Good Monday morning to everyone!

I made some delicious soups and snacks for the week this weekend, thought I would share. My fiance made turkey chili that is seriously so good! He used white beans and added mustard seed. I think those little mustard seeds make the whole pot of chili, I love it. I added a little fat free cheddar and it was delish.

I made a crock pot full of buffalo chicken dip (also great for superbowl snacks). Its a fairly typical recipe: 1 brick FF cream cheese (you could probably sub .5 brick ff and.5 brick 1/3 fat, because, honestly... that FF cream cheese, when it makes up so much of the recipe is kinda gross) and then added wing sauce to taste. Just get it hot and mix it together, and its delicious. Maybe add a little ranch packet if you're into super salt. I dip my little peppers in it or celery. (Also good on pretzels :devil:)

Then, the most delicious thing I made: meatball soup. 32 oz of broth of your choice, and about 20 frozen (turkey) meatballs, all the veggies (I used spinach, carrot, celery, onion, stewed tomato). SO GOOD. I made a whole crock of it, and its pretty much gone. And its what is for lunch today. 4pts.

Hope everyone is off to a bright fresh start this monday morning. I have about a billion things to read for my classes, and there are about a billion other things i would rather be doing! :p

Amandie...good luck on your test.

I will have to go to Walmart and find the ww jalapeno cheese sticks...although i would have to use my extra points for it since i am doing the simply filling plan. Its been ok so far but I have got to find other stuff to cook because it seems like i am getting bored!!!

Hope you all have a great week...Weigh-In on Wednesday...hoping to break even...it was a very good but very bad weekend for me!!!

Huh, I thought I already typed out a post earlier? Okay, gonna type it out again from memory, sorry if I missed anyone!

Shanhat- Hang in there!

Welcome, BethC!

Ashley- I made your meatball soup tonight, so good! I added Italian seasoning, powdered roasted garlic, mushrooms and maybe a little too much spinach, lol. Thanks so much for the dinner idea (and leftover lunches for me to bring to school this week, yay!)

Drooling hard at your chili and buffalo dip. Maybe I will attempt a no-mato chili with just cumin and paprika, very few dashes of Tabasco. Growing up, I had a serious spicy tooth, enough to the point where I'd sip hot sauce right out of the bottle, yikes. Sometimes I miss the flavor but I don't miss the heartburn and the other stuff that comes with it. As for the dip, perhaps I'll omit the wing sauce and just have ranch chicken dip? I totally agree with you on the FF cream cheese.

Gah, life was so much easier before I developed GERD. /rant

Thank you, Lizzy Lou! Fingers are crossed for your WI on Wednesday! :crossed:I hear ya on getting bored on the same stuff.

Amandie I can't stop with the wing sauce. I put it on salads and.. well... anything that I can. I am addicted.

Lizzylou How long have you been doing simply filling? Did you try that new Simple Start plan at all?

More on Simple Start: I would love to hear if any of you have seen success with it. I feel like I am doing a hybrid plan of this. Because I track, and many of the things I eat are power foods... Sometimes, like last night for instance, I went to sleep and had only eaten 23 points for the day. But I was totally satisfied and full and content all day. I eat a lot of veggies and fat free dairy and lean meats, so the points just aren't there. I get 39 pt+ a day, so that would be SO MUCH FAT FREE CHEESE and chicken.

Hey ladies! Congrats on all the losses. Amazing!! I was down 0.4 this week. I can't say much other than that I was a little lazy over the weekend with tracking. I also used my splurge points this week and did not use them last week. So now I have been avoiding using them again this week. This morning the scale dipped to the 170's (barely at 179.8) so I think those points are going to have to be off limits for me. I also lost a daily point at weigh in this week (I thought GEES I lose .4 and they are stripping a point away!) Yikes! Best wishes this week!

Hello all!

My first WI was this morning and I'm down 4.9 pounds! (.1 pounds away from a nice round number :)) I also lost 1 pt+ per day, which is exciting. I was OP all week despite going out with friends twice.

Best wishes to everyone this week, here's to finishing January on plan and in style.

I hear ya, Ashley. Spicy food was/still is an addiction for me, lol. I, too, put it on everything. My fave "dip" was cottage cheese with hot sauce and pepper flakes along with some cukes, carrots and celery sticks.

Did ya see that article about hot cheetos and kids? More and more kids are suffering with gastric issues and honestly, I'm not surprised. I grew up with IBS but that could have been attributed to stress, not just food. I probably will not let my children (if I ever have any) eat spicy food until they are well into their teens. I had my first dozen of hot wings at 2 years old, thanks to my brother.

