Starting the topic. Be back when I can.

Hi all.

Well, now the holidays are officially over and life can get back to normal again. John had today off since New Year's Day was on a Saturday, but he decided to go into work for the afternoon. Ana's back at school. And I have the house to myself for a few hours. I kind of missed that. Waking up to the alarm this morning was awfully hard though. I started reverting back to my natural night owl tendencies over the break. It will be early to bed tonight, that's for sure. Eating is returning back to normal too. Only thing left is to de-decorate. I like to leave the tree and everything up until the 6th. But today might be a good day to do it. We have freezing rain here today, so it's pretty much a stay indoors kind of day.

Talk to you later.

Carla

Carla,
Thanks for replying yesterday! I'm not sure how this all works.
Well today is the day I started again!!! This time I feel confident and know I can do it. Cleaned out the frig and pantry. I've been online getting new fun recipes to try. I am also looking for a new crochet project. You can't eat and crochet at the same time!!!
The kids went back to school and I am looking forward to life as usual. I am so glad I found this website. I have never tried this for support before!!
I have had 8 pts today and feel good. I made myself eat breakfast but I slept through my workout time. I'll try again Tuesday. I am afraid to weigh until I've had a good couple of days. I am probably above my start weight after my weekend. Yikes!
Patrice

Hi All -

Have to be brief as I'm posting from work.

Patrice - welcome! Nice to meet you - you're right, it's hard to eat while crocheting. I use knitting as a way to keep the hands busy sometimes. You'll find the folks at 3fc very supportive.

Carla - I'm going to undecorate tonight. I was too much of a slug yesterday to do it.

Our hot water tank crapped out on New Year's eve, so I have to hang around at home tomorrow till the guy comes to replace it. I have a sore mouth; a tooth has suddenly developed a sensitivity to anything hot, so I've been achy for a few days on and off. I have an 8 a.m. appointment tomorrow - with my luck the plumber will arrive while I'm out.

Jen's kitty is coming back to live with us. Her roommate has developed a serious allergy to Misha and ended up in the hospital with respiratory distress! Jen is coming over on the ferry this afternoon, and will either go back to Victoria tonight or tomorrow morning. She starts her final semester Wednesday, and will finish her degree in April.

All is well on the food front. There don't appear to be any chocolates or cookies lying about at work, for which I'm hugely thankful. I've booked vacation the week before Christmas 2005 as a self-preseservation tactic. I think we're also going to go away for a few days to avoid the whole Christmas foodfest mindset.

Better get back to the grindstone.

Karen

Carla - I know what you mean about the alarm this morning. I was staying up way past "Judy-time" over the vacation and somehow managed to get myself in bed by 11 last night. Even so, it was hard getting up this morning. Good for you for planning to "de-decorate" so quickly. We never manage to do it that early. This year, we are having some folks over both this weekend and the next, so I will be de-decorating on MLK Day (the next day off). One thing I didn't see in your post was anything to do with workouts. Here comes the drill sergeant - HAVE YOU EXERCISED YET THIS WEEK? If not, what are you planning on doing tomorrow?

Patrice - welcome! BTW, one of my dear friend's names is Patrice - I think it's a beautiful name. Good for you for clearing out the fridge and the pantry - that's a great thing to do. I still have some stuff around the house that I had better clean out (like chocolate that I got as a gift). What kinds of workouts do you do? I'm sort of the exercise nut in this group - nutty because I really like working out. I'm glad you could join us - I think we're a really supportive group.

Karen - I'm so sorry to hear about your tooth. I hope whatever the dentist does to make it feel better is quick and painless. Sorry about the hot water tank. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that the plumber shows up after you are back from the dentist. Which dogs (if any) has Jen's kitty met? LOL about scheduling your 2005 vacation. Around holiday time next year, I think I will have finished up my student teaching and will be unemployed - at least I won't have to be around all the food at school! So, drill sergeant hat going back on - HAVE YOU GOTTEN ON YOUR TM YET THIS YEAR??? OK, that's done.

I am feeling so much better since I got back on core on Saturday. It was lovely to have all those dinners out last week but by the time New Year's Eve rolled around, I was ready for some good wholesome homecooked food. I did really well this weekend and managed to keep my snacking to a minimum and snacked on either fruit or milk/yogurt. I took my knitting project out again and while I haven't picked it up yet, I'm giong to try to tonight. As Patrice said and as I know, you can't eat when your hands are busy. Tony caught the cold from the one I was fighting off at the beach and I thought I was coming down with it this weekend too so I did not exercise this weekend (she says sheepishly) but I'm feeling better today so I did a back-care yoga workout after work. That's #1, only 239 to go to meet my 2005 goal :-)

I'd better get going - I'm preparing the first lesson for my tutoring group which starts Wednesday morning before work. I'm a little nervous but it;s good experience, extra money and I'm sure it will go fine (she says, convincing herself).

