I continue to wake up early before it was 4am everyday now it is 3am... the problem isnt waking up it is that I can not fall back to sleep. Laying in bed for 3 hours is sooo not fun. I am hoping the waking up has to do with how much water I am drinking. So tonight nothing to drink after 7 and see if it helps. The fact that I am waking up the same time everynight worries me though.

Besides that...best day ever!! My FBS 115 Today is also my weigh in day and I am down to 207.6 which is a 2.6lb loss! I jumped on the scale 3 times I couldn't believe it.

One step closer to my goal of Onederland!!!


Shannon I am so happy for you!

I think I would starve to death on Dukan lol so not a big meat eater. Though that would certainly help in the weight department lmao

Good morning. The ACV water is working better for me this time than it did last time I tried it. Last night I ate a piece of DHs pizza at dinnertime, even though I KNOW how it spikes! At bedtime my blood sugar was 215. I didn't want to take the meds, so I drank a bottle of water with ACV and lemon juice. This morning I was at 130. The last time I tried it I was having a hard time with the taste of the ACV, and I wasn't adding enough. Now I add 2 tbsp and also 2 tbsp of the lemon juice. I am used to the taste now and am going to continue using it in all my water.

Trish, your blood sugars are really good! Keep up the good work! My baked beans turned out pretty good, but don't hold a candle to my mother's. I don't know what she did. Most recipes I see call for the same basic ingredients, but it different amounts. Also, I didn't have any dark brown sugar so I used light brown and added extra molasses. I will continue to search the internet until I find a recipe with a picture that looks like my mother's. I know she wouldn't have used any unusual ingredients because she would not have been able to afford them. Hers were very dark brown with lots of rich flavor.

I glanced at the Dukan diet this morning before going to church, but I didn't have time read much. I am going to read it again and read the principles of it. I'm just not sure about doing nothing but protein even one day a week much less every other day. I'll just have to see what I think after I read the book. One thing I see from Dukan, Atkins and other low carb diets is that there are many different ways to low carb and I can take ideas from each one to make one doable for me.

I got up this morning and I was hungry so I ate 2 scrambled eggs before I went to church. So my eating started earlier today. So not sure how today is going to go. It is easier to do the 5 to 8 hr window when I can do it at home. After church I came home and had more of a CAD lunch mainly because if I want starchy carbs, I want them earlier in the day. I've got a small steak that needs to be used for my dinner later this evening as it will be low carb. I feel like I will slowly be moving toward the low carb way of eating as my lifestyle again. One of the reasons I had a difficult time eating low carb in the springtime was that I wanted fruit. As much as I have loved being able to eat fruit this year, I can't believe that I am tired of them mainly because they just don't taste as good as they used to. I think it is because so much of it is imported.

If you can eat strict low carb and include only one starchy carb once a day and lose weight and if you can eat such a strict low carb diet like Dukan where you eat only protein one day and protein and veggies the next plus all the other varieties of low carb plans out there, then I see no reason why I can't create my own plan that I can live with. I know that my stomach will not be able to eat a day of nothing but protein because it gives me GERD. However, I really think low carb has so many wonderful benefits. So I have decided that when DGS goes back to live on campus in August and I don't have to worry about feeding him, I can take the money to do Atkins Induction. I am usually able to do AI for about a week to 10 days. If I can work toward that goal between now and when he leaves, the 20 grams limit on Induction just might be easier for me this time so that I might be able to make it the 2 weeks.

I think the most important thing about doing AI and then adding the 5 grams of carbs the way the book shows is the fact that I can learn how many carbs our body tolerates. I have finally come to realize that this is information that is important for me to know. Not only that, but according to the new Atkins books, it is also the way to "health" and "healthy living". I stood and looked at my reflection in the mirror this morning and asked myself this one question "Low carb is supposed to flatten your stomach and tone your body which you've always said you wanted one time before you leave this world, How bad do you want it?" Made me start thinking about it. Just what is it that I eat that is more important than reaching that goal. It comes down to deciding what my priorities are.

Sorry, I'm thinking out loud again.

Y'all have a super Sunday.

