July's thread kind of ran into some overtime. Welcome belated to august, y'all!

Maybe we can get people to start posting again if it's fresh...kinda like my cat when she's got a newly-changed litterbox (ooooh, a fresh canvas).

C'mon out of the woodwork, friends! We've got an APB out for ya!

Dragonwoman64
rebelridergirl
DianaLS
jillybean720
SwimGirl
kykaree
barbygirl43
jamswife0807
treefrogtoes
BIGGIRL27

Have I missed anyone? Apologies in advance if I did...I went through several older Gettin' Together threads, but I'm a tad bleary-eyed.

Even if you've never posted before, stop on by, anyway. We won't bite! Okay, maybe, but just a nibble...just a taste. Dieting can do funny things to your thinking!

Hi Gardenwife,
I have been around since June and I have read allot of threads from you and Howie. I have enjoyed the inspiration. My hubby and I started a new way of eating and we started execising. I have met some really neat people.
I love the support I get from here. I am 37 and have been married for 19 yrs. My hubby is stationed in Okinawa Japan. The boys and I love it here. I would love to join the thread.
Vicki

Woohoo! New blood Welcome, Vicki! Gosh, Okinawa--I can't even begin to imagine how different things must be there than here!

So, weigh-in last night was a bust. Like I said, according to my home scale, I was the same when I got up yesterday morning. By the end of the day, I was up 2.75 pounds on the TOPS scale Not as much as I lost last week, so I still have a net loss for the two weeks, but still. I know some of it is water retention, too--I drank nearly 20 servings of water yesterday! Unintentionally, too--I was just thirsty and kept refilling that bottle (my 3-servings bottle refilled 6 times...), and by the end of the day, my ankles were noticably puffier. I had definitely had some extra sodium the night before (a bunch of us took my boss out for dinner since today is her last day--I had a chicken and cheese quesedilla with SW ranch sauce and a few handfulls of the SALTY snack mix on the table), so not a big deal--it'll all be gone plus some when I weigh in next week

Aimee--did you ever get your medical test results back (or am I just blind and missed that in one of your posts ) ?

Goodmorning!!

Kimberley - It totally dawned on me when I saw the new thread.. but otherwise I forgot it was August already! Scary! I'm shocked at all the MIA people!

Vicki - wowsers! Thats pretty far away? What it like to try and lose weight in a different country? How many boys do you have?

Jill - wow, thats a lot of water, no WONDER the scale was up. I think we can safely say it was mainly water that contributed to that weigh in! I still haven't gotten any test results in, I can't believe how long its taking! One good thing, if anything was REALLY bad they would call the second the results were in, which means I was RIGHT about my blood sugar being normal. Just because I'm overweight does NOT mean I have Diabetes!

I hate it when my work calls me, it's never a good thing I tell yah! My manager called me this morning and wants me to have a sit down with her and talk about another employee and the "sequence of events", which I actually wasn't around for. I hate it when people want me to squeel on another person. But I'm just going to tell her I don't know exactly what happened, only that my first day back from vacation she called in sick and I had to work alone for 9 hours with no break. I love pointing that out over and over again! heh. Evil Me!!

Well I am off to make a strawberry banana smoothie and put my face on, I am going shopping for this cleanse that I'm starting on Sunday. Have a great day!!

-Aimee

good news!! I don't have mono! I called the doctor and the nurse said all my results were negative..which means I also don't have Diabetes, a thyroid problem either!

-Aimee

Good...Morning, everyone. Welcome Vicki! Great to see you posting here. What branch of the military is your hubby in? You and I are about the same age - I just turned 38 last week - so now I don't feel quite so old in here.

I weighed 212 today, down 1 pound. I some of my meals from yesterday had vacated the premesis, it might have been better. Ah well, tell that to my body. *snicker*

Jill, yeah, I'd SAY it was a lot of water weight. I felt a pressure on my bladder just reading about it.

Aimee, hope all goes well with the sit-down. I disliked being put in awkward positions like that at jobs, too.

We had rain last night and it's cooled down today. It's a little muggy, but we've got the windows open, anyway. The house gets so stuffy when it's closed up with the A/C on, so the fresh air is more than welcome. Oh, and today's farmer's market day downtown -- yippee!

Last night, Howie bought the ingredients for Alton Brown's protein bars. He called me three times from the Kroger store...

"Is wheat germ the same as wheat gluten?"
"Rolled oats is the same as oat bran, right?"

Thank God for wireless phones! I'll probably make up a batch tonight. I've toyed with the idea of selling healthy granola bars and protein bars at the farmer's market. Like anything else, I have to weigh the pros and cons and decide whether it's worth the time and expense. It's $10 to rent a spot for the day, so that factors into it, too.

HEY ALL,
Hope everyone is having a great Saturday. Remember I am 13 hrs ahead of the states. East coast that is.
Aimee, Jilly, and Gardenwife,
I will be 38 in October and my hubby is in the navy. We are on an AF base.I have two boys.16 and one will be 13 Sept 5th. We love it here. The people are so nice and there is allot to do and see. It is hard to lose weight here because there is no support. No WW or Curves or anything like those. I have chosen a lifestyle change. So far so good. I really believe anything can work as long as you exercise amd change things for good and for the whole family. The boys were not thrilled with the no soda and no fastfood. But I know they do it when they are not with me and are with thier friends. But I have reduced the amount they have. It is so humid here so we bought a George foreman large grill and we use it allot. The boys love the hamburgers I make on it. I am just taking it one day at a time. I know I will eat bad sometimes but I will come back here and just get the help I need to jump back on.I was having health problems and It became a race for my life. I want to around for the grandbabies.So what are ya'll doing and tell me alittle about ya'll.
Vicki

Hey! I am home from work, it was pretty uneventful. Which is a VERY good thing

Kimberley - men make me laugh, "Rolled oats is the same as oat bran, right?" .. teehee. What would they do without us huh? But it's nice to feel needed like that! The sitdown was SO silly, I went into work 30 minutes early to sit down for 5 minutes and be asked questions to which I didn't know the answers. Stupid really.

