Sorry, reposted from the last one.

Hi everyone, I posted on another forum, but I thought I would ask here. I am looking for ideas for meeting new people. I am in a small country town, I am not allowed to drink due to having had pancreatitis, and I work quite a few hours, yet have weekends off. Any ideas would be so great. I have moved 3 hours from my friends, and I just want to be able to go and have dinner or coffee with some friends after a hard day, and my partner is the same. When I was at university, meeting people happened every day, but its harder now. I just feel lonely. I watch tv shows with strong women characters and they all have an amazing group of girlfriends, and I really feel that I am lacking that at the moment. My inability to drink anymore doesn't help, it just makes me really uncool to the people I used to hang around

Caldawg, I can sympathize. I work at a university, and most of us moved here form somewhere else, so we all have to develop a new network. My best advice is to join a group based around something that interests you. Although I'm not as outgoing as my friends, we've all found a friend here and there by joining different groups we enjoy: the local dog club, historical society, Scrabble club, library board, running club, domestic violence shelter, volunteering at the nursing home, soup kitchen, etc. Hope that's some help!

Everybody ready for a new leg of the journey? I need to set some new goals. I'm doing well sticking to my WW points. I need to work on the list of metabolism boosters I made with my research... more on that tomorrow.

Thanks Vortex. I am currently looking into sports based group options now. I heard from an old friend tonight and it brought up some real mixed emotions for me. I miss the old days so much it causes a physical ache in me; I also feel a bit irrelevant, like I am not able to contribute to her life or the lives of my other older friends because my life has changed so much in the last 18 months, and theres is still exactly the same. Its like we have lost a lot of common ground now, and I feel a bit irrelevant to them.

I too need to set new goals. A moment of weakness last night seen me order a family sized pizza with sides, and then consume the lot in one sitting.. To say I feel embarrassed and disgusted in myself if the understatement of the century..

Caldawg89 - hope the meeting people goes well - just catching up with the last life boat segment - congrats on getting under the 300 mark! - oh dear re the pizza I need to be sharing with someone, or I would have done the same

Vortex looking forward to seeing about the metabolism boosters

I need to stick to my WW points and only use some of the weeklies as a safety net with my dailies

Why stick to my points - well I went to -10 points of weeklies this week ... however
I still managed a loss of 1.9 KG - or 4 pounds ! Also got in all of my fit points and drank a fair amount of water too!

I've been in the water so long, chasing the boat, that I never even set goals for this leg.
For the three days left I'm going to try to stick to only healthy foods and watch my portion sizes.

Wish me luck.

Hey, gang, sorry I haven't been posting regularly. My summer class started this week... SOOO intense.

Anyway, I'm doing well with eating and exercise, and now I'm focused on a bunch of other things!

So all of the following have some research behind them, which I can give more info on if you want. But my list of metabolism boosting habits is as follows:

1. Build muscle. (Obviously, this takes time, so the benefit doesn't kick in for a while.)

2. Interval training. There's actually lots of evidence that short bursts of exercise are good for you in lots of ways, but speeding metabolism is one of them.

3. Eat frequently, if you can manage it (the 4-5 meals a day thing, or snacks between meals, is apparently good for metabolism, even if it really inconvenient for us workaholics).

4. 3-5 cups of green or white tea every day.

5. Drink your water and other beverages with ice.

6. Stay hydrated.

7. Use "thermogenic" spices. This mainly means hot-spicy stuff, chili powder, turmeric, etc. But it turns out that garlic and ginger are themogenic, too, and even black pepper! The effect is tiny, but as with all these tips, I figure a tiny (but real) effect added to a bunch of other tiny effects might add up to a less tiny effect.

8. Shoot for 25-30 grams of fiber a day. For me, the key foods to try to get in are strawberries, blueberries, broccoli, cauliflower, squash, carrots, apple, pear, beans, nuts, oatmeal. (Did you know, on top of all the other benefits of fiber, that it helps regulate your body's processing of sugar?)

9. Organic produce. Turns out that pesticides slow the metabolism. So if you can't buy organic, wash well!

10. Protein at every meal.

11. Get sufficient dairy/vitamin D. T

12. Get enough sleep.

NOTE: Our next thread is #170. I screwed up the new title.

STOP

Head on over to slip 170 where we'll board and venture out again on a new leg of our journey.

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