Well, it's a day earlier than I generally start the weekly thread but I figured what the heck...

Sorry I've been so scarce lately - between work, my class (got another class coming up this week from Weds - Fri - Adobe PhotoShop which looks like a ton of fun!) and of course my horse obsession, I haven't been spending a whole lotta time around the 'net...and I see I have a WHOLE LOTTA posts to catch up with, and new people to say howdy-ho to!

Meg - that sleeping thing sounds just like my Jim - he has a VERY tough time getting comfy at night. I think it's the cats - they like to sleep between his legs and at his feet, and so when he's asleep he gets into very weird positions to accomodate them! Now for me...I'm much better at being a log. Unless I have too many liquids too close before bedtime that is...and the thing about waking up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom is that the kitties think it's FEEDING TIME!!! wake up and try and get me to go into the kitchen...arrggh...BTW...swollen legs - my legs swelled up for months after my lipo but they seem to be fine now... My doctor's advice - like yours - was to keep them propped up. VERY difficult for me to stay in one position for very long - I'm a mover and shaker, for sure...

Carrie - ahhh the subject of Free Days...which can be a godsend at first (I must admit that the FD was one of the main things that attracted me to BFL initially - given permission to eat whatever and however much you want for a whole day is pretty appealing) but then can bite ya in the bootie when you get to a stalling point. I think for a lotta folks, the Free Day is almost like that Simpsons episode called "King-Size Homer" - remember the one where he decides to gain a ton of weight so he can be disabled? One of my favorites btw...here's a quote from the show from Homer that reminds me of some folks' idea of the Free Day (including mine at the beginning!):



Sugar: NEVER a good thing to have if you're trying to lose fat...but ya know I just started buying those 15-calorie SUGAR FREE POPSICLES...Jim and I both love 'em (he actually prefers his "fudgies" - the 45-calorie sugar free Fudgesicles). I also buy the sugarfree Jello but those little puppies are pricey - Yeah, I know, make it myself, but mine always turns out with a skin on top and lumpy. Ew.

Well...gotta run do some cardio, then go to Safeway - I'm out of EVERYTHING except for chicken breasts, which were on sale last week so I stocked up - but when I'm out of EGGS, then it's definitely time to shop!!! aarrgghhh...and of course I'm doing the usual horse stuff today...so there ya go

Hi Ladies and to all the newbies. I'm a newbie too. I've been lurking this week after coming home from our extended Labor Day Weekend down at our boat to a flooded basement. I have been working on that mess all week and still have a long way to go. My weights have rusty stains on them but I can clean them up. My benches made it through OK. However, my floor mat, rug and waffle foam were floating so they had to be washed. It's been a bummer but I'm keeping on.

I was unable to start BFL on 9/2 as I intended because of all this, and at this point I can't say for sure when I will. But I have increased my cardio to 6 days and lifting every other day. I gained a few pounds over the holiday weekend from excessive carbs and learned a lesson, even though I was able to lose the gain over 4 days, plus some. (eggs were on sale this week 2/$1) I've also changed my eating to fewer carbs ala Atkins at least 3 days a week, just for experimenting's sake through the remainder of the month. I rejoined the Labor Day Challegers in another Challenge up in the Buddy Group, so there is a change in my signature line.

I'm loving the way my arms and thighs are starting to take shape and look in spite of the excess skin. Anybody have any suggestions on how to get some definition to my waist? Crunches aren't quite doing it for me yet, only my ab muscles, and I still can't tell I even have waistline.

Meg, I was thinking about you propping your legs against the wall at the gym. At my gym, no one would think a thing of it. Maybe you could do push-offs, alternating legs while one is up.

I'll be alurkin' and alearnin' as we go. I'm feeling really good, confident and postitive, and I appreciate y'all.

dip

Tidey : I use basically as many good fats or natural fats (eggs, Udo’s, nuts) that I can and then clean carbs (oats, banana & fruit) for my carb up. Shoot me an email if you want and I will send you the sample. It’s restrictive but it doesn’t seem to bother me for some reason? Your free day looks good!

