Amazingly enough, my cat let me sleep until after 6 o’clock this morning! That never happens! Usually we are up by 5 at the latest! I think she knew it was raining outside so what was the point of getting me up as she didn’t want to go out in that!

I’m going to have a couple cups of coffee and then get ready to go jewelry shopping! I have gathered up all my old gold chains and a couple rings and necklaces that I no longer want and hope to be able trade in or sell them outright to buy my new ring. We’ll see…I’m not a very good negotiator! I’m going to a reputable jeweler, so I hope I won’t get taken too badly.

Scale was up a bit this morning, but I ate anything and everything yesterday, plus I’m SO sore from yesterday’s boot camp workout! Yikes! I know there’s some water retention and food transit issues going on.

Looking forward to doing a bit of shopping and just having a “me” day today.

Good luck bra shopping annette. I need to do that too, but I just dread it! So much money for something that no one sees! LOL!

Have a good weekend!

Good morning, everyone, I am an angry person this morning because I stepped on the scale after being 100% on-plan, and am up .4 oz. I know, big deal .4 oz, but the scale should be going in the opposite direction, not up.

I was wondering because I’ve done away with my evening glass of wine, no desserts, no sweets, except Splenda in my tea. Could an artificial sweetener be causing an insulin resistance and I’m not losing?

Geez, wine’s gone, dessert’s gone, now something else to eliminate. Pretty soon, the only thing that’s be left are paint chips.

Thanks, Lori, yes. I keep myself hydrated all day long and even take a glass of sparkling water to bed every night for occasional sips for a dry throat or mouth. I’ve given up my evening wine (whine) and no sweet treats.

I think I’m upset that my background job clearance is taking forever and a day. It’s been over a month and they are just getting my physical exam results back. Talk about inefficiency. I can’t believe they (the job) is still waiting on a the doctor to sign off on my x-ray. Really?

I’m just in angry bird mode today. That’s all.

It’s safe to return to your seats; angry bird has left the building.

Hello

I’ve been keeping up with the Baggy pants and Bras Brigade via my email.

It sounds SO frustrating about your job, etherial. For me, one area of frustration in my life can spill over into other issues eg I’ll be waiting for the kettle to boil, tutting and tapping my feet because it seems so slo-oo-ow. Maybe that has happened with you and your weight blip? I really don’t mean to dismiss how angry-birdish you’re feeling about it, though, especially after your iron self-discipline of this week – “Impressed emoticon”. Hope you have movement in both areas of your life, pretty damn soon.

Lori and Annette – yes I hate bra shopping, probably more than any other type. I’ll have to try the Marks and Sparks website, Annette.

The bling sounds gorgeous, Lori. I love the colour topaz – gold/yellow. A blue topaz sounds special.

I have been inducting myself in using my exercise bike. The manual made interesting reading. Think it has been translated from Sanskrit! Eg “To avoid the user to select TIME and DISTANCE in the same program to confuse the user couldn’t distinguish which one (TIME or DISTANCE) as the first priority.”

Up until today, I have just been having a fairly gentle session on it – while watching trash telly 😉 Today, I went for the 2 x 20 seconds of High Intensity, as outlined in The Fast Exercise Book (by ‘the sainted Dr M’ and Peta Bee). Annoyingly, halfway through my lung-busting burst, the bike went into another, much gentler, phase. I shall ring the company next week and see if there is a way of setting up a specific programme for HIIT.

I also have to discipline myself to do the strength exercises, which complement the bursts of aerobic activity. I am seeing my 13 y.o Personal Trainer (heehee) tomorrow so hoping he will talk me through a few more. Last time I ended up a sweating panting heap after about 5 minutes.

Amazingly, so far I seem to have avoided building this up into a big ‘must do … don’t want to’ thing in my mind – which has been my usual reaction to exercise regimes in the past. I love being able to leap on the bike without worrying about what to wear (no, not nude cycling!) It’s such a contrast to road cycling: padded pants, waterproofs, helmet, gloves etc etc

I have fasted twice this week, with no struggle at all. On non FDs, I was well over my TDEE. Oh well, as the closing line of Some Like It Hot goes, “Nobody’s perfect”.

I hope you all have a good Sunday. Take care.