Have a great one!
Judy

Judy - your tutoring will go fine; good for you for taking it on. Glad to hear that you're feeling better, both in terms of cold and food. As a matter of fact, yes, I did tm yesterday, and did 30 minutes of upper body weights, and walked for an hour on Sunday...so I'm two up on you!

Hi all.

Patrice - Cleaning out the fridge and pantry and looking up new recipes are always great motivators for me. I hear you about looking forward to life as usual. It's good to get back into a routine.

Karen - Sorry to hear about both your hot water tank and your tooth. I hope the dentist was able to help you out and that the repair guy showed up after you got back home. Is Jen sad about having to give up her kitty? At least she knows it's going to a good home. I keep telling Ana that Luigi is going to have to go stay with my mom if she doesn't leave him alone. She's always wanting to pick him up and hug him and love on him and he's too slow to get away from her now. He's good natured about it, but I'm sure it bugs him. And then at night he jumps on the bed when I'm trying to get her to go to sleep and is a huge distraction. It's hard to believe Jen is almost done with school. Wow. And great idea to book a pre-Christmas vacation to get away from all the sweets and junk.

Judy - How did your tutoring go this morning? I'm sure you did fine. I'm glad to hear that you're feeling better, food-wise, and that you were able to fight off the cold. I hope Tony feels better soon. Yep, you've heard nothing from me yet about workouts. I'll get started with them tomorrow when I get back on program. I didn't get out for a walk on Monday because it was rainy and icy and this morning there was no way I was getting up early to exercise before work. I haven't been able to get back into a sleep routine and was up and wide awake until 2:00 this morning. Remind me next year to keep to a sleep schedule over the Christmas break.

Well, tomorrow it's back to being on program in a structured way: journaling, counting points, water, the whole nine yards. I've even e-mailed WW and asked them to clear out my weight tracker so I can start fresh with a new start date and weight. I'll being doing points for the first week or so since I want to eat what's in the freezer and pantry and the food that's there, while WW friendly, lends itself better to points than core. But I'll be incorporating CORE principles as much as possible. You know, I'm not excited about it and really don't feel all that motivated. In fact, for the first few days I know that 1) It will be hard. 2) I will hate it. 3) Despite 1 and 2, I'll have to just suck it up and deal with it and it will get better. Hopefully I'll find my groove soon.

Have a great evening.

Carla

Hi everyone,

I've been on 3FC for quite some time now and have really only spent my time on one board. I'll give you a quick background about my WW adventures.

In 2001 I started WW for the first time. by the spring of 2002 I dropped all the weight I wanted (78 pounds). In June of 2002 I moved away from my friends and family with my now husband, but it was hard to stay on WW without the support. I gained about 15 pounds back but I was ok with that. Then I was put on some medication that made me gain back even more weight. After being at a low of around 150, I am back up to 208. I'm off the meds now and have been for a while. I tried WW meetings around here but I really don't like the meetings here. I don't like how the leaders give the class and on top of that, the only class I can make it to didn't have anyone else under the age of 50 in it and I'm not exaggerating. I'm 24 and its pretty hard to relate to the eating habits of the people that much older than me. It just wasn't working out. I tried the WW online program. I really liked it but it was expensive and I wasn't getting much support. So I decided to join some more boards here and try to get a little more support.

I weighed in this morning at 208.4 and today is my "official" re-start date. It looks like you have a great group here and I'm looking forward to becoming part of it.

Okay, I admit it... I AM HUNGRY!!!!!!!!I am doing pretty well but it's that time of the day where I could graze through my pantry! I haven't yet....won't..but how many hot teas can I drink. I have had a healthy snack, drank water and am now nibbling on a few
green olives while cooking dinner. (they cut the urge for sweet for me)
We are having an ice storm here. I really want to get out the mixer and start baking...but I won't. Enough complaining!!
I am enjoying reading the posts on this thread. Sounds like a great group!
I dropped the extra lbs I gained over the weekend so I am at or under my start weight. That's a relief!

Karen - way to go - I'm glad to see you are two up on me! Thanks for the encouragement!

Carla - Good for you for getting back on track tomorrow even though you aren't motivated. Maybe it will help a bit if you think how much better you'll feel - pysically as well as in your head. OK, recruit - how about 10 minutes of any kind of motion or weights or stretching tomorrow? If not, drop and givbe me 10! Oh yeah, I need to keep a sleep schedule on vacations too. Let's remind each other, OK? The tutoring session starts tomorrow - thanks for the encouragement!

Welcome, Lori! I think you'll find that this is a very supportive group, and we're free!