Cindy : With all respect to Tidey’s advice I would always clean up a person’s menu before adding cardio. Adding cardio is a last resort to me. Ah Laura seems to have jumped in first (HEY LAURA!) and her advice is spot on. Bar are full of junk carbs and not the best protein. They are best used for convenience sake but you will find that a lot of people dump them early. Meal 2 is excellent. Check the recipes thread in here for more variations with CC (cottage cheese). If you don’t want rice with the tuna, try a potato, yam or another fruit. You don’t HAVE to use Myoplex by the way – there are dozens of other MRPs or just plain Protein Powders that you can make your own MRP out of! Pasta – you need to be really really careful of that one – loaded with calories – it’s another food that frequently gets dropped by regulars and to be host I have no idea what Kashi is!!?? Your exercise looks ok – with the running yes it does hurt at first to adjust but if you wanted to continue with it then your body would adjust. If you don’t then that’s cool too! (I love running because I play sport) If your joints hurt try taking some glucosamine and for muscles take some glutamine.

By the way how tall are you?

Karen : Hey how are you? Long time no post!

Dip: Unfortunately – abs are one of the areas that are more affected by diet than exercise! (specific exercise I mean) Seeing your abs is a matter of getting your bodyfat low enough – 1000 crunches a day won’t make your abs pop out.

As for me - loving life! Hey I had a question about the MSN site - if we post pictures there can anyone view them or only members of our particular site? I want to put up my original before and after pics but I am not fond or 'advertising' them if you know what I mean. I still have work to do and am not fond of them yet.

I had a carb meal last night which put me straight to sleep at 9pm. It was lovely but filling.

Hi to Meg, Mel, Red and everyone else (I have a bad short term memory sorry!)

JC

Good evening girls

I've had a good day, no gym or cardio today... Well if rest is good for muscle growth I had a very, very well rested weekend, it feels good... food was spot on too...

JEC ~~ I would be very interested in getting a bit of a menu of yours too, not necessarily a carb up day but just your regular day where you eat 50p, 35f, and 12c... MSN pics can be viewed by every one unfortunately JC, but just put some back pics of you no one would know... you can also delete them later after a week or so after the group here has seen them... There's always one good thing about carbs, they make you sleep really well....

Dip ~~ That's soooo unfortunate about the mess you came home too... Hope all is well...

Tomorrow is leg day and I'm going to do JEC's workout for a change and I am looking forward to it... I also start my part time hours tomorrow, I am sooooo happy with my decision of going part time you can't even imagine... But how part-time will it be? I'm not sure because I've already got a booking for another school on one of my days off, and I love that because of the variety...

Later all...

Damn! using my workout?? I am honoured!!

Perhaps I could do that. The old ones are at leanandstrong under my profile but I was hoping to put them somewhere else. ....

JC

JC - I'm 5'4" - same as you! I just checked out your profile at L&S - great progress in that year! I'd love to hear about your CPB experience some time - I'm considering it for myself.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions on my nutrition plan. I chuckled about the bar comments - for most of C1 I was eating 3 bars a day, so this IS a reduction for me! I love protein pancakes - eat them on weekends, but need to invest in an electric griddle before I can really make them in bulk. Two at a time, in a frying pan, is slow going.... I will definitely take your advice and try to eliminate the processed foods from my diet.

You know, I'm thinking there's a way to make the MSN site private - I know I've not been able to read messages or see pics at some of them until I joined.... but I've never had a group there of my own, so don't know how it works. I know that at YahooGroups you can make it "members only".
Cindy

Cindy: Ok cool I thought that you may be taller with that lean body weight. Mine is about 129lbs and I thought that I was muscley! As for CPB – well I gave it a good go but it didn’t work out for me but that was a while ago. Pam is an incredible person and has done great things for many people – at the time her program didn’t work for me because it was based in carbs. She currently is issuing a menu that has lower carbs and I have had a sneak peak at it and it looks great! I think that it would work for carb sensitive people and have incorporated it into what I am doing at the moment – which is working! Pam’s program is like any program – it works for some but not others. There is no magic program that is for everyone all the time.

JC

Hi all!

