Megan Hangry? What a good word - I'm going to borrow it from you if you don't mind.

I have the "duty" visit with my father this morning. He was quite subdued and reasonable when we saw him on New Year's Day but has, according to my SIL, gone back to his ranting now.

I really don't want to do this but I figure duty visiting will be over for the month of January if I go this morning. And I have to work today (dogwalk and a one night sleep-over) so I can bail really early if he starts ranting. I'm taking along a photo album - try to keep him busy talking about his past.

He never asks about our lives - just starts in about himself. I never quite realized how egotistical he is. But I guess it follows with the general attitude of bullying and thinking he's "above" everyone else.

Dagmar

nuerodoc said something in a recent post that rang a bell with me. She said we on this thread are all wanting to lose weight, and I agree, to a certain degree this is true. I do want to lose a few pounds to reach my vanity weight, BUT the MOST important thing with me......I do not want to gain !!!!

Weight was 146.5 on Sunday morning, a drop of 2.6 pounds from Saturday morning and lower than Friday morning. I had a lot of errand-running yesterday, wasn't home much, and didn't snack much. Especially I had almost no sodium. So maybe there is something to be said for this daily weigh-in.

Today I was indecisive about going into the city but realized I have too much housework to catch up on and probably could use some quiet time. Since I believe improved life management means improved weight management, we'll see if today bears out my theory.

Neurodoc, when I had an enforced break from my exercise schedule two years ago, due to the horrendous inner-ear infection that caused me to lose most of the hearing in my left ear and also my inner-ear balance mechanism, I regained about seven pounds immediately, then my weight stabilized at the higher weight, and then, once I resumed my exercise schedule, I think it took about four to five weeks for that gain to drop off. Does that sound less scarey to you? I was actually less hungry when I exercised less, which is probably homeostasis at work. That said, if anything were to sideline me from my gym-going, I would most definitely freak the &^%$# out. So hang on, woman.

I'm planning to return to low-impact cardio 2 weeks after my surgery (which was last Wednesday) to hopefully not regain more than 1-2 pounds. And of course, doing my damndest to keep calories at/below 1300/day (my non-exercise maintenance level) which, as saef says, is easier to do when you're not doing any exercise and have less appetite. My bigger sorrow is definitely the loss of muscle and definition that will occur from lack of weight training for 6 weeks.

When I was off 4 weeks last year after my skin removal surgery, I was shocked at how much strength I lost! Incidentally I lost almost no cardio. The good news is that it came back really fast for me and I'm sure it will for you, too!!

Patience, Megan, patience... right after I celebrated last week that the scale had taken a dip downward and released the holiday/vaca weight, it bobbled back up, and had been playing around inbetween. It went back down to 156 today, but that was after a really low calorie day of 1200 cals yesterday. I need to accept that I did some real damage during the holidays and vacation and it will take time to come off (now, how to make my emotional side accept what my logical side tells me?). I'm having a flashback to last year, when it took me 3 months to lose 4 lbs, or the year before, or... part of the reason I've given up a few times trying to get this regain off is that it is really hard for me to get "real" weight off at this point. Much harder than it was the first time around. So I must be patient.

Daily weighing might not be the best for me right now. I might switch to weekly weighing and see how that goes. Of course I will still log my calories & exercise daily.

Dagmar, hangry = hungry + angry = the point when you're so hungry, you get angry and cranky, if you haven't figured that out. I didn't coin the phrase and seem to hear around a lot. My BF knows to feed me when I get hangry.

Neurodoc, hang in there. This will be a tough time but you will get through it.

This. My scale was down one measly pound today and that was after going up .5 during the week so really I lost .5 lbs. for the week. Patience, patience. I really would like one of those elusive "whoosh" moments.

Love the word "hangry." My DD started using it a while ago so I feel pretty "with it" that I knew what hangry meant.

