Airegrrl -- Thank you for that enlightning ah-ha moment post... It's so true that we have to remember the source of those remarks, comments and cruel jokes, and just move on. Your plans for the next year sound like wonderful goals.... I too a couple of years ago before coming here and at L&S and seeing the inspiring transformation thought that at 45 I could not be built like I was at 30 something... and I thought, why not?? Good grief I'm not going to do like my mother and stop cause I'm 60, 50 or 40!! So I too am going to strive to be the best I can...

Oh and BTW...........

:balloons: :grouphug: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! :grouphug: :balloons:

Thanks Colleen - I can't wait until they are gone either! Actually, the one under my bra is gone as well, but the photos didn't capture that! Hopefully my Christmas gift to myself this year will be lack of back rolls! And then maybe I'll have an actual waist!
Cindy

Cindy: this is what I see. Tighter arms around the base of your triceps, more protruding collarbone on your upper chest, slender wrists, tighter muscles on your lower quads over your knees and WAY LESS rollage happening! Way to go girl! You are on your way……. :D ;) After two challenges I would suggest changing the split to encourage more growth from your muscles. Another change could be to migrate from BFL cardio to sprints or something similar like guerrilla cardio – to kick you into higher gear with your fitness. :drill: :drill: :drill:

Airegrrrl: I was the one who made the reference about being squishy and it was my Mum I was referring to. I have always been a heavy girl (and I don’t mean fat) and so has my Mum but we are about the same size at the moment but she weighs 22 lbs less than me. Currently I am a size 8-10 but I weigh about 180lbs. My ideal is to get down to 145-150lbs which will put me at about 12-13% BF (approx) which is lean enough in my book. I carry a lot of muscle and I also put it on easily. The lowest I got down to before was 165ish (I didn’t weigh in very often) but during the soccer season I put on about 10 lbs of muscle and a little fat (which didn’t bother me) so that now I am wearing jeans at 180 that I couldn’t wear before at 170. Weird huh? I told my workout partner what I weighed the other day and she was surprised (she sees me all the time). By the way I am 5’4” as well. On a good day I can see a 4 pack. :s: :yes: :yes: When I read about women weighing 125 I always imagine a stick thin insect! :lol: no offence to anyone that weight intended! :lol:

The longer it takes to ‘recreate’ yourself or should I say slower, then you are more likely to keep it off. I see it time and time again. Even after I lost a lot of my weight I took time off to maintain for a while (and ended up putting on muscle as well). My logic was that there was no point losing fat if I couldn’t keep it off so I had a stab at maintenance.

That’s the other thing that annoys me about my Mum when she says that she is too old to exercise – she is only 56! I see all of you guys in your 50’s and you can do it so why can’t she?

Laural: happy birthday! :balloons: :balloons:

My 2 cents

JC

damn it that reminds me to change my signature.

JC

JC - thanks for the clarification - how do you participate in that?

Colleen - I am in Suffolk, VA, right in the middle of the storm :) Not something I want to go thru again anytime soon. I told DH to get a job OUT of this area!!

Cindy - PT is Physique Transformation. Myself , Audrey, and a few others that lurk here are on the program. It is similar to BFL, BRx, etc., in that it concentrates on nutrition, clean eats, and weight training. It differs in that it has its own software on its website, that you track your food on. It gives you daily caloric goals, based on what part of the program you are in, and you not only know what you eat, but everything that is in what you eat. I have gotten quite an education about food!!

I like it because of the detail, plus you are graded on how close you are to obtaining your daily goals in terms of calories, protein, fat, carbs, sugar, sodium, and so on.

BTW, great pics :)

Robin :cb:

Robin: you just join in - nothing fancy. A few of us just wanted a date to look to so that we get our butt's into gear! So we picked thanksgiving.

JC

Happy Birthday Laural!!! :gift: :balloons:

JC :goodvibes :goodvibes :goodvibes :goodvibes

I hope everyone is having a great day! :D

Jayne

Thanks Jayne! See you tomorrow night!

JC

No worries JC :D . And I'm all set for tomorrow, I have my new program worked out and the weights have been heavied!!! Yay :D :D :lol: :s:

Jayne

&*#% I knew I forgot something this weekend! To redo my workout (will do it now though).

Talk about an emergency to throw you out of whack!

JC

We Will Rock This Week!
 

Good morning! Everyone ready to have an awesome week? We had a quiet weekend here — one day was spent visiting DH’s mother :dizzy: . I managed to get some good cardio in both days and am psyched for a new week of working out. My partner is back from his vacation in Mexico, where he was sidelined for three extra days with no electricity due to a hurricane, came down with food poisoning, and lost 15 pounds (none of which he needed to lose). It may be a light workout today, depending on how he's feeling.

I’ve spent some time reviewing my it’s and its, hoping to feel confident enough to post without causing pain and consternation to others. Next week I promise I’ll move on to affect and effect and lose and loose. :D

OK — lots of great posts to read this AM!

Ilene — we be the Whale Sisters! Woo hoo! Let’s get T-shirts!

