Weight Control Support Group

Debby, I think we were posting at the same time.

Thank you for your compliments. You are too kind!

I do have a picture scanned as a blonde. Just have to figure out how to crop and resize it without deforming the picture. By the time I change the settings, everything is all blurry. I'm getting there guys!

Well...it's Kraft Dinner for the boys and I'm not sure what for me.

I think a cup of green tea sounds good.

Debby, I'm not 100% sure but I can't see why drinking decaffenated iced tea would be bad for you. I do know that I got a response earlier on in this thread regarding the Green Tea Iced Tea (Lipton's) and it was suggested that I make my own instead of buying the bottled kind because of all the artifical 'stuff'. Are you planning on making your own or buying it?

What if you chew on ice cubes?? Can you handle that? I know it's hard eating enough ice cubes to amount to a gallon of water but, between the tea and that, maybe you could slowly get used to the water. Just a thought..... Ummmmm, get crunching! :LOL:

Oh....poor Debby. Since no one else has answered, and I am a cheerleader, I will give you permission to substitute iced tea with nutrasweet and lemon for some water, simply because I cannot conceive of a happy life without iced tea! Now, if I'm wrong, you'll get an answer in a big hurry, I'm sure.

Just remember that tea is a diuretic, so you will be burning a lot of calories running to the bathroom. I think your penalty for drinking something palatable should be sucking your tummy in the whole way to the B.R. !! I think about 20 seconds of holding it in counts for one situp. Actually, I hate water too, but I think you should drink some water. It does wash out toxins. But have some tea too, and don't tell anyone else.

Ghyslaine, you and the children are three beauties. Beautiful soul, beautiful person! How dare all of you guys be so young and pretty?

Thanks for answering guys! I drink ALOT of iced tea (decaf mostly) at work all day long!!!

Can I jump in on this one? I was about 80 pounds over what I know feels healthy for me (which is about 20 pounds ovder the chart weight.

I also have some aches in my back and knees that I know the weight is aggravating.

The only way I could approach this was by working towards eating healthy and not think of it as a diet. I'm also still taking baby steps for improving my health. I'm using the diabetes pyramid of foods (whole grains/cereals beig the biggest part of the diet, then fruits and veggies, then protein with fats and sweets being the smallest element), keeping total calorie count in mind.

It's been a month and I'm still working on increasing my water to the 64 oz (it just never tastes anything but flat to me!). I've gotten my overall calorie count down to around 1900 a day and I lost 8 pounds.

My biggest challenge is going to be getting the exercise in! I have never found an exerice that I really like and it's going to be winter soon, but I'm working on finding things I can incorporate into my day.

I'm really hoping tha this way will get me where I need to be to be healthy (with being smaller as a side benefit) and that I can do for the rest of my life.

Jeanie.....Thank you.

Guess what I am doing today? I decided to put on a pedometer just to see how much walking I get done in one day. Apparently, everyone should aim to get a minimum of 10,000 steps per day. Well......I am at 598. I have sat down quite a bit today but this morning, I told myself that if I didn't log 10,000 by the end of the day, I would hop on my treadmill to make up for the lost steps. Looks like I may be on the treadmill for quite some time tonight!

Good for you Debby! Keep up the good work! I get side tracked at the office at times and choose a diet soda. I wish I could break that habit.

Eeva, I have nevr heard of cucumbers in water. How interesting. Not sure if I'm brave enough to try that though. I was thinking that maybe you and I could have a "take your anti-biotic on time" program. That way, we are sure to drink some water! :LOL: Hope you feel better soon. I am going on close to one month(if not more) of being sick. It's no fun at all. Sending get better vibes your way. I don't think I could ever become a vegetarian. I know that there is so much variety out there now for vegetarians but I've never thought about it much. Have you always been a vegetarian? If no...did you notice a significant change/improvement in your life when you chose to become one? I am very interested...no one I know is vegetarian so I have no idea what it really is all about. We all know the "no meat" part. It's all the benefits and recipe ideas I'm not aware of.

Okay....enough of my rambling on. I'm off to drink a glass of water!

Patrice, Welcome aboard!!! Nice to have you join us.

Well, you've come to the right place. We are all taking the baby step approach here and plan on succeeding!

We'll do the water drinking, food and exercise challenge together!

Stick with us!

Okay...thanks to Debby, I have a recent one to show.

