Sunflower40 and Dak1lls, thanks for the califlower pizza idea -- that sounds really delish! You are right about cauliflower, it doesnt have much of a taste itself so I can see how it's a good base. Fortunately that craving is gone now (glory be) -- maybe posting here helped.
Saskgirl, yes, it's a learning experience to figure out what can "set us off" (and it will be different for everyone) and then modify your behaviors to avoid that situation. Gosh that was CLOSE, but I made it though, and I feel so much better and stronger today! Maybe I can go through another 3 months without another close call like that -- that would be great!
Sanfran, I feel for you on your recent slowdown -- and I totally get how easy it would be to lose motivation in the middle of one of those periods. Most of my diets in my past have ended after an extended slowdown or plateau where a part of me started to feel like: "why am I killing myself, I am not losing anyway". A couple things to check. 1.) really get CAREFUL with weighing and measuring (sometimes after being on the diet a long time we all get a little sloppy) 2.) check your Basal Metabolic Rate at
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator
this will tell you approx how many calories your body is burning each day at rest ... then total up the calories you are eating. These two numbers might be a lot closer than you think and could explain your stall. Maybe cut back a bit on your intake calories since there is a bit of "slop" there. I eat 10 oz of frozen organic broccoli a day (which is 4 c. loosly packed) ... if you chop your veggies very fine, you might be packing too much into a cup and might be getting too many carbs. 4.) Also you might need to start exercising more (but watch weight lifting as if you start putting on muscle, the scale could go up (but inches would come down)). 5. Make sure you are drinking at least 80 fl oz. of water a day, without enough H2O your body cannot break down and expel stored fat. Just a few ideas.
There is a lot of fine tuning each of us must do as our weight falls. I am so tall , that my BMR is higher than most, which explains my high rate of weight loss. But even with that, my BMR has dropped by nearly 250 calories a day due to losing 54 lbs. But my BMR is STILL close to 2000 calories a day, so I am running a deficit of about 1050 calories a day when I eat 950. You may need to adjust things to keep enough "distance" between what you are eating and what you are burning. If you can't eat less, try to burn more through added aerobic exercise or brisk walking or dancing or something! But you might be eating more calories than you think, so double check your daily intake totals through careful weighing.
Just a final note that (on average) humans need a deficit of 3500 calories (between what they are eating and what they are burning) total to lose 1.0 pounds of fat -- and when you burn 1.0 pounds of fat, 0.5 pounds of water is released. So when your calorie deficit totals 3500, you should lose 1.5 pounds off the scale (or thereabouts). My deficit is over 1000 calories a day, so every 3 days or so I should lose (in theory) 1 lb of fat and 1/2 lb of water for a total of 1.5 pounds on the scale ... or about 0.5 pounds on the scale per day. This is almost EXACTLY what I am losing. If your calorie deficit is smaller, you will lose less weight, that is just a scientific fact. The choices are to eat less, burn more, or just be happy with the slower losses on the scale. Every pound down is a good thing, no matter if it takes a day or a week or a month.
To everyone else that posted ... GOOD THOUGHTS!!! And KareVT, I like your list of 5. And RuthAnn, thanks for the great ideas and support.
Happy Dieting out there!!!