Happy Sunday ladies! I'm sorry I've not been around much...that may be the case for the next little while but I am reading. I'm spending every spare minute purging, sorting, packing, etc. I'm trying to mostly use free boxes since it will cost us quite a bit to move - the distance is just over the max for a "local" move. So far the only place I've found any is the liquor store. They are on the small size. I've packed 15 so far since yesterday afternoon. I think we are going to rent a storage unit for a month so we can drive loads of boxes into the new town and leave them til we move. That will help decrease the moving costs since they will just weigh what the movers move (the larger items).

FBS was 100. I've been off plan since Friday evening. It's been a busy weekend, we've eaten out alot and had a birthday party to attend last night...but my levels have been ok. With the move coming up I had to move my physical up sooner so I can get everything done before then so instead of my next lab work being in Oct, it will be at end of month.

I had grandkids again this weekend. I love having them but dang I'm tired and I have my daycare kids all week long. I will be off part of next wk. I plan to do a lot of painting and things I can't do when I have kids.
Fbs was 94 yesterday and 103 today. I go back to the dr next wk and am pleased my numbers are down. I just wish my weight was down more.
Have a great day everyone.

I just ate my breakfast of a plain scrambled egg. It seemed so strange after all that time of having them with all the veggies and lentils. I was just in the mood for plain, but I did slice up half a tomato to eat with it. Now I will have my small bowl of oatmeal. This time I will remember to sprinkle some cinnamon on it.

Everyone seems to be doing well here. That's good. Shannon, I am trying to do some purging here myself, not for moving, just so there's room to live in our house! I have bought so many new cookbooks for my collection and they are on my grandson's bed. I'm going to pack them in a box until I have time to sort out my cookbooks and get rid of some I no longer want. My grandson is coming to sleep over on the 31st so his bed will have to be available for him.

I made lasagne last night for dinner. I put some frozen spinach in it and we didn't like it as much as the fresh. Today I will make pork and saurekraut. It's easy for me to eat that without any carbs so it's a good choice. Also, I just put it on to simmer and I can leave it and do something else. I hate when I have to stand at the stove.

Have a good day, everyone.

Well, I'm getting my Atkins book out and going to start AI today. I don't know how many days I will be doing it but I will do it until these cravings for sweets and starchy carbs goes away. Then I will begin to ease back into being more careful to eat a lower carb diet. I just haven't been able to get control of things, I feel like I'm starving all the time and wanting to eat everything in site. It is like all I want to do is eat. I refuse to let it get out of control any more than they are. So today will be Day 1 on AI for me.

Carol Sue I had 2 plain scrambled eggs yesterday morning and they were so good by themselves. After church, I came home and had 2 more with the greens, salsa, cheese and bacon. But I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed the eggs by themselves. I need to do some house cleaning around here. I want to get things cleaned up so I won't be embarrassed when the bug spray man comes in August. He usually only sprays around the house, because we haven't needed him to spray inside. However, with cold weather around the corner, I want him to spray inside maybe in August and/or November.

I don't remember if I told y'all about the kettlebells my neighbor told me about. She showed me her set of kettlebells and dvds she is getting ready to do when her finger heals that she cut the tip off of. She had me try one and showed me how to do one of the exercises. From what I understand, if done correctly the exercise is supposed to work your core. I remember the physical therapist who worked with DH after his neck surgery told us if that you don't get your core right then nothing else works right. I only did 3 of the one exercise she showed me how to do. I had what they call an explosion of energy and I was instantly sweating. I must have sweated from just the 3 moves for a good 30 to 40 minutes. I was so impressed that I went to Amazon and looked them up. I ordered the 5 and 10 lb kettlebells and 1 dvd that was highly recommended for beginners. At my age I'm not sure I'll ever use larger than a 10 lb weight. Although I saw an 82 yr old woman using a 30 lb on YouTube. I decided if she could do it, then surely I can do the smaller ones and who knows maybe by the time I'm her age, I can use a larger weight too. I should have them by the end of the month.