Thank you all for your kind words of encouragement. I don’t blame the facility, I find fault with our Dept. of Justice for being either terribly slow and inefficient or incredibly thorough in order to ensure they are doing their jobs properly. What I’ve learned is that some places they need information from are still in the archaic paper, fax, and mail stages and they have to wait. Too bad there isn’t a law against outdated methods.

I’ll be working in an exclusive senior residential facility, with 6 other chefs, preparing gourmet food (oh, these people eat only the best duck, venison, prime rib, poultry, veg, etc.). Even the wine that the reduction sauces are made from are superior drinking wines. Quality and it’s extremely expensive to reside there, so even though I am not working directly with them; I kinda am.

They want to make sure nothing happens to those wonderful, wealthy seniors and so do I, which is why I want to hurry up and get to work!

Let me tell you, I just left an event tonight where pasta, wine, beer, breads, etc. was all over the place, but I made sure I ate dinner BEFORE we left home. Hubby ate dinner and drank, I drank water and later had a 1/4 cup of coffee.

I felt great doing that. I asked DH if the ticket was expensive and he said it was fine that I don’t eat. The ticket was only $20 and it’s for little league. No worries.

Bootsy, more power to you for getting on that bike. Better you than me! Stationery bikes and me, go nowhere, fast!

Annette, I understand your concern about your friend, but I feel there is little you can do until she makes the decision herself that things must change. You can be a positive influence on her by your example of exercise and weight loss. She no doubt knows what must be done, but until her mind is in the right place, any intervention from you will result in a rift in your friendship I’m afraid. I may be totally off base here. Only you know what the relationship with your friend is like and how receptive she seems. Maybe try talking to her about 5:2 every once in a while and see if she seems interested. Hopefully she’ll come around before her physical condition deteriorates any further.

My mind is not in a good place today. I am eating anything and everything! I certainly know better, but my body is winning the war over my mind today. Tomorrow will be a fast day, come hell or high water!!

Annette I agree with Lori re your friend. My sister when she is losing weight wants the whole world to lose with her. I find it incredibly stressful and irritating when she keeps going on about whatever diet is helping her at the time because she is doing it to get me to join in. She will bring food into every conversation and meals with her are ruined by talks about weight and dieting etc. I’ve been known to say ‘can we eat a meal without having to bring up dieting’. I start to avoid her to be honest. So that’s not the way to encourage me.

I always support her losing weight and vice versa but as we all know, we have to do it for ourselves and it has to click in your mind. All the hint dropping in the world won’t make that happen. Share you experiences with her and feel for how resistant she is. Let her know in conversation how much you have lost and share any health benifits you have from it. But don’t push her away by making her feel you are dropping hints too often.

It was actually a male friend who got me into this but once I stopped working I stopped fasting and grew and grew. I watched him lose 2 stone over a year, he’s 50 this year. He now has the body he more or less had when he was 25 and looks fantastic. He cycles without getting out of breath and even went back to the gym. We were talking about it one day and he said, I wish you could get into this diet, in a year you would be 4 stone lighter and that’s got to help your mobility and pain. I then broke up with someone I was seeing and thought… How will I ever meet anyone again, no job, limited mobility, 18 stone… The words of my friend went through my head, that was 4 wks ago and I’m now 11lbs lighter. I can’t carry on gaining weight and felt the need to feel some sort of control over some part of my life. I hope that my resolve will stay with me as it has my friend. I actually enjoy the control I have on fast days! It’s that which is spurring me on as much as the actual weight loss. And discovering the difference between emotional hunger and real hunger was a massive break through for me too.

I hope your friend will reach the point we all have, that something has to change and that she will join you on your journey of weightloss and control.

Hi Annette

I sympathise with your dilemma. You obviously care about your friend and the damage she is clearly doing to her health with her overeating. It’s very difficult to watch people engaging in self-destructive behaviour and not want to step in. However, she has been resistant to your overtures in the past. In the end, she is responsible for her own behaviour – including her denial of its ill effects.

A few years ago, I attended Overeaters Anonymous. Although eventually I felt it wasn’t quite the approach for me, two aspects of their ethos have stayed with me: people have to hit their own ‘rock bottom’, which will be different for each person; all recovering addicts can do is attend to their own recovery and not try and ‘fix’ anyone else. (You and I have both posted before about how food can be an addiction, so I am taking the liberty of talking as though you and I are ‘in recovery’ and of assuming you see your friend as probably having those issues, too.)

