LOL steels post just popped up. I almost missed it. I'll read it now dear.

Hi all..

Steels...Sorry about the low carbing..But you tried and now you will able to function more better and having better food choices..I had tried low carb once and it did not last for 2 weeks..bathroom issues with it..KWIM. Keep plugging along..

I am doing well...started calorie counting today and what a start I had, snacking mostly on junk..since our weather is gloomy and rainy..But I am tracking it and knowing I will use pen and paper for life.

I will be calm on my home scale and no more daily peaking..just weekly and am determined on shedding this weight. My fiber is low end..only fiber I had was in my morning meal.

Enjoy your evening ladies..and Have a better food choices,fiberous,of course May 1st! We can do this ladies...We are winners, and winners never quit!!

Steel, your posts are so bright and lively. Your optimism and joie de vivre just shines through. I am sure you give us all a lift when you drop in.

I think i would feel sick on a ton of protein too. And although i've started cooking more, its not because i have to and i'm enjoying it. Today i want to have a go at hummus since i finally found the jar of tahini that has been sitting around for so long.

Its great your daughter is showing improvements. You are a great mum.

Its great you have found a way to eat the lentil soup. I would never have thought of honey though i guess it goes with ham. My father used to make split pea soup with ham a lot. And pumpernickel is great too. I've got some in the fridge. I usually eat it with cheese though.

Wow your daughters are lucky having you to worry about all their stuff.

I hope everyone has a good day too. I love reading everyone's posts.

Well i'm back again already. I guess i could be accused of over posting. But i got a shock and disappointment to find my diet tips thread had gone. I think its been deleted. But then i thought i could have done something stupid with it to cause it to get lost. I hope it turns up because i didn't keep a copy of what i wrote and i put such a lot of effort into it and i wanted to do it for me, as much as for anyone else. So now i want to post about my lunch since it was so good.

But first hi to Lilian. Are you still not able to cook Lil? That must be so hard. But at least tracking what you eat is a good way to be able to help you stay on track. I find it so useful.

Anyway now to my hummus. I have made it before but i don't do it often. I usually just eat it with bread but when i make it but today i ate with a salad as well and it was sooo yummy. I must say i really really do not like store bought hummus. I have always found it very poor quality so its worth doing it yourself if you want to try it as its not hard at all. Here is a recipe.

1 cup chickpeas (double all this if preparing for lots of people. Soak overnight and apparently with some bicarb soda. Then drain and put water aside for use with blending. Cook the chickpeas in a pressure cooker for at least 15 minutes. Otherwise cook on stove top until soft.
Juice of 1 lemon
125m or 1/4 cup of tahini
1-2 cloves garlic (2-3 cloves if doubling recipe)
Salt if needed.

Blend chickpeas thoroughly. Add a little liquid if needed. Blend in juice and garlic. Then blend in the tahini which might make it all sticky and need more liquid. Taste and add salt if necessary. Don't let it be too dry but it shouldn't be at all runny either.

I allowed half a cup for my serving.

To eat with a salad do like this - Open pita sandwich with hummus, salad and yoghurt:
1 pita bread. I ate half but if you have much more weight than me, i'm sure your body can cope with a whole one. Try to get wholemeal pitas for the fibre. Warm the pita bread somehow but i admit i forgot to do that. Then slice in half through the middle rather than eat it as a pocket so that you can eat more salad with it. Make it into an open sandwich to eat with knife and fork.

Spoon all the hummus in your serve onto the bread and spread it.
Drizzle over 1tsp olive oil
then pile up salad vegies (3-4 sorts would be good) such as green leaves, sprouts, watercress, grated carrot or beetroot, cucumber, tomatoes, capsicum, mushrooms.
Crumble a little fetta cheese on this or grated parmesan. Not essential but nice.
Black cracked pepper
then top with 1 tbsp of good quality natural yoghurt on each pile. If you are really enthusiastic you can mix in some crushed garlic for greek tzatziki but plain yoghurt is fine too.

I can admit i was not full up after my half pita serve so then i ate 1 ladle of stewed pears with more yoghurt and a sliced dried fig.

I can say that since i have started reading my french women don't get fat book, i have improved my food. Making a little more effort and really enjoying all my vegies and fruits and things. I am also pleased with my restraint of the delicious dried fruits and nuts.