My recumbent bike is in our bedroom and DH sleeps during the morning. I can't bring it into living room because he has his regular stationary bike in here that he uses. I've been wanting something I could do in the mornings because I like doing some form of exercise at the beginning of my day and this will be a perfect way to start my day exercising and to get my metabolism revved up. I am looking forward to getting started with it probably the 1st of August if not sooner. I know that the exercise will do a lot to bring my fbs down too. In the meantime, I will work at getting my lowcarbing under control.

BBL

Good luck with the induction Trish! I never did induction specifically since I never tracked but I know that first month, when I was stricter, really helped me.

Well, I did not have to adjust my signature tracker this week, first time I had no loss or gain since starting. Earlier in the week I was about 2.4 lbs lower so obviously my weekend eating put me back up. Oh well, even though I ate off my plan I was making conscious choices, not the mindless "escape" eating that the carbs used to be for me so it's a win in my book. Trying to get back on plan today....however we have a bday party tonight at dinner time with pizza. I guess I will try eating the toppings only and no cake....we'll see. I very well may have to get back on plan tomorrow instead, lol. I will eat on plan up until then though. The parties are really hard esp when they are at a meal time. When they aren't I do much better. Today's party is at a playplace that is inside a stire that sells unique beds/bedroom furniture for kids. Hoping to get a good look and maybe find something for the new house. We want to potentially use Olivia's current bed for our guest area and get her a loft bed for her new room.

Speaking of cooking/meals....I have got to get on the stick with some planning. We have been eating out more than usual lately and I want to "eat the pantry" and "eat the freezer" before we move. The freezer is almost all red meat so I guess we'll be on a red meat frenzy, lol!

Our new home inspection is this coming Saturday very early so we will drive a load of boxes down to rent the storage unit then. I am going to have to sketch out all the rooms and measure while there so I can decide where furniture will go. It's also the day of Olivia's rescheduled birthday party (later in the day).....going to be busy! I don't have anything planned today other than taking Olivia to the birthday party so I think I'm going to try to pack the boxes I have left from my last run to the liquor store and maybe go see if they have any new ones.

I know a lot of Atkins people have problems with the New Atkins etc, but I'm reading The New Atkins Made Easy. She says that while protein is important that it should not be over done, but to be ware of portions as too much can prevent or slow weight loss. I read this a few years ago in another book. Also she stresses that the 12-15 grams of allowed veggies are very important for weight loss. They recommend raw up to 6 cups and cooked up to 2 cups during Induction phase.

Shannon They also give guidelines so like 4 oz is the size of smart phone etc so you don't have to really track if you don't want to.

She also says you don't have to eat the fat on the meat if you don't want it which I don't like chicken or beef fat, but do like pork fat. When you cut the fat off of meat, you should make it up with your healthier fats.

I found that interesting and thought I would just share it as it might help some of us see where we may need to tweak to get the weight moving.

I believe I can live the rest of my life with my own low-carb plan I have arranged. I get to eat a small portion of carbs once in a while and that keeps me from binging. I have cut back the quantities of veggies I am eating, but am still eating a good variety at every meal. I think it's the veggies that have stopped my cravings for sweets. My carbs are in line but my portion control is not. I will continue working with that.

Shannon, you are so busy, but it's a good kind of busy because you are planning a welcome change to your life. I was wondering if the birthday party is in a location where you could order a salad. That might help you avoid too much of the pizza and cake.

Trish, I have a kettleball. I think it's 5 lb. I received a coupon as a thank-you for another purchase I made and it covered the full cost of the kettleball, so in effect, I got it free! We have a basement so I turned our gameroom into an exercise room because now that the kids are gone, no one uses the gameroom anymore. I have accumulated quite a bit of exercise equipment over the years and have sold the things I don't use anymore. Right now I don't have room for anything new, except small things like the kettle ball. I do have a TV and VHS/DVD combo in there so I can watch TV or pop in an exercise video. It works out well for me. I have no interest in going to a gym.