Meg: a thought just struck me about you putting your legs up. Why not try working your abs with your legs up like that? Sometimes I do that; I shrug my lower body up as part of the abs WO.

Hi girls !!!!!

JEC ~~ Thanks you for that excruciatingly difficult leg workout!!!! I hate you at the moment !! It was AWESOME!!! This guy also showed me this hamstring curl which he called “the poor man’s hamstring curl” because you don’t need a machine to do it. You kneel and jam your feet under something, do a pelvic tilt, stay very straight, then “try” to go down all the way, yea right! All the way!!?? He stayed to spot me thank goodness....

Cindy ~~ Check your PM’s....

Last night, I must fess up, I had a downfall, got into the Crispy Minis, I don’t even like them, but once I started I ended up finishing the bag, thank goodness it was almost empty so I ate only 20 or so... then if that wasn’t enough, I had a WW tortilla with 1 tsp peanut butter, I actually didn’t feel so bad about the tortilla, but I had already had the Crispy Minis... GRRRR!!! My weight was down this morning tho... whew! But with my luck it will go up tomorrow...

Today is looking up to be a very good day, and all because of that AWESOME workout!!

Later all, I will be back, I don't work today !!

Happy Monday morning everyone. Dip - so sorry to hear about your basement flood. I work out in my basement too and I can imagine how discouraging that must have felt. Sounds as if you are rebounding well though.

Kemp - how did you do this weekend?!?

For me it wasn't as bad as last but I do have room for improvement.

Yesterday was the end of the 4th week of the Do or Die challenge and I am down 8.50 lbs. I was hoping for 10 and w/ clean weekends I probably would have made it. I need to tighten up weekends and get in more cardio and those are my goals. I did get all my weight sessions in this past week and just finished chest and bis so I have a good start on this week. Will try to walk tonight after work.

Take care all.

Ledom ~~ We posted at the same time...CONGRATS on your weight loss... That’s great news... If I remember correctly we were in this together, well I’ve yo-yoed yet again a couple of pounds... So just keep doing what your are doing and I know you will succeed....

Ledom thanks for asking. I was actually pretty good. I didn't have anythign bad in the house so I had to be good . I was stuck inside b/c we are having a lovebug swarming. (they are bugs that come around 2 times a year and are a major headache) I didn't want to be covered in them so I stayed inside and worked on painting my bathroom.

Dip if we had a basement it would alwys be flooded. Sorry, I am not being mean I just don't have one and never could being that we are at sea level. You don't have to dig down to far to hit water around here. I hope you are getting it under control now.

Karen you guys sound like Joe and I at night. The cats don't care if you are comfy or not b/c they are and we are just going to have to sleep around them.

I tried to make Pam's protein brownies and the were terrible. Do any of you make them and what type of protein do you use. They were so dry and funky tasting I threw them away. Of course not after Joe saw them and laughed at them. hey, at least I was trying to make us something healthy.

Hi there everyone Had a dreadful food weekend,(actually week, to be honest) but am back with new resolution. Just a quick post before I head for the gym and a new workout split.

Kempyd: I posted a brownie recipe on our recipe thread here- something like PMS Brownies? I like them a LOT better than Pam's. They are much more moist, and more like a souffle. Let me know if the recipe has dieappeared and I'll try to reconstruct it. It makes 3-4 servings.
Alternatively, try the recipe "Kent's Brownies"- mine was based on his, but I added some cottage cheese and got rid of some of the egg whites.

Ledom: Congratulations! 8.5# in 4 weeks is GREAT! That usually takes me 2 months. Unless we are talking about putting it on- that takes maybe a week

Ilene: I hear ya on the part-time! Enjoy it. I've done that hamstring exercise- very good to have a spotter, otherwise you can end up face down with no way up.

Cindy: I agree sort of with JC. I'd look at cleaning up your menu before you add more cardio. Or tweaking your menu towards a few less carbs. I disagree about CPB- it is extraordinarily expensive for what you get, and the same information is available in many other places for free or at much cheaper prices. I also did it, and while I lost weight, I also lost all respect for Pam's business practices. The plan she had me on was basically eat less carbs, 5 meals a day, and do a butt-load of cardio in addition to a 4 day lifting split. Yes, it works. Do you need to pay $380 or so dollars for that? Not in my book.

