Hi turtles - lots of posting, which is great.
Ariana - welcome!

Glad everyone seems to be focussed & doing their best.
Busy times up here & glad trailer is closed up for the season & my
home yard is pretty good. Hopefully did the final grass cutting last weekend & raked tons of leaves as well.

Heading off for my vacation this Sun for a week in Punta Canta in Dominican so looking forward to that. My grandson took his first steps Tues evening so that was very exciting.

Lost 2# each week for past 2 weeks & have w/I tonight but am feeling like the scale will be up abit. Planning on doing some extra swimming/walking on vacation.

All - good luck at the scales!

Bandit, congrats!

This is great news!!! Keep up the good work and enjoy your vacation. Aren't you lucky that your grandson is nearby and you can watch all the cute things he does.

Turtles,
I rejoined WW's. I felt I could use the social connection. So far, so good.
Plan is to be very careful today and use some extra points on Sat. for my dh .

Best wishes to all of you. We can do this one day at a time!
Judy
234.6/201/198 and thinner

Ariana, aren't we supposed to ask you what your menu is today? I'm asking.
How are you doing?

I went to WW last week as a "friend", then I joined again. My first WI was yesterday. I was very high on the scale since we had eaten out the night before. Hoping for a good WI this upcoming Wed.

Cherry Autumn, if you see this, go to your private messages. I am going to leave a message there for you.

Everybody have a good week and chime in when you can. I have a friend to walk around the blocks here. It's about 1 1/2 miles and that's a good place for me to start.

Good luck and keep on keepin' on!
Judy
234.6/?/199 and thinner

Ariana, aren't we supposed to ask you about your menu? I am asking. Good luck and write back.

Things going well here. I rejoined WW's and had my first WI yesterday.
I haven't been hungry which is very weird for me, but I'll take it and run.

Cherry Autumn, if you see this, check your private messages. I am going to leave something there for you to see.

Judy

I didnt see anything in the private messages. Sorry Judy.
Hello to bandit, princess, and ariana.

Judy, you are. I'm doing a bad job of tracking, working out and checking in... so. I've been under a lot of stress and I had 7 days of continuous tracking and then it went sideways.

I think for the next few days I'm going to focus on trying to check in every day and start tracking as of tonight.

To get things started - I don't know the points for everything yet but this is what I've had so far today --
Breakfast, Starbucks Peppermint Mocha, 4 shots of espresso, with whip (about 8-10 pp) + Hot Oatmeal (5pp)
Lunch, 1 piece of original or thick crust dominos (it was a screw up, they just said it wasn't thin crust and gave it to us)
Snacks, 2 snack size reese's pumpkins (2pp ea), 3 mini oranges

My stress this week has been a continuation of the stress that knocked me off the wagon and which I allowed to drive me to gain 20 pounds in about 3 months. I am working on the biggest career opportunity of my life, a project which I can't talk about yet because it hasn't come out yet! But suffice it to say the project is very complex, and the deals for it very expensive.

What started out as a 4-person project because a 1 person project until about 2 weeks ago, where I gained a second person for a small chunk of the work. I've been working 60-70 hours a week. For 7 of the last 12 weeks I lived in a Holiday Inn Express in a business park in Cambridge England. I worked 10-12 hour days, had no car (I was afraid to drive on the wrong side of the road), no fridge, no microwave.

As a result of a bad situation, stress and my OCD "need" to make dinner the last thing I do each day I ate a lot of pizza and drank too much (not alcoholism too much, but more than my usual limit of 1-2 drink nights a week, with 2-3 max drinks a week, so, say, 4-5 drinks a week sometimes?) I slept badly and drank a lot of sweetened coffee to get by and made bad decisions. I walked to work almost every day but I made up for it by eating junk at lunch and dinner.

So. Now I have this project due at the end of the month -- writing training materials for the new product, plus finishing my own end to end test bed. But every morning when I start work, there are people that pull me aside from that -- people who won't wait for me to finish my document and want me to enable them NOW (and whom I cannot refuse because they are managers or sent to me by managers) and early deals on the new project, for which I am the only resource to devise a proposal (the only person knowledgeable in both services and the product.) So I can't say no to those either.