Day 1 on AI has gone well. I did have a weak moment during our main meal, but I got through it without doing anything stupid. I do believe that I ate too much protein. I had pan fried chicken wings and legs. I decided to eat 1 of the legs and save the other 2 for DGS. I had a salad and broccoli for my veggies. When I finished, I realized that I should not have eaten the chicken leg. I actually believe that overeating protein makes me want something more to eat. So I honestly believe, for me, that I should only eat a "normal" portion of protein as the new Atkins book suggests. I think I will need to do this maybe for at least a week. I still don't want to restrict my foods too much, because there are some starchy carbs I do not want to give up like corn. However, I do need the short time on AI to stop the hold sweets seems to have gotten on me. So I may need at least 1 week to get rid of those cravings. I knew I wasn't really hungry when I finished eating lunch today because I was wanting some kind of dessert.

Carol Sue I don't have any desire to go to the gym either. I also am not interested in exercising with anyone else because I like the freedom of exercising at my own pace as well as when it is convenient for me. I think I've been eating too much food, especially veggies, at one time. I am still eating enough veggies, but spread eating them throughout the day in smaller quantities. However, I don't need 3 meals and 2 or 3 snacks each day. I had my 3 meals and a snack and did perfectly fine. I had 2 eggs with a slice Canadian and a little bit of shredded cheese with sliced tomato tonight only because I am bad about wanting to munch at night and I figure that will ward off that feeling.

So far the only discomfort I've had is a slight headache which only lasted a few minutes. Hopefully I've done low carb enough that I won't experience too many bad reactions.

Goodnight. Catch y'all tomorrow.

Edited to say Carol Sue After my reaction to too much protein, I think you might be right about the veggies keeping you from being hungry for sweets. I'll have to keep an eye on that to see if it is true.

Trish, that is the effect that eating vegetables has on me, but it might be different for everyone. I just realized that the few days that I started giving up eating my kale and greens for lunch I started eating more bread and also some cakes my DH had here. I rarely crave sweets otherwise. Now that I'm come back to the veggies but with very little kale I no longer crave the sweets.

I think some people try this and when it doesn't work after a week they go back to eating sweets thinking it didn't work. But I did it differently. I added the large quantities of veggies to my normal diet while still eating the carbs and sweets. It took about 2 months of that before I noticed I no longer wanted the carbs or sweets. I did not just stop the sweets and add the veggies at the same time. I think that's what made the difference.

Carol Sue Interesting observation. The thing I noticed in the 1st week meal samples of Atkins (there are 2 samples one for people too busy to cook and use Atkins products and the other one you cook everything yourself which I'm using as a guideline.) Every snack does not include meat/protein as I would have thought we should. Sometimes they just have veggies like pepper strips dipped in ranch dressing. So they are really pushing the veggies.

I figure that I can eat like this most days. And I've learned from CAD and other low carbers that I can add an ear of corn or some other carb once in a while and it will not mess up my diet. I suspect that by eating more AI type days will prevent me from getting into any more binges. Until this recent binges that I have had I had not experienced in yrs. It will be nice not to have to deal with binges any more.

BBL

Good morning ladies! Yesterday turned into a collassal eating frenzy. I think it was hormonal from my cycle but it was a whopper. Ready to be back on plan today....four days off is enough. Lol!

Trish if you get to feeling poorly, have some broth, supposedly that helps with the symptoms.

Last week of swim lessons. For all her drama, Olivia has really improved. Mark took her swimming this weekend and said she swam and floated in the deep end without any flotation devices! He was really impressed. She is the most dramatic in her little group but she also is the bravest. Her instructor always tries more daring things when it's her turn and tells me she's doing really well. Two lessons this week then we are done. We don't really have anything planned next week but then the next I moved her week of half day camp up bc I had to move all my dr and dentist appts up so I can do them before we move. Mark also has to travel to New Hampshire that week for just a couple days. Then the following Monday we close. Crazy!!

I've gotten connected with the MOPS group where we are moving. Olivia will be in preschool the mornings they meet but it will be the last year I can attend so I think it will be good especially since I need to meet new people. So far all my interactions with local folks have been really good, I'm encouraged.

Shannon, your closing is really soon! Sometimes they take forever. Did you decide what you're going to do about your current house?

My hands are hurting really bad today. I think I'm going to have to take some ibprofen so I can get something done.