Patrice - I find that when I'm hungry, the best snacks I can have are those with a little protein. I love olives but I can eat tons of them although they definitely help with a salty urge. I've found recently that a little protein can go a long way. I try to have either a glass of milk, some low fat or fat free cheese, or some peanut butter (but I HAVE to measure it) with an apple are more satisfying than 0 point snacks like veggies, etc. Glad to hear that your sneak peek at the scale is looking good.

I had a good day yesterday. I did have a couple of snacks at night but it was fruit and non-fat cheese with crackers that I counted, i.e., I counted them andput them on a plate rather than take the box with me. I did some freestyle weights at gym period today (as well as a little bit of abs and cardio warmup moves) and tried a half hour of a new step tape when I came home from work. Tomorrow is probably going to be a planned rest day from exercise - early to work for the tutoring session, and a have a staff development course from 4 - 6 tomorrow. We're supposed to have some wintery weather tomorrow - I hope the roads aren't too bad on the way home.

Have a great one!
Judy

Good morning all from the wet and cold Northeast! Thankfully the roads were fine last night and this morning although I admit, I wouldn't have minded a delayed opening this morning. I have not been sleeping well - I wake up during the night, well, early in the morning at around 5 or so, for no apparent reason. On paper I get 7 hours sleep but I don't feel rested.

I had a good day yesterday, although I didn't exercise (as planned). I had very little in the way of snacks at night - I'm not sure why but I'm not complaining. I plan on doing a good workout when I get home after work - I'm really savoring no classes at night for now. My sneak peek was good this morning - well, let me re-phrase that. I will *definitely* show a gain on the scale on Saturday. Last Saturday, the sneak peek gain would have been somewhere around 7.8 pounds. As of today's sneak peek, the gain is around 3.4 - great progress in 4 days. Of course, I'm not satisfied - I want all the weight off this week! Ah well, I think it's time to step back and pat myself onthe back for getting back on track.

Have a great one!
Judy

Good Morning from Snowy Vancouver!

Snow is a big deal to us - we get about 3 days of snow a year; we usually get rain, rain and rain. It's gorgeous here today.

Judy - major kudos to you for getting back on track in a big way. The first post holiday weigh-ins are always real kickers. Sorry to hear you're not sleeping well. I've shifted from not being able to sleep to not being able to get enough again. We can blame every condition on perimenopause for the next ten years, so I'm voting for casting the blame there.

I had a great day yesterday; 30 minute cardio program on the TM, a 50 minute brisk walk at noon with 2 pals from work, and a 30 minute lower body session with the home gym last night. Food was good too - I've been packing two or three Source yogurts with me to work to snack on. Only 50 calories each and very tasty. They're helping me avoid getting really hungry and heading to the evil vending machine.

I'm not weighing myself till the end of January. I had a meltdown re post holiday gains just before New Year's, leading Mike to hide the scale. I was climing on the scale three or four times a day berating myself, so he removed it from the bathroom. I know he'd return it if I grumbled, but you know, I'm actually feeling a bit liberated without it, and inspired to keep doing the "right" things so I'm not disappointed at the end of the month. That's the plan for now, anyway!

Have a good day,

Karen

Isn't it amazing how much we can become attached to our scale. My best friend came over and stole mine last year beacause I am a scale addict. After a month she returned it. It didn't help. I probably weigh 3-4 times a day. I know it's terrible...just like the little cheats. It just adds stress!! I am going to try to weigh only once a week. It will be tougher than the diet!
Although the diet is not going great, it's going. I really have to be more honest with myself and get back into my obsessive ALL BITES COUNT mode. I am still nibbling...
The weather here is wet and icy. Really no excuse for not exercising since I have every workout video you can buy. Just used a couple of times each.
I went today and got my hair cut. I feel tons lighter and motivated just from that. It's amazing what works as pick me ups.
Hope you all are doing well.
I am glad it snowed in Vancouver for you. I think the snow is beautiful.

Karen - way to go on your awesome workouts! You go girl!! Wow, I don't think I've managed to go 2 days without weighing myself but I don't do it more than once a day. Still, I'd probably end up doing better if I just weighed myself once a week. Nevertheless, I've never managed to cut out the daily weighing for more than 2 days! Have fun with the snow. I love it if I don't have to go anywhere in it! I agree about blaming it on perimenopause. What happened that you're sleeping well now - do you know?

Patrice - good luck on trying to weigh yourself just once a week. I have a 2 tons of exercise videos but I use them. I've joined I don't know how many gyms over the years and then never go but with my videos, I can workout when it's convenient for me, and I don't have to care how I look. Hmmm, I could use a haircut too - I always feel great afterwards. Glad you did too!

I forgot to add yesterday that the tutoring session went really well. I really love what I'm doing. What a difference from a few years ago.

Have a great one!
Judy