You will lose muscle, Neurodoc, but it comes back pretty darn fast once you start exercising again. If you lift weights, just don't start lifting the same amount you were before you quit. I got bad tendonitis from trying to get back to where I was too quickly, which knocked me out for another few weeks. For me, losing muscle made the scale go down while I was recuperating. Scale number definitely doesn't define fit and healthy. You'll get your Michelle Obama arms back in no time.

I didn't weigh in this morning, as I overslept by about a half-hour & had my mind on getting coffee & breakfast before heading out to the gym. But I will try to do it again tomorrow morning. I just want to experiment on this science project a little. My insight is that since I don't weigh or measure, or count calories, probably I require greater amounts of data from other areas.

Up a little the last few days, still under goal , but barely.

It has been quiet here the past few days. I've been trucking along, POP food and exercise-wise. I find I'm able to stick to a slightly lower calorie level right now than normally when I'm in losing mode - closer to 1400-50 cals rather than 1600 or so. I think the difference is that I'm not strength training right now, which I miss, but I have tried so hard in the past and never ever been able to lose weight while strength training.

The scale has been bobbling ever so slightly downward for the past two days. But I really do need to stop weighing daily bc TOM is coming, and that's always discouraging. Food, exercise, etc has been POP and the only improvement I could wish for would be to get more sleep. Poor BF is sick, but that makes him snore, which keeps me from sleeping. I feel like a terrible person constantly pushing him to try and make him stop while he's sick.

My legs are sore. Yoga tonight is going to feel good, if I can just stay awake for it.

How is everyone doing?

I'm doing battle with a cold that really wants to catch me. So far, I'm winning, I guess - but it's been 3 days of 90% capability. 150 on the scale, some of which might be some coloring bloat from the Nyquil. I'm just going to have to live with it for the moment.

I did make a massive batch of turkey stir-fry last night. It's a recipe from Paul Prudhomme's "Fork in the Road" cookbook, which is his single effort at a "diet" cookbook. It is very colorful with all the peppers and carrots; the sauce is awesome with kind of a hot-sweet thing going on. I do love this cookbook - it's the only one that I've broken the spine on from overuse!

So glad the weather is and crisp during "dogmaggedon" - much easier to cope. Although I am keeping a lot more of the dogs on leash due to increased human/tourist traffic @ the beach.

And now there's a new foster lab coming next week - Bulut ("Cloud" in turkish.)

Whew! It's kinda fun being this busy again but also kinda draining. I got on the scale this morning and need to cut back a bit on the "exhaustion replenishing" calories.

Dagmar

Becky, tell me about the stir fry sauce? I'm good with the basic stir fry dishes, but I have no idea how to make sauces that aren't terrible for me.

Dagmar - glad that you have good weather for your dogmaggedon!

Megan - glad the weight is staying down!

I'm hoping that I can exercise a little today. I'm tired, but I also stayed up way too late considering. I just have to figure out how to take it easy.

So tomorrow it might snow. It is 65 right now.

I got in the elevator yesterday and the maintenance man got on wearing a mask, he explained that he didn't feel too bad but did have a cough and didn't want to spread it around. I thanked him for being so considerate.

Becky, I, too, am curious about the stir fry sauce. I created my own the other day because I didn't want to use soy sauce (not for any particular reason), but I noticed my DH getting the soy sauce out.

Dagmar, you must have incredibly strong arms. Young Labs are the bane of my volunteer work at the shelter--most have no manners, and they tear my arms off as they race out the door. We use those slip-on leashes that shelters use. Not plastic, thank goodness. I always think of myself as fairly strong, but when one of those dogs takes off, I feel like I have no muscle. It used to be easier when I was younger and 100 lbs. heavier.

Shannon, 65 degrees! Hopefully you feel well enough to take a stroll outside. I'll be happy when it gets above freezing here.

"Only" 1.5 lbs. to make it to my redline weight. So easy to put on, so hard to take off. I was reading someone's blog today where a person posted the following: "Does anyone have experience with the “set-point” theory as it relates to keeping weight off? Supposedly if you can stay the same weight for 6-12 months, your body “sets” to this weight and it is easier to maintain after that…" All I could do was laugh when I read that! Wishful thinking. .