Good morning everyone! Hope you're all found well and raring for another day of fat busting! Circumstances yesterday led me out for dinner to a Japanese restaurant and speaking of mindlessly doing things automatically, I added soya sauce to my soup. The soup probably had enough sodium to last me two days...but oh well, can't take it back now. Now I'm reeking the havoc of it, retention! The best part is that a mistake like that can easily be corrected with a lot of water! So guess what, I'll be drinking like a fish today!

Linda, glad to hear the weather is becoming much more liveable. Hi!

Angela, you're ticker is looking good! It's nice to actually see your progress isn't it. And it's such a great thing to go in and change your weight to watch those pounds go down!

Leda, it's funny how your "quote" relates so well. Welcome! I know cravings have got to be the worst to fight. I love pizza too, no let me rephrase that, I LOVEEEEEEe! pizza too. When I'm having a craving for it I make a healthy version. Usually Hawaiin with lean sliced ham, on a whole grain crust, low sodium sauce and reduced fat moza cheese. I have two slices and a nice size side salad to go with. I'm totally satisfied by it. Just a suggestion!

Ladies, I heard or read something a while back...not sure where, but it just popped into my head again now. "It's impossible to keep up your motivation up to a max all the time while trying to lose weight. That's why it's important to look at this as committing to a lifestyle change. If you're depending on getting all the way through this on high motivation you'll be fighting thoughts of failure and doubt because that initial "honeymoon" period will be over as soon as you hit your first bump in the road."

Makes so much sense doesn't it?! It boils down to how committed you are to this and how badly you want this for you in the long run.

Anyways, have a great day ladies! I look forward to reading all your successes soon!

Good Afternoon Ladies!!!

I was having a good eating day yesterday until I lose a fight with someone King Ranch Chicken!

I'm doing good today and I hope to keep up the good work!!!

Leda & Tina - I have a fight with PIZZA everyday!! My favorite place to order pizza from is Domino's and there is one RIGHT across the street from my apt. When I take Precious out for her walks everyday, I see it and smell it. I haev been in this apt. for a month now and have not once ordered Domino's!!! I almost have but I DIDN'T!!! GOOD ALWAYS WINS OVER EVIL!!!! EVIL PIZZA-ZERO; JANA-25 HAHAHA!!!

You ladies have a wonderful evening!!!

Howdy Ladies! I see some familiar faces here and Tina had sent me a PM and let me know ya'll were hiding. I am SOOOO identifying with the plateau thing and being stuck and have been for many months now. I am proud of the fact that i have been able to keep off about 60 pounds for going on around a year now but when you still have about 80-90 to go it still feels like a tremendous task.

So i may flounder a little here at the beginning and may be in and out on my posting but hope to be in full swing of things soon. I am working on getting over sinus infection, ear infection and bronchitis that was working on pneumonia right now, so exercise is the last thing on my mind but i know that is the key to getting going again for me.

Hope to be seing lots of less of you soon! Erin

Hi gang . . .

Wowwweee have I ever been having a crummy day. Weather is great, but I'm the pits. Started my day at 3:30 with a really nasty hypo event and have been feeling yucky all day long.

Hopefully everything will be back to normal tomorrow . . .

leda,

I can relate, not that I had completed my journey to goal, but that I was doing great and then slowly slipped off the side of the wagon, with the occasional pathetic attempt to get back on. Last week I decided to hop on with both feet. I'm glad to have found these groups. I think the last time (when I was sliding), part of it was lack of community support.

Welcome back to the wagon, maybe if we clutch at each other, we can keep from slipping off (or at least have help jumping back on) and not get left in the dust.

ruthannie

meowee, hope tomorrow goes better. I had quite the day (posted a long vent) over in the WW At Home group.

ruthannie

Hey ladies, I am so excited to see some familiar faces here and some new ones too. I don't have alot of time for alot of chat but did want to drop in and say hi. I truly believe that if we all work together and help keep each other accountable we will break these plateaus and start heading in the right direction again.

Speaking of the right direction, my scales are down a pound from the uppage I was at a couple of days ago. So now I am at 230.0 . I have a feeling it is because I was sick last night and spent most of the night in the bathroom but hey, I am always excited to see a drop no mater what the cause.