Eeva - I was essentially a vegetarian from 1979 (age 16) until 1986. I started in high school just because I wanted to be different. I "cheated" occassionally as I didn't do it for ideological reasons so much as for health reasons. But I was never very healthy about it in all those years, and I was a smoker the whole time. The hypocrisy of the whole thing bothered me, and, like I said, I wasn't particularly healthy. I put a lot of work into studying the different "philosophies," from raw-foodist to macrobiotic. My problem was, and still is, just being disciplined about what I eat. I smoked, I drank coffee, I ate sweets - so what was the point?

Besides - I really can't stand a lot of the vegetarian dishes. LOL! In the end, it just wasn't me.

My dad, who just turned 72 this past Thursday, is proof that everything in moderation and a disciplined diet is healthy. He was diagnosed with diabetes one year after insulin was invented. He has survived quintuple by-pass surgery at age 63, and statistically should have been dead 46 years ago. He eats nine servings of fruit and vegetables a day, has 4 oz. of meat with lunch and 6 oz. of meat with dinner, and gets 25 or more grams of fiber and exercises each day - even if it is just out in the garden weeding. He eats no sweets or junk food at all. He is why I cannot be against animal testing ideologically (we would have none of our modern medicines) and why I believe eating healthy - meat or no - is the key to the quality in a long life.

I admire the discipline it takes to be a vegetarian! I just don't have it - and that's what I'm working on!

So Patrice100 - I am with you! For me it is about changing my habits far more than it is about losing the weight!

...and I've finished three glasses of green tea and 1/2 litre of water today. A bit better than yesterday!

Ghyslaine - I'm scared to get a pedometer. I'm not sure I want to know!

See Ghyslaine! You're gorgeous! You don't even look like you need to lose weight!

What a little sleep will do.... !!!!

I was thinking the same thing! She looks pretty thin to me!

Have you not noticed how I hide behind my children? Seriously....I have at least 20-25 pounds to lose. I'm sitting on about 10 of them in the pics! The rest is on my belly, in my thighs....etc. You guys are too kind.

My pedometer messed up on me! I looked down about 10 minutes ago and it says 42 steps. Geesh.....looks like I'll have to do this again tomorrow and be more careful. I'm thinking I may have hit the reset button while I was cleaning, so tomorrow....no cleaning!!

Well, I'm going to give this a try myself. I have a bit of a double goal. I went from a size 12 to a size 16 in 2 months this spring, when I quit smoking. I started smoking again in May and have maintained my weight at a size 16, but haven't lost any either. I want to quit smoking again next week (when Mike loses his job and we can get back to going to the gym) and maybe lose weight this time. Next Friday is goal time for me. Thursday I bought a pack of light cigarettes instead of my normal ones (switched to a cheaper brand, too. Cigarettes are about to go up $.60/pack here which will make it over $4.00/pack for most brands, possibly over 5 for some.) Today I will buy ultra lights, and next week begin cutting it down. Even if I don't completely quite by Friday, I want to be down to 1-2 cigarettes a day by then. I just hope I don't gain weight this time, and hope I can lose what I've gained. Clothes shopping makes me cry, so does trying to put on a bathing suit. This pic was taken about 2 months ago. I cried for about 2 hrs before getting dressed for this trip, trying on all the clothes I had (it was over 100 degrees that day).

Yay Myste! Welcome! What a beautiful picture!

Unfortunately, I do not have any advice for the smoking part as I have never smoked. (except the occasional one after a few beers when I forget I'm a non-smoker ) I am sure there are tons of people here with advice and encouraging words of wisdom.

Just remember....we are baby-stepping our way to a healthier lifestyle. One step at a time! You can do it. We all can

To start off, last week was our drink all the water you can week (which we will be keeping up from now on) So, start with the water intake and next week....we are incorporating fruit into our menu and veggies (for those that want to tackle the two at once)

Myste,

I think you look beautiful in your picture, and admire you for deciding to quit smoking. I need to quit too, but I haven't had the willpower recently.

I read somewhere that quitting smoking, beginning on the first day of your period up to 14 days later is much easier than at any other time. For some reason, cravings are supposed to be less. This might be a good bit of advice to try.

Debby-

My nutritionist told me that decaffeinated drinks with sugar substitutes could replace water. This includes diet soda and iced tea Sodas are bad, though, because of the phosphorous. So, I wouldn't feel bad about drinking tea as long as it has no caffeine.

One liter of water down, more to go...And I prepared for next week's additional fruit-I got bananas from the farmers market. They might not last all week though!

Christy

Myste...that is a great picture! You are very pretty, and don't look like a size 16 at all!!!

Myste and Christy....I too smoke.

I have cut way down now, