the curb (no tree due to kitty issues) and we'll take the lights down today.

We went to see The Artist yesterday. Good movie. Today, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Tomorrow, work. Yuck.

I made it through the holidays, have the decorations down and am ready to start the new year clean.

Allison - I wear the GwF on the upper part of my left arm, just below the shoulder. It doesn't have to be tight, but enought not to slide. I move it higher when I exercise. I have the link with Bluetooth and I love that. You can see a real time readout on a smart phone or iPhone, iPad that way. The core is smaller, it needs an additional watch monitor to show the display. Otherwise you only see data when you plug in. It includes three month of the app, $6.95 per month after that. Costco has a link with Bluetooth on their website for $179 right now with a year of the app included I think.

I survived the holidays and am only 0.8 pounds above my lowest recorded weight during the month of December. We're back from being out of town and I've had a few days to get back into my routine. So things are starting to feel normal again.

We haven't started taking down the tree or decorations but hopefully will today. Dd's birthday is Wednesday so I have one more difficult day to face. She is making a tiramisu cake from scratch so I'll have to try it. My weight is way up (122.2 today) but I suspect it is a combo of salt and what I ate yesterday. Dh and dd made three different and amazing chile con quesos for our new year's celebration.

I go back to work on Wednesday so reality is staring at me. My time off has been nice. I think we may also see a movie today but we aren't agreeing on one, so I think we may split up. Dh and older dd want to see Sherlock Holmes, younger dd and myself may see young adult.

Bar goo-- so glad that Lilly has been found. Ive been very worried about her.

Happy New Year! Our tree and lights remain up until the Three Kings arrive on the 6th.

I experimented with paring our holiday food back even more than last year. None of us missed anything and we ate other, out-of-our-ordinary food when we were away. My eating has been really quite sparing and my weight is stable. For me, the challenge comes now as we head back into routine.

Back from a short vacation (Dec. 29th through today). Good to be home though I didn't get in nearly as much skiing as I planned, due to rain for 1/2 of one day, and a blizzard that started around 2 pm yesterday and didn't let up until halfway through our drive back from northern MI today. Still and all, a fun time (and we took the kids to a nearby indoor water park for the 1/2 day of rain, so for them it was a bonus not a detriment).

I'm curious- have any/most of you read the NY Times article on the challenges of weight maintenance? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/ma...r=1&ref=health
If so, what did you think of it? It certainly rang true for me, though the major study that was cited in that article, by Proietto, has gotten a lot of skepticism for generalizing conclusions based on the use of an aggressively low-calorie diet as the basis for then attempting weight maintenance.

Back to just below red-line weight as of yesterday, just in time for New Year's resolutions :>)

I'm glad the holidays are winding down. I'm itching to get back to work but my school is off until next week. I feel like I've been idle too long. I certainly don't want to shift into boredom-eating mode, so I'll have to find ways to keep myself busy.

neurodoc - I actually posted about the article in the Maintenance Library. I found it interesting, but troubling at the same time.

Andrea I read the article for which you posted the link. Yes we all have to work a lot harder than the "skinnies" at maintaining a healthy weight (and it might not be as low a number as we'd like). But how much of that is physical and how much is psychological? I don't see psychological assessment in most of these studies. Should it be there?

I don't overeat when I'm hungry - I do it when I'm experiencing a negative emotion or when I'm bored. And I can maintain a reasonably healthy weight (about 5 lbs. over what I'd like) without a huge effort. I wonder how many of the people on 3FC are similar?

I think scientists and doctors should put their focus on developing a medication for those truly not able to control their weight without herculean efforts. And the food industry needs to be controlled - they are constantly bombarding us with messages about how much we need to eat/drink crap. In Canada we have certain controls limiting advertising of harmful substances to children. I think most processed food falls into that category. I wonder how well people would maintain their weight if there was no glucose/fructose or other forms of sugar added to a lot of foods?

I believe those obese people who literally can't control their weight without gigantic effort are still in the minority. Most of us just need to be mindful and careful around food. That can be hard, and we all experience burnout from time to time, but we've all proven that it can be done.

Dagmar

I read the article, too. It seems to say we are doomed to regain what we lost. What kind of a prospect is that ? I don't think we are doomed but we must remain aware of what will happen if we go back to our old ways. I am always aware of what I am eating even if I go on a binge I know what is going to happen. I think it all comes down to a choice, do we want to be at a healthy weight or do we just want to accept that we are going to be overweight ? I see people all the time that I am assuming have just accepted their obesity and think they can do nothing about it. I don't think that is true, of course, but it is up to each of us to do something about it. I have to take an active role in losing weight and maintaining.

Morning all,

It feels strange to be back at the office today. Thankfully there's nothing too crazy going on and I can ease myself back into a routine. It's chilly here too. I think I will have to bring my potted plants in tonight, which is annoying bc who has time for that? I ended up sleeping a lot of my long weekend away, but yesterday I managed to get the Christmas lights down, the house clean and tidied, totally unpacked and laundry done, my goal for the weekend. BF and I were both tired, so we ended up going to a bonfire on the beach for about an hour and were in bed by 11 pm on New Years. I didn't even have a celebratory glass of wine. We were fine with that.

I'm trying to get myself organized with my new day planner and once again am starting my food journal. The next 6 weeks will be very busy, so even though a busy time seems not a good time to start a new diet/exercise plan my goal is to just keep things on an even keel, not give into stress eating, and do food prep on the weekends, and I'm hoping to lose a few lbs. I hoped to lose 10 lbs in 2011 and I lost 6... not a great feat, but going in the right direction. Food journaling in particular is my downfall. As long as I keep exercising Emma I know I will stay pretty active.

Allison, I'm with you. Work, yuck.

Dagmar, great job staying away from the soda. How was your first day back to walking the dogs with less caffeine?

Andrea, I'm glad your vacation was fun.

I think the solution to obesity lies somewhere in the middle of some extremes - the "the food industry and is totally responsible for obesity" versus the "an individual is solely responsible for their weight". I believe genes can have an influence but are certainly not the end-all-be-all to a person's weight in most cases (there are rare instances where a genetic mutation plays a much bigger role). We do have to make our own choices, but outside pressures like advertising, peer pressure, cheap junk food, and how society has evolved to a more sedentary lifestyle make it hard to make the healthier decisions. Like I said, somewhere in the middle. I might read articles about studies like this one with interest, but I don't let them influence me too much. Just bc I'm "doomed" to regain doesn't mean I'm going to just give up! Those are my thoughts in as concise a nutshell as I can come up with, but I could go on and on, lol.

Happy 2012 everyone!

Weight is down one pound (thank goodness) but still high. Tomorrow is dd's bday with all that entails! I will post after about her 21 gifts. We realized the other day that we were missing one, so I placed a quick order, but I'm not sure we will get it in time.

Back to work tomorrow. I got up early today in preparation! Not really, but dh got up for work, so I woke up too.

I think I've mentioned before that we are trying to help dd get a service dog to help with her Tourette's Syndrome. Last night we posted on Facebook shortly before 10 pm about her journey. We were so touched that we immediately received notes, pm's, and even donations. I know it meant so much to dd to see how many people care about her.

If anyone is interested, the website is adogforkatherine.vpweb.com
Please feel free to share as we are trying to reach as many people as possible.