Well it is time for me to get to work. Hope to check back soon.

Good Morning Ladies . . .

Life is definitely looking better this morning. My blood sugar is sitting at normal levels and I feel human again. We won't talk about the scale- but eventually he, too, will come to his senses.

Hope you all have a great day planned . . . see you soon.

Good day ladies! I'm really happy to report that not only did I manage to lose my retention weight but one more pound went along with it!! Yay! I'm really trying and feel really committed to this. I'm a little nervous about lunch today though. I'm invited over to a friends house for lunch. She does try to be health conscience, but you know how it is when you're counting calories....you count everything! And I just won't know down to the point of what I am consuming. But the best part is we're going for a walk afterwards and I already did my workout this morning, so bonus burning today!

Jana, wow! Avoiding pizza is a huge defeat! Now, that's some great committment. You go girl!

Erin, it's so good you decided to pop in! Don't worry about having a slow start, I know once you are feeling better and have your mind in the game again...you'll blow some pounds outta the water! Congratulations on maintaining your loss!

Linda, sorry to hear you had such a bad day yesterday.

Ruthannie, I think having a support helps a great deal! Especially with having a group of ladies who have slipped and know how difficult it is to get back on the wagon.

Robbin, LOL..I remember once when I was doing this I got sick and lost 3lbs. in one day. I was so excited, even more so that when I started introducing solids again the scales didn't reflect that.

Have an awesome day ladies! Keep the fire burning!

Q: I'm a 49-year-old woman and have lost about 60 pounds in six months. I’ve seen great results but still have more to lose and I’m worried about my middle—I’ve seen no change there in two months. I’m working out with a trainer twice a week and do 4 to 5 hours of cardio a week. Do you have any suggestions on how to continue losing weight, and how to target my belly?

A: Obviously, what you are doing is working. So before you panic because you feel like you’ve reached a plateau, relax. Losing 10 pounds a month, on average, for six months is quite an accomplishment. But it’s also quite a shock to your body: All that fat loss has produced a host of biochemical, physiological and anatomical changes that your body is learning to adjust to. It’s a good idea to allow your body to adapt to its new weight without trying to pressure it to produce more drastic weight losses. The fat you’ve lost is energy, after all, and the body likes to preserve energy. So you need to coax it into accepting your lighter body.

When someone is extremely overweight, it’s common for weight loss to happen fast initially, but then slow down. The National Institutes of Health’s guidelines for treating overweight and obesity in adults say there’s often a predictable plateau after about six months.

This phenomenon is partly due to the fact that you need fewer calories now than you did at your heavier weight. What that means is that what worked for you in the first months may not be the same recipe for weight loss now.

Let's say, for example, that you lost weight when you were eating about 2,500 calories each day by cutting that to 1,800. But now that you're lighter, that 1,800 calories may be closer to what your body needs. So the same amount of calorie-counting with your foods and calorie-burning through exercise might not have as powerful an effect.

Plus there is some evidence that a person who is at a reduced body weight has even lower energy needs that a person who weighs the same and has maintained that stable weight.

Your lower energy needs now are just one of many physiological responses to your weight loss that may make you prone to gaining it back.

So what can you do about it?

First of all, rather than trying to lose more weight right now, focus instead on weight maintenance—keeping off the weight you’ve already lost and fighting your body’s tendency to regain it.

To maintain the weight loss, and to continue losing, you may need to eat even more healthfully than you already are and be slightly stricter about portion sizes.

You are on the right track at making exercise a key component of your weight-loss program. It’s a rare person who can keep lost weight off without exercising.

But you may need to increase your activity—either by working at a slightly higher intensity during your cardio sessions, or by adding a few more minutes to each one, or adding another day of cardio. Every person is different but research suggests that it takes from 60 to 90 minutes per day of moderate intensity exercise on most days of the week to control weight.

As far as your belly is concerned, you’ve no doubt lost a significant amount of fat from that area already. If you don’t feel like you’ve seen further whittling down of your waistline in the past couple of months, then shift your focus elsewhere for now. Scientists and researchers still don’t understand everything about how fat is gained, lost and distributed on the human body. There is no magical ab move that will suddenly make fat vanish from your gut. But research shows that belly fat tends to be the most easily lost (and gained). If you have a genetic tendency to store it there, or to store more of it in the area, it may be more resilient.

Try to be patient and remind yourself that you spent years packing the pounds on, and it can’t all be lost overnight—or even in less than a year. Shift your focus on how to live in a way that prevents your lost fat from returning. Eventually you’ll achieve a healthy, fit weight. But give it time. The good news is that even though it may feel like a battle—and it is—it will get easier.

According to the National Weight Control Registry, a research database that tracks the behaviors of more than 6,000 people who lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least a year (but on average for nearly six years), successful weight losers report that once they’ve kept the pounds off for three to four years, it seems to get easier to stay lean.

"From MSN Health & Fitness site"

Good Morning everybody . . .

Another nice looking day around here. Of course, it is going to be a rainy long-weekend. Why does that seem to happen so often?

Well, my friend Lou-Lou and I are going to do the lunch and 'shop till you drop' thing this afternoon, so I'd better get a few little constructive things done before it's time to leave. Hope everybody has a great day planned. See you later, gang . . .

Hello all! Well yesterdays lunch really wasn't that bad of a deal. She had turkey club sandwiches. The only bad thing on there was full fat cheese and bacon of which I took very little of (just to be polite). Dropped another half pound today! Things are going well other than the fact I woke up with a cold and I didn't feel like dragging myself to the elliptical because my legs are still sore from trying to really up the resistance. BUT...I did it anyways! I'm so proud of myself for pushing through.

Seems a little quiet in here these past two days. Hope you are all well and have some great news to share soon!

Take care and have an awesome day!

Okay....so the birthday cake is catching up to me I swear! I only had a little bit, but I think the sugar made my system go crazy. I gained a pound - YUCK! I'm thinking about trying the Sacred Heart Diet. I've been reading up on it, and it says that you can lose up to 15 pounds in one week. I doubt I would lose that much, but I'd like to try it to kick start me again since I'm still on this crazy plateau. Would any of you like to do it with me, and we can track our progress together?? I would love a buddy or two, or three - LOL!! Let me know your thoughts! Talk to you chickies soon.

Hi all! I'm on a plateau/relapse now. I had lost 75 pounds out of 100+. Doing it steadily, albeit slowly. I have never been a fast loser. I was doing WW points, and I really think I messed up my metabolism by not getting enough food for the amount of exercise I was doing. It was frustrating - biking everyday, eating the plan religiously and no weight loss for months. I ate more, I ate less, I exercised more, I exercised less, I switched to Core.
I began to cry every week when the scale wouldn't budge. No change in my measurement - I wasn't even gaining, either. My DH felt so bad for me.

Then last summer I kind of started giving up. I figured that I may as well eat the things I wanted to, and my weight began creeping up. 25 pounds later and I just can't let things get out of control again. When I popped back over 200, that was really depressing.
So - I buckled down again in January, and lost 10 pounds over the course of 3 months (I told you I was a slow loser!! LOL). This was eating balanced meals with whole grains and lean proteins (tracking on fitday).
Now, I got stuck again - no scale movement at all, and it is inching up again.
I am tempted to do NS, just to take the exhausting focus off of food for awhile.

Glad to find others like me! You know how people don't believe that you can follow a plan religiously and not lose weight.

Well gang i have managed to hang on through another week and not have any profitable gain. I am still having fluctuations but it has a lot to do with really crappy eating. I am having a hard time kicking this crud that i have and that is making a perfect excuse to eat what i want and not exercise. Anyone have any suggestions for how to get on track when you feel cruddy??? I am really ready to start moving in the right direction again. I packed up some of my winter clothes thinking by the time i pull these out they will be too big but they will likely fit exactly like they did when i packed them up. Although, they won't be any tighter which is what happened for years so that's good, right?!?!

Well our 100 degree + heat wave seems to finally have broken and we are actually getting rain in the afternoons so hopefully drought relief is not far behind. Break the humidity and i may want to really get outside again!! Now that we have a dog i have great reason to get out and walking so that may be my starter back to exercise.

Anyone doing anything fun for labor day?? I will be working some but hope to work in a little fun and relaxation too. I am excited for the start of college football and will watch the Alabama game saturday night.

Ya'll have a great weekend and will pop in again soon!