So if I could get time to finish the documentation, I could start enabling more people and take the burden off of me, but nobody will allow me that time. And the people demanding immediate action from me on all day tasks are my manager and their managers -- people I can't refuse!

So. I'm panicking, and it's very hard to eat healthy and take care of myself right now. I KNOW that if I eat healthy I will feel better and if I workout regularly that will help too, but I can barely even talk myself into taking breaks during the day right now, I work for 10-12 hours straight.

Alright, that's the bad news.

The good news is that my wife and I can get legally married. The wedding is a small affair, the rabbi is booked, the marriage license obtained, the reservations for dinner are already made, the dresses found and ready to wear, I just have to show up and be married.

The other good news is that all of my hard work is paying off. I'm earning major kudos and recognition from my boss on up and my boss is talking about promoting me by the end of the year, a financial gain so big it would allow us to pay off everything but the house and start saving for emergencies, and allow my wife to put her salary towards a car (which makes it easier for me to work out without worrying about meeting her anywhere or helping her work out.)

So. The question is, what am I going to do now? I can't -- I WON'T keep gaining weight until December when things ease up. But my attempt to put two feet in the water last week didn't work. We're going to try again with one foot.

Baby step goals
* track everything I eat as zero for now (not attempting to track points, just getting in the habit of recording every bite)
* attempting to check in almost every day here at 3FC
* take a one hour do something fun break each day

I also ordered a free fitbit (part of work's fitness program) and once it arrives (2-3 weeks) I can use it to track my activity. I used to use a Nike fuel band but I have to take it on and off when I type because of RSI in my wrists, so I was forever forgetting to put it back on... this fit bit attaches to your bra or waist so I won't need to take it off to type.

Judy -- I am glad to hear things are going well!
Bandit -- good to hear from you, hope your vacation is awesome.
CherryAutumn, how are you doing?

Okay, Turtles, I had the weirdest thing happen with this thread. I wrote replies but they wouldn't "post". Except they did post and my computer didnt' show that. Ugh. So, Cherry Autumn, the reason you didn't get a private message was because I didn't think it would show up. When I finish this, I will send you a private message.

Ariana, wow is all I can say! You are right to select a one foot strategy for getting back on track for now. I like your plan. Commit to coming here and doing the very best you can. Good luck and weigh to go!

I finally broke my 200# plateau this morning and I am thrilled. I think that getting out and walking with my df in the morning has something to do with that. Also, get ready for this, if I am not hungry...............I don't eat! I am hoping to maintain this weight loss and lose more by Wed. I'll let you know how I'm doing.

and to all of us. Ariana, congrats on your upcoming marriage.

Talk soon.
Judy

Good afternon Judy. Sorry about the computer troubles! Sometimes they have a mind of their own, and I should know -- I'm a software engineer!

Wow about sums it up Judy. Thank you for the support.

Congrats on breaking your 200# plateau! I am sure that exercise helped -- not just in terms of burning calories but also reducing stress and if you are like me, cutting back on stress eating. And I know the feeling about the not eating when not hungry part. The average person would be puzzled but I get you -- it's the HALT drivers -- Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired -- the non-hungry reasons we eat. I would add anxious to that list, but that's just me. (I believe the list comes from Al Anon, but it seems to work, right?)

Thank you for the congrats on the wedding Judy. My wife and I are thrilled that we will get the chance to turn our religious marriage into one the state of Arizona will recognize!

Today's food so far --
Breakfast: Starbucks Peppermint Mocha, Grande with Whip, Half Sweet, Starbucks Oatmeal with Brown Sugar and Nuts

Lunch: 2 scones with clotted cream and jelly, two sweet potato pancakes, tea with 1 tbsp of sugar. Not a terribly healthy lunch, but my wife made it, I've been working and didn't think too much about it.