Sorry I haven't been here, been getting my head around the fact that I have to low carb. AlekaThe Simple Diet has helped me a little with that. I've decided that I do like the idea of using the Atkins drinks in place of snacks, but when it comes to meal time that I want to make my own food instead of using frozen dinners. I can always use an Atkins frozen dinner for substitute if I need to, but it won't be often. One of the ladies on there makes her own frozen dinners but has a back up plan. So I've decided to have a back up plan. I lost 78 lbs yrs ago doing CAD. There will always be days when I cannot do a legal low carb day because DH likes to eat at Long John Silvers or we go out for burgers and I have to admit that there are times I can go to a hamburger place like Steak 'n Shake and have a salad, but some places don't offer them or they are too expensive. (Funny how healthy becomes the high price item in some places.) So in order to keep from having those guilty/failure feelings, I'm going to have a back up plan by have a CAD Reward Meal. That way I am still OP. I hope this will help me to be successful.

I'm still counting calories as well as carbs and hope to keep my fiber in a good healthy range. I'm not sure you could call my plan Atkins Induction or low carb as much as a moderate low carb because I've added beans to my daily plan. Sure does keep things regular and hopefully helps with the cholesterol. So glad that Pattience reminded us of that one.

Lilliann Looks like you are getting things going good for you. Success surely comes from doing what works for us personally. Hope other things are going good for you too.

Steels You have a really busy 2 months ahead of you and counting calories probably will help you get through all the activities as well as any celebration goodies coming up.

Oh yes. We didn't get much rain where I am, but I here a lot of people got it bad. Tornadoes missed my daughter in AR and my sister in Miss. My youngest son and his wife were on an island of the coast down below Pensacola when that bad storm hit and got flooded in for a day, but thank God they were able to get on the highway this morning and I talked to him while they were on the way back home in TX. So we were really blessed. Thank you for thinking of me and asking.

Guess I'm the chatty one today, but we are that kind of group.

Well, DH is probably getting hungry so I better go make lunch. Have a good day.

Trish, maybe its more a question of reducing carbs rather than going low as such.

If you have a problem with bread and pasta, why not just ban them from your diet for a period of three or four months while you learn to eat other things instead. And when you bring them back, just allow yourself a particular quantity and along with a meal full of other nutritious things. I have found that after four months i have really improved the quality of my food in terms of nutrition, variety and portions as well as flavour that I am more confident than ever that i can ride out difficult emotional periods and the occasional risky event. I've had a few of those along this journey so far too. And so much of my success is due to me banning refined sugars which are my big weakness.

It seems to me now that when going on a diet, people might probably have more success if they started by focusing on the quality of the foods they eat rather than calorie reduction. Over time your interest in unhealthy foods will grow less. Though i still think it is beneficial to be aware of daily calories and keep a food log.

When you decide you are ready to reduce calories, just reduce them a small amount. This enables you to minimise hunger and control it when it does arise and you'll still lose weight but it will be so much easier. At the same time you have lots of different foods to play with to make your meals more interesting. When you get confident, you can increase the reduction a bit and learn to play with the limits without panicking that you will regain any losses. This last month of easing up on my calorie restriction has really shown me that.

As for portion control, i measure everything and decide in advance how much is probably appropriate. If, at the end of a course i am still hungry, then i would have some fruit and or natural yoghurt depending on what my appetite is like. With the courses situation, i am finding that because they are now quite small, its easy after each course to decide whether i need something else or not. Two days ago i was surprised that i didn't want anything else after the soup. If i still feel unsatisfied, i definitely do have something else and usually its fruit. There's no point in being hungry at the end of a meal.

I also keep a detailed food log. And write out the recipes i make up myself as we'll as those i find from elsewhere. Mostly i cook according to my own recipe as i know that cooking with other recipes isn't something i can sustain day in and day out. However, when i want to make a particular dish, i look around for a good recipe. I will tweak it sometimes, reducing the amount of oil a little or leaving out this or that if i don't have it etc.

In the beginning when i was reducing i stuck with three meals close together and a glass of wine before dinner which i know is not as good as with dinner but it helped with the 4-5pm hunger and quenched my appetite effectively.

Now i seem to be eating between meals a bit more but nearly always its fruit. I seem to never get hungry after dinner now. When i go to town, i tend to get hungry. I usually take fruit in the car and sometimes a sandwich, but I plan on eating a proper meal or salad sandwich if i need to eat something solid. As i usually go out for a whole day or half a day depending on my destination, i have to be prepared for all that. Also i usually find a cappuccino or a cafe latte gives me a good boost of energy from the few calories in the milk. And of course i always try to have a water bottle with me. This way i can avoid running to a junk food outlet and the dissatisfaction and negativity that arises from that.