I speak as someone who has been ‘enthusiastic’ about a number of processes, which have helped me,to people who I thought would also be helped by them – only for them to be rebuffed, either directly, or with lots of reasons why my intended recipient is ‘different’ or ‘knows something just as good’. Even if you do post the book through her door, with what I am sure would be a kind letter, there is no guarantee she will read it and become better informed. I bet she did know you had lost weight when she complimented you on your tee-shirt. You gave her a useful steer at that point, which she declined. Hard as it is, I think you have to respect her right to make her own mistakes. Maybe one day . . .

However, you know her (and yourself) best, so all the best with your decision, Annette.

Great workout Annette!! I hope I can remember my own advice when it’s next time for me to hit the treadmill. I’ll be going to boot camp again tomorrow as it’s cardio boxing day and I love that workout. We hit the heavy bag and alternate other exercises and running in between bouts of punching. Fun!

BB…sounds like you had a great day! Staying in charge of your eating is something of which to be proud. I need to learn to do that on weekends.

“See” you tomorrow!

Lori, have you tried BBC America on the Internet. After a programme is broadcast in the UK it is immediately put onto BBC iPlayer, which is where I watch all the BBC content. The sugar programme may be available on there if BBC America has an iPlayer facility. I can’t check, as it detects that I am in the UK and it won’t let me view anything because of the licence fee.

Hi All

Thanks for your encouragement about the tests (Haha – April Fools’ Day, Annette, hadn’t thought of that!) and the concern about the weights. Don’t worry – most of the exercises are just using your own body weight for resistance.

Glad you’re not discouraged, Lori. I’d not heard that sore muscles caused water retention but I suppose it’s like any sore area, tending to swell? Have I got that right? As you say – onward!

Amazing loss in weight and measurement, Annette – very well done. So pleased for you. I weighed myself yesterday, too – and have arrived at 12 st! Haven’t done my measurements yet, will check them tomorrow.

To be honest, I didn’t really enjoy the tv prog on sugar. For a start, I found the presenter very irritating! I gave up on it about a quarter of the way through, so I might have judged it too quickly, but I was concerned that it focused on individual behaviour, rather than highlighting the responsibility of the food industry in adding sugar to so many foods. I read a v good book last year called ‘Sugar, salt, fat’, which revealed how the food industry has used these 3 key ingredients to enhance/ bulk out poor quality food, keep costs down and maximise profits. As health concerns were raised about one, they would reduce that, only to increase one or both of the other two in processed food. I can post the title if anyone is interested. (Note to self: I’ve lent it to someone – must get it back off her!) However, it does sound as though the programme was useful in lots of ways, Annette – so that’s all to the good.

I have a recipe for natural yoghurt. It’s Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s (yes, Lori – he really is as posh as he sounds!!) It is fairly sour tasting at first but as you have said, Annette, it does seem we can reeducate our palate to accept a lower level of sweetness. I mainly ate it with muesli, so the dried fruit sweetened it. I can post you a link if you’d like to try it.

Hope we all have a positive Sunday x

Sweets make the world go ’round. Even though I am a savory-kinda-gal, I still love buying and baking, and once in a while, beg for my sweets. My favorite is caramel anything. Toffee is a form of caramel and so is burnt sugar; well not to the point where it becomes bitter and less palpable, but just on the edge of reason.

There is a time and a place to indulge; provided you choose your weapons wisely. My official day to indulge will be a week after I reach my goal weight and then no more until several weeks later, provided I continue to maintain my new shape.

Maintenance was the part of the weight loss lesson I always seemed to skip. Anyone can lose weight. There are many books that show you how. Unfortunately, there is no book on the market on Maintenance. There should be a book that universally covers every diet in the book (no pun intended), and show you have to maintain your weight for that particular diet.

Who knows, maybe I’ll write it. Happy Sunday all!

Hello all,

I’ve been feeling tired and a bit fed up just the past few days. I’ve not fasted yet this week. I’m going away for a couple of days tomorrow to stay with friends in Wales so will be having a ‘pause’. I plan to fast one day at weekend – that will do me for this week.

Take care, everyone, and will call in when I get back. Good luck with all your plans this week.