WTG on your 4.9, Viking. That is awesome!

Jaimie- I bet you'll catch up next week!

On losing points, ugh! I'm down to the minimum, 26. Boohiss! I'm currently on my break between classes today, just eating lunch (meatball soup, thanks again Ashley and it tastes awesome the next day) and catching up on Vampire Diaries via netflix.

Have a great afternoon, lovelies.

Smashlers..I did try the Simple Start and it got me started the first week but I had to them jump into Simply filling because I got bored with Simple Start food. I think its going pretty good I just need to find other recipes to make and spice up our food a little. Getting a little repeatative (sp?) lol

Way to to Viking on your loss! That's awesome!

Anyone know where I can find some simply filling main dish recipes?

Thank and have a wonderful Tuesday!!!

i just wanna see if my tracker is showing up now :-)

Yesterday was a great day, took a 2.7 mile walk (a lot for me) in a hilly area so got 11 flights of stairs (per Fitbit) for it. But, today the weather is cold and wet so can't walk outside. I was going to use the rower and treadmill, but my allergies are driving me nuts so I don't feel like doing anything. I have to be careful on what I eat today since I won't have many calories from moving around. (Will eat closer to my minimum than usual).

Wow. So many posts, I can't even keep up. :dizzy: I Love it!

I love the recipes in the Simple Start, I think it is perfect for someone who has never done WW before. But I like to track for myself, I have the tools, so it's no problem. I have never done Simply Filling, some of it seems limited, for example, as we discussed you can only have Fat Free cheese. So those Jalepeno Pepper cheese sticks would be not a choice.

One thing that I need to work on (besides more exercise) is drinking more water. There is no excuse for that. The water flushes away the salt which retains water in your body, and hopefully the fat.

Have a great day everyone.:)

I did try Simply Filling, but it wasn't for me because of things like Fat Free cheese being a power food, but lowfat cheeses weren't.

There are a lot of similarities between what you can eat on Simply Filling and what is on Phase 2 of South Beach Diet. However, on SBD you can eat the lowfat cheese and can have 1 nut serving a day.

The other big difference is that WW allows reduced calorie bread whether it is whole grain or refined grain while SBD only allows whole grain (and doesn't require that it be reduced calorie). I actually think it is, well, bad that WW allows reduced calorie refined grain on Simply Filling since it is certainly not nutritious for you.

Serenity100 For so so so long drinking more water was the goal that I put on the back of my Weekly at the WW meetings every week, and it just never worked out... Then my life changed. Lol I bought the Eddy bottle by Camelbak. It has a straw, its pretty, I love it. Now I drink like 4 or 5 of these bottles a day and don't even have to think about it.
http://shop.camelbak.com/store/Produ...hili_red_l.jpg

Koshka That is really good point. I tried SBD the first time I started trying to lose weight in 2011, lost a bunch and then gained it back. I think, with any diet the concern is weight loss and not so much being "healthy". Diet companies leave that up to us to sort out I guess. And thinking about it, I agree with them. Because, being in maintenance is a whole other beast. Figuring out what to eat in a healthy way, or a way that is specific to our bodys needs, is a lot less (I would think, I have never been in maintenance) stressful since your night trying to juggle too many things.


Alright ladies I am off to school then work. Long day today. Have a good day!

Hello ladies! Phew this year has been pretty stressful thus far, but I think I have a hold on things right now!

I had been displaying signs of vitamin deficiencies since October. I could not figure out what was going on. I started taking vitamin b complex, and my symptoms started getting better, but weren't going away. Did some searching online and talked closely with a relative and figured that I might have a real underlying problem, she was having similar issues and her own theory.

So, I have started a new lifestyle change. I am now gluten-free and although it's only been 5 days since starting, I can not believe I am no longer bloated and some of my symptoms are slowly vanishing, even things I would have never tied to gluten-intolerance. I think I may still be detoxing, but I can't tell you the relief I feel already. I am still extremely tired, but thinking back on all my issues with food, it is all becoming clear I had an underlying issue.

I am so ecstatic, and yes I will miss some foods, but I can't tell you how thankful I am to have discovered this now.

I am ready to start tracking with my new diet change! I wanted to get a handle on what I can and cannot have, and not focus on counting so much this first week.

Good morning all!

Happy to hear you're feeling better, DriveByAmbition! You can do it!

Yay, you got your ticker, LizzyLou!

Serenity- I'm with you on the water! Need to drink more!

I really like that water bottle, Ashley!

Have a great day, all!