This afternoon we have a family picnic in the park. I will bring my embroidery to keep my fingers from cycling continuously back around to my Tia's amazing homemade guacamole.

Tomorrow I'm making my "healthy pizza" (a low point homemade (even the crust!) pizza to give me 4 servings for evening meals this coming week. I can alternate between pizza and peanut thai noodles (I make my own sauce, from a WW recipe.) That way I won't have to make hungry decisions about dinner.

If time allows I am also making these muffins from a Krusteaz low fat mix + applesauce + wheat bran -- they're good for breakfast, high in fiber and still tasty. Do you guys want the recipe?

Ariana, so glad you have dinners figured out for the upcoming week. Weigh to go. These steps get us to goal.

I would love the recipe for the muffins.

Things are going well here. Right now I have the "Unstuffed cabbage" simmering on my stove top. It's an unconstructed stuffed cabbage roll without all the work. I had forgotten about the recipe, but when I picked up a huge cabbage on sale at my grocery store this recipe surfaced. If my kids come over today, I can serve it for dinner. If not, I'll have it (dh politely declines) and I'll pack up the leftovers and make them "planovers" as my friend, Grace, calls them. Handy to have in the freezer for a quick meal when I don't know what to have.

Okay Turtles, let's keep this going. I know there's a lot of social media out there but I would love to make 2014-2015 the year the Turtles here at www.3fatchicks.com make it to goal!



Best to everyone.
Judy
234.6/199.6/189 and thinner

Judy, and other fellow turtles -- more shortly! I'm being a whirling dervish in the kitchen.

For now, let me share two recipes. I'll put them in separate posts for readability.

High Fiber Muffins (4pp or 2p on the old system)

Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
1 Box Krusteaz Fat Free Muffin Mix
2 cups wheat bran
1 cup applesauce, unsweetened
1 cup water
1 whole egg
1 teaspoon baking soda

Mix the ingredients

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.

(Ari notes -- if you measure the wheat bran by weight instead of in cups (where you can easily get a different amount), you get about 39 muffins out of a double batch, giving you roughly 3pp a muffin and you'll want to bake them longer. I did it by weight yesterday and found they came out too soft at 15 minutes, I'm guessing 17 would be more appropriate.

Makes about 12 muffins or 24 mini muffins

An old favorite of mine! They freeze well too...

Hi turtles,
Ariana, the recipe looks great. I think these muffins would be so handy to have in my freezer during the holidays. Thanks!

Turtles, back from my walk. My df and I are walking each morning around 8:40. We've got the distance to a little over 1 1/2miles. We walk and talk. It's great for both of us. She's a WW'er too and we go to the same meeting.

I hope this response works.
Have a great OP day . let's do this!
Judy

Judy, sure thing. I amended the recipe to say that if you measure the wheat bran by weight, you get more weight bran, and therefore more muffins, making it 3pp -- but you should cook them longer to avoid them being overly soft. They're still tasty just soft.

They are great to have in the freezer for a quick breakfast or a quick filling snack during the holidays for sure! I'm wondering if I could find a low fat pumpkin muffin mix to make up this way for a holiday theme. :P It would be a few more points if I can't find fat free, but it's worth a shot.

Congrats on keeping up with your walking. It feels good, doesn't it?

Yesterday I ran errands and cooked -- I made two batches of the muffin recipe and froze them (I free them in a single layer on a baking sheet for 30-45 minutes and then put them in a bag, so that they don't all glue together into an uber-muffin. I did all of the prep work for two healthy pizzas and two recipes of burrito mix, which I shall make today.

Have a great day ladies!

Hi Turtles,
Ariana, you're doing great. Keep up the good work. My leader always says the most important part of losing weight with WW's is to be prepared. I
m going to make a veggie soup again. It was perfect for lunches last week.

Cherry Autumn, I have left you a private message. Let me know if you got it.

Wishing everyone a great day and lots of weight loss. I lost 3.8# at my WI.
Of course last week I weighed in after eating out the night before so I can't say it's a true weight loss........but I certainly did lose weight this week and I hope to break 200# next week.
J;udy