I’m right with you on the “can’t have the first cookie”. Why does your mother care anyway? I don’t have any patience with food pushers anymore. I think they’re doing it so that they don’t feel guilty when THEY eat what they shouldn't. Ever notice how food pushers are never pushing salad or chicken breast on us? It’s always something sweet and full of calories with no nutritional value.

MY parents are aghast at the amount of food I eat and the frequency. They can’t figure out how I lost so much weight and eat “all the time”. And yes, I’ve tried to explain … :rolleyes: And my stepmother has the classic type 2 diabetes that she has lots of trouble controlling but eats nothing but carbs (she knows better, of course, but “just can’t give up her whatever”). Parents — no matter how old we get, they still drive us crazy! :lol:

Your new baby is so cute! All of our cats seem to find us that way too — showing up on porches and under bushes. It took a while for ours to get along but they do — usually one ends up as the dominant cat. Our 20 year old kitty is still the top cat, despite her age, and always gets first crack at the food bowl (and this girl lives to eat!).

Welcome back Colleen! How was the haggis? Good timing on missing the storm! Beautiful pictures of Scotland — is that DH? He’s a cutie! :)

JC — perfect eats! I may end up posting mine today too — I really need some accountability. I must have missed it — are you and Ilene doing a plan? I love the Da Vinci SF French vanilla syrup — I put it in my chai tea with a tiny bit of skim milk and that’s dessert (mock chai latte).

And what’s with your mom and being too old to exercise??? I plan to be doing squats when I’m 95! Seriously, I think that’s the thing that will keep us from getting “old”. There are a lot of women my age who are “old” already — just given up and resigned themselves to being obese and totally inactive. It’s frightening to see how weak and out of shape they are. At the grocery store recently, I slung a twenty pound box of kitty litter on the belt with one hand — and neither the cashier or bagger (both middle-aged women) could lift it with two hands. That’s just sad.

Robin — wow, you really had quite a time with the storm! You did the best you could with the food under very difficult circumstances and now you move on. It sounds like you’re very happy with the PT plan! Keep us updated, OK?

Cindy — congratulations on finishing your second challenge! I see some very big changes in your photos — I can’t believe that you don’t see tons of progress?! (I guess we’re all blind when it comes to ourselves!) Your face is slimming down — less chin, right? Your back and upper thighs are noticeably smaller and your shoulders are losing that “rounded” look and becoming muscular. Someone told me that we should all focus on shoulders more because they are the “frame for our bodies”. Yours are really coming along. Enjoy your rest week!

Indiana Robin — what a great birthday present you’re giving yourself — a year for you! I’ll bet that a year of working out and clean eating will totally reshape your body, even if your weight doesn’t change by an ounce. I hope you take before and after pictures — you will be our living proof that building muscle makes one smaller, not — horrors! —“bulky”.

Great goals and a great plan, Laural!

I'm shooting for a perfect day here -- perfect eats, cardio, weights. Will report back.

Meg

Lol... no Meg, that's my brother (but he is a cutie, isn't he?!) I couldn't bring myself to try the Hagis, though my bro did. He wolfed down the whole plate while we leered at him - even said it was pretty good. He admited to me later, though, that it was actually kind of disgusting - he just didn't want to look like a wuss in front of everyone at the pub.. lol...

Ok, GTC... my goal is to wear a pair of size 12 jeans that can be worn immediately after being removed from the dryer with NO fat roll having over the top! My size 14 jeans can now be worn with little rollage, but within a few hours, they are literally falling off of me (as in, can be removed without unbuttoning... what's up with that???!!!) Might not be able to accomplish that by Thanksgiving, but it's at least worth aiming for, right?

Anywho, off to shower!

Ay yi yi back from Yosemite!!!
 

You have no idea how tough it is to depart "the world's best place" to go back to (Maynard G. Krebs voice here) "WORK!" ;) Ah well...the Valley WAS gorgeous - although the falls had dried up - we had a kind of dry winter this past year and of course Yosemite Falls IS snowmelt...five years ago, when Jim and I were married on the Valley floor, the falls were very full - made for some great photos :) but that was the year after The Big Flood of 1997 that washed away a couple of campgrounds and all the cabins at Yosemite Lodge. We had a quite relaxing weekend - hiked up to Sentinel Dome to pay homage to the Jeffrey Pine made famous by Ansel Adams which finally fell a month or so ago (it had died in a drought back in 1976). The tree is still there where it had fallen - hopefully it won't get picked apart by hikers seeking souvenirs...here's the famous Ansel Adams photo:
http://www.anseladams.com/newstore/images/SEP114LG.jpg

We stayed at Yosemite Lodge (our favorite place) and since there is no TV, much less the Internet, we brought plenty of reading material and sat outside on our patio chatting, reading, and listening to music. Didn't see any bears, but quite a few coyotes, deer and countless birds and squirrels...temps were in the mid-90's :cool: perfect weather for biking around the Valley floor and wading in the Merced River!