Vicky - great to have to here! You are WAY ahead of me in time.. I am West Coast of Canada, so 16 hours behind you.. hows the future? So about me? I'm 25 turning 26 in 14 days.. not that I'm counting. I live in the Greater Vancouver Area, on a huge mountain. I am currently working retail, and am shacked up with my boyfriend of 5.5 years. I definitely aspire to more, but in the mean time I'm stuck because I just have TOO many options.. which is great In terms of losing weight, I'm not actually doing that right now. I've been feeling pretty sick lately, don't really know what it is, so I'm trying a cleanse to see if that'll help! When I go back to dieting I'll be doing a low fat, no wheat diet (I have an allergy to wheat). Although I'm always game for some sorta fad diet.. lol, I am into instant gratification!

Wow, I got a lot to say, or maybe I like to talk about myself? heh. Have a good one gals!!

-Aimee

Hi, all. Today was farmer's market day and I came home with all kinds of tasty produce. Yum! Do you have open air markets available all year there in Okinawa? Sometimes Howie and I wish we lived in a more temperate climate, where produce was fresh and local year round. Ahhhh, that'd be nice.

Let's see, about me...My big interests are photography, computers, writing, and gardening. Which gets top billing in my life depends on the season. I adore animals, especially dogs and cats. Howie and I were married on Leapday in 1992, so oru anniversary is comically easy to remember. We've no kids, no plans for them, but we're Aunt Kimmy and Uncle Howard to our best friends' children.

We do have a open market called the black market. They have different fruits than us. Thier peaches are the size of softballs. So good. Big apples too and things I don't like are thier oranges and tangerines. Taste terrible. We have no strawberries for some reason. I miss them so bad.Out of season. Goya is what they eat all the time. Hard to explain what is. It is so bitter. They eat green tea and sweet potatoe ice cream. They are very healthy people.
Vicki

Funny they call it the black market -- makes it sound like everything is contraband. LOL! Sweet potato ice cream sounds good. I like the pumpkin spice ice cream that's available around Thanksgiving here.

Hi ladies!

Work has been hellish lately and I was on vacation away from modern convience for a week... but I'm back to the grind again. I've been too busy to even READ other posts in here for the last several weeks!

I got the job I posted for at work, I don't actually get to START the position for a couple months, I have to train my replacement once it's hired! BUT, I got a $.56/hour raise that I din't know I'd be getting!!! YIPEE! My hours will be way better once I transition into the new job too! I can't wait!

On the diet/WL front... I wanted to be at 240 before we went to WI Dells, however, I was stuck at 243 the day we left (and started my TOM, hello waterparks and tent camping... UUGH!) The minute we got home I jumped on the scale to access the damage... 240 exactly! Thank the gods for the cherry licorice and beer diet!!

So I'm hoping to be more available to the site again... I miss everyone so much! I'll have more to say once I get back into the swing of things...

I don't think I'm as adventurous as you gals, I think if I ate ice cream it would strictly be vanilla or something cheesecake, heh. I used to get into the soy "ice cream", it was chocolate chip chunks.

So I had a horrifying thing this morning!! I woke up early, ick, and was on the computer checking email, all that stuff.. and something caught my eye. It was a spider the size of a toonie!! It was all black and icky, it took almost 45 minutes for me to kill it because I was so freaked. Nothing like an irrational fear, eh?

I am totally enjoying my lazy day off work, I know I have so much to do, but I just want to forget it and watch movies all day (which I've been doing!). heh. Ah yes, I love lazy weekends! Have a great on gals!!

-Aimee

You took the words right out of my mouth, Jill. Aimee, don't keep us in suspense, what the heck's a toonie?

Sara, great to see you posting again. Congrats on your new position! The beer and licorice diet I could handle, as long as the licorice was strawberry flavored, not cherry.

I wrote the following to a friend, but it pretty well sums up our weekend so far:

We just got home from spending the night with our friends. We pitched the tent idea (snort!) and instead slept inside. Our friends camped out on air mattresses in the living room while their boys slept in a kid tent we brought over for the. We got it on clearance a couple months ago, but just couldn't see waiting until Christmas to give it to them, not when plans changed and the camp-out became a camp-in. I'd gotten some juvenile-themed sheets in a bundle of assorted linens on Freecycle, so the kids were thrilled to pieces to get Cabbage Patch Kids, Holly Hobby, Strawberry Shortcake and Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles top sheets. You'd think we'd brought them a million dollars.

We stretched out in our friends' bed, familiar since it is our old king bed set. Boy, wish we'd gotten that set again when we got a new one - ours hasn't held up too well. Now that we're a lot thinner, our future mattresses will have more longevity. We'd love to try one of those waterbeds with the tubes, or a TempurPedic sometime.

Anyway...What a nice night it was, from the great dinner at Red Lobster (Crab legs! Happy dance!) to the campfire we sat around out back, to staying up into the wee hours reading in bed with the fan blowing cool night air into the room. I had many, as I call them, "small fits of happiness". Life is sweet when the little things thrill and comfort you, you know?