Ok- off to the gym. Gonna try my new split.

mel

Kemp - I've never made the protein brownies - too labor-intensive for me. I *have* made Mel's PMS Chocolate Pancakes a few times in the past though - they ain't bad!

Cindy - I'm actually the owner of the MSN LWL group - I set it up so peeps here could post their photos without taking up too much bandwidth here (also, since we don't have 'albums' at 3FC, it's a heckuva lot easier to view photos at MSN than to scroll through pages and pages of threads). Since the address is posted on the "Basic Sticky" at the top of our forum, unless I hear a loud clamor otherwise, I don't see a problem with letting people view the photos - we get a lot of lurkers here from other parts of the 3FC forums, and I'd hate to have them be required to join *just* to view the photos. KWIM?

OH - and check our "Articles Worth Reading" sticky at the top of the forum (well near the top anyway!) - as I've just added a post this morning that I think you'll find VERY interesting reading...kind of adding to what JC said about that ab fat...

Basements!! Very few houses in California are built with basements, unfortunately. I remember visiting my grandparents in West Virginia as a child and LOVED playing with my aunt's old Barbie collection in Grandma's basement on a rainy day (jeez...those Barbies are probably worth tons of money by now - if my aunt still has them - she had *all* the accessories...pretty cool). Another kind of house you don't see very often here in Earthquake Country is masonry (brick) houses. The times that Jim and I have visited the East Coast, we are always struck by the numbers of brick houses - they're gorgeous but very rare here - the local exception that comes to mind is Filoli, which is an estate in Woodside that was built in the early 1900's - you might know it as the "Dynasty House" (at the beginning of the credits of the show, when the camera swoops down over the Carrington Estate - that is actually right here in the Bay Area) although other films have been made there too - including "Heaven Can Wait" and parts of "George of the Jungle". LOVELY gardens - if you ever visit the Bay Area and you're into old houses and landscaping - it's definitely a must-see. http://www.filoli.org/index.html

Thinking about different plans...like JC said...not one plan works for everyone...KNOWLEDGE is the real key. There is so much info out there - it's difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff - i.e. the bogus psuedoscience BS jargon from the real deal (BTW, I very much agree with Mel regarding CPB). And it seems that on the various message boards, everyone seems to 'catch the wave' (stealing an old Coca-Cola marketing slogan there!) and join up on the same program all at once.

I've received quite a few PM's from people in the past few months, asking for me to recommend a plan to lose weight. At this point, I want to make it clear that as of now, I do NOT recommend any one plan or program. I can give my personal experiences on various diet/fitness plans - or opinions based on my own personal knowledge - but that's it. I've stated before that the discussion of various diet plans can get REALLY heated - to many, it's like bashing their religion or something.

IMO, there are grains of truth to be had in *ANY* diet/fitness program but what it really comes down to (again IMO) is:

1) Food consumption - food quality, calorie level, meal timing
2) Weight training to build lean body mass and assist in fat burning
3) Cardio for fat burning
4) (most important IMO) Making changes that are a LIFESTYLE rather than a DIET to prevent rebound.

I just caught Suzanne 3FC's (our Administrator here) new signature and thought it would be a wonderful saying for many of us here to take to heart:
Just rambling on a Monday...and I gotta get back to work!

Good afternoon girls !!


Karen ~~ I love your rambles they are always interesting... And you’re absolutely right, what works for one may not work for another. This is why I enjoy this discussion board so much, and BTW you have a great attitude about giving out advise...


Mel ~~ What’s the new split?

Jennifa ~~ That was an awesome free day!

Kemp ~~ Yep we have the cat problem too she sleeps between our legs, and one of us usually suffers, specially on cold nights like it’s starting to get now...

Well I just had an awesome lunch with my mom. We were very talkative we haven't had a chance to sit and chat alone for a very long time, and we both miss that when I work full time... It was fun... For lunch I had salmon with a salad and steamed veggies, omitted the white rice... it was a bit oily but very good....

Later all!