At home, i drink water and instant coffee with milk (no sugar ) all day long. I rarely drink juices and never sodas. I probably drink more coffee than ideal but coffee is not the evil entity it used to be. Because i drink so much milk and yoghurt i don't even think its a big problem for my calcium levels. I looked into that.

I eat few processed foods. And frozen foods/meals are rare. I've got some vegetable pasties in the freezer for occasions when i'm too tired to cook but i don't even eat one a fortnight. I find most frozen meals a huge let down.

In sum, i believe if you can focus on quality, whole and unprocessed foods, less meat, strict food logging, and frequent monitoring of calories but minimal restriction, you will find it easier. Find replacements for things that cause you problems. The less temptation we surround ourselves with the easier it is to eat according to our needs and not our out of control desires.

My day was great. I used MFP to set my ratio of protein, carb and fat as best as I could to fit low carb. Not Atkins Induction because of the beans I'm eating, but carbs were less than 40 g and all the other numbers were good as well as sodium and fiber as well as I am doing plenty of exercise as well. So I am extremely happy with my personal plan that I have planned. This is so doable for me as a lifestyle.

I'm not going anywhere but i've decided to start another thread which i hope you will join in on as well.

Its about eating vegies and fruit and on it, you can share your vegie eats for the day in the same way that here you register your fibre count. Also share the vegetable recipes you've just tried and anything else vegetable and fruit related. That said, its only going to be about fresh fruit and veg. No frozen or processed things. I'll try to put a link in. I think it will have to go in the food talk forum.

Here's the link. Its on the whole foods and lifestyle forum, not the food talk forum.

http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/whol...eg-thread.html

https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/preve...ords/23147144/

This came up on my yahoo page and it was snappy and interesting. I thought you'd like to read it.

as a result of it, i learnt that perhaps i should try sauerkraut again cause i have constipation issues from my antidepressants. However i've never been really fussed on it in the past so I'm not confident.

I've also decided to formalise what i've been doing pretty much most of the time anyway. I'm having one raw veg meal a day and one cooked veg meal a day. But now with more focus.

I don't really go with the super foods idea. Its just good nutritious food or not so much. I'm not very prone to jumping in to food fads.

I won't both soaking my nuts either as who needs the extra bother. Not sustainable for me. Its enough to soak my beans and lentils ahead of time.

I did see a recipe yesterday on my french women don't get fat website for making my own ricotta cheese that looks very easy. And i want to get back to making my own yoghurt again. Yoghurt is quite expensive here. And now i've realised what i did wrong in the past was not to strain it afterwards. Now i know that's how you get the naturally creamy rich flavour. So i have to try this soon.

I've decided to go see a counsellor again soon to help me with my sewing procrastination. I'm just not doing any work on anything. Very lazy. But i'm not really stressing about it.

From watching my ducks i have noticed that animals and most likely us too, are prone to do nothing when we don't have to. My ducks will spend most of the day supplementing their diet with chasing grains and insects when they had to compete with lots of others for a limited amount of bought food. Now that there are only two left and there is plenty of bought food to go round, they hardly move from their spot all day long. This explains the laziness of cats and dogs too. And lots of us people. Its very hard to motivate ourselves when we are not forced to it. It seems to be nature's way.

I made ricotta cheese for the first time ever today. It taste good and it was easy. Though you don't get much cheese out of 3 litres of milk so its just as well milk is cheap these days.

I was going to make the spinach ricotta cannelloni recipe i made right at the beginning of my diet but i picked up the box of cannelloni and realised it was full of cockroaches. Yikes! So there goes that idea. I'm sure i won't have much trouble finding other ways to eat it.

I want to have another go at making yoghurt today too. I just found a new tip to improve it that i haven't tried before, which is to strain it a bit to get a thicker creamier yoghurt. I'm interested to see how that goes, because yoghurt in the shops is not so cheap these days.

Hey Ladies, i started running today. It was not on my agenda when i got up this morning but Brandis, another poster, led me down a track that motivated me to go out and run. I can't believe it. I'm so pleased.

I found this little easy training program. And ran 2.5 kms but didn't have to run the whole way.

I got it from this site which has some other interesting tools on it. I learnt about TDEE today. total daily energy expenditure. Look it up on a thread by Brandis to see how she and maybe might use it.
http://www.health-calc.com/diet