Since I hadn't been to the gym since Thursday morning (took a break from weights last week and just did cardio) it felt great to go back to the gym this morning - did shoulders, triceps, abs and some quick HIIT cardio and I feel great! :strong:

I am SO ready to eat clean...after we got home yesterday and I spent a couple hours or so at the stables riding and playing with my boy :) I went shopping for clean eats and cooked up a 'mess' of chicken breasts...boiled some eggs...getting ready for the week ahead. I gotta tell ya, as gorgeous as Yosemite is, most of the food sold in the Park is, well, your typical junk American food...pizza, hamburgers, hotdogs, etc. We had planned on eating at one of the GOOD restaurants in the Valley for our anniversary - the Mountain Room - but they were PACKED. (The Ahwahnee Hotel has wonderful four-star dining, but dinner patrons are required to dress formally - all we brought along were shorts and T-shirts). After waiting an hour for our pager to buzz, we finally gave up and had dinner in the Lodge cafeteria! :lol:

Ilene - well we THOUGHT our cats were getting along - apparently that's only when we're around. When we got back home, there were signs of a definite SCUFFLE. Tufts of white and grey fur on the floor and Chalupa Boy has an 'owie' just under his nose - compliments of our girl-cat and her dagger like claws - she's going to the vet ASAP for a trim (she won't let us do it...we've tried...). My sister was taking care of them, but we got home VERY early - Jim likes to get an early start and we were on the road at 6 am yesterday! We think that the catfight happened sometime on Saturday night after my sister had checked in - the boy's boo-boo looked pretty fresh. Needless to say the cats are VERY happy that we are home!!!

Let me chime in with JC here about the benefits of LOSING WEIGHT SLOWLY. It's true - the slower you lose weight, the better chance you have of keeping it off. (check out the Tom Venuto article I posted in the Articles sticky).

Gotta run...shower is calling me :)

Hey all!

Ilene, that coworker was mean!!! I would have said "yeah, I thought I recognized your leathery mongoose-like looks, but I wasn't sure. Are you feeling well?" HUH. You, being the nice woman you are, are still wonderful fabulous Ilene. Hang in there, I think you look mahhhvelous dahlink.

OO - name for kitty? Miss Rosa Nose? What a sweeeetie, I would have a cow if I found a kitten!! (so would my cat LOL)

Laural, happy birthday and hang in there! You will do great on the GTC.

Robin, I think you and I are in it for a year together. Go check out bodychangers dot com and look at the interviews. A lot of them took a year or more to change. It's great - hope for all of us and it's a little more realistic than the BFL champions, who had extraordinary results in a short period of time.

Hi to everybody, I don't have a lot of time to post.

I'm in on the eat clean week, but I'm taking my free day on Saturday. Sunday was clean. My goals for Thanksgiving? BUFF ARMS aka BIG GUNS. Why is everybody raving over Jennifer Garner's arms? Um, hello, remember Linda Hamilton's arms? maybe I'll rent Terminator 2 again and set that as a sometime goal. I am so tired of feeling like lady flappyarms - even though my arms are now getting quite cut, I still feel like I can fly away with my triceps......

Ilene: You are a far, far better person than I am if you could manage not to key that woman's car on your way out of school. Oh, okay, I'm kidding, but it wouldn't be because I didn't want to. :s: What a jerk! I used to have a friend who would respond to comments like that with this sweet look of curiosity and say, "it's SO nice to see you again! I had almost completely forgotten how rude and tactless you were until we spoke! I'd always wondered if you were rude or just so stupid you didn't realize how offensive you were, and I guess now I know. Just stupid. Isn't this a great class?" Or something like that. She said it so without rancor that nobody ever knew what to say. It was a thing of beauty.

Also, I too was a kitten rescuer this weekend. I was putting gas in my car at an Exxon station in Charolottesville, VA (on my way to Richmond) when I saw an incredibly tiny kitten hiding in the bushes next to the road. Everytime I went close to get a better look it darted into the bushes and hid. I enlisted the help of one of the station attendants and we managed to reach in and grab him. He's a tiny grey thing with a white tip on his tail. Since there were no houses nearby I put him in my car and gave the attendant my cell phone number, so he could call if anyone came in trying to claim the kitten. Since I haven't heard from him I did what everyone suggested I NOT do -- I named him. So Tobias is mine now, I expect! We're off to the vet tomorrow to get him checked out.

Newbie Question of the Week I see a lot of you talking about eating big salads with your meals, and I'm a huge fan of a salad, but what type of dressing do you use? I gather Ranch is out of the question. ;) Ah, Atkins diet, how I miss you sometimes.

Colleen Your photos of Scotland are gorgeous! I went to college in London and spent my summers at the University of Edinburgh, and your pictures made me 'homesick'.

Today I start Week 2 of my first BFL challenge. I couldn't resist getting on the scale this morning (bad Revely!), but I was gratified to see I lost 2.3 pounds last week. Of course, I couldn't sit down or pick anything up all weekend, but that's a small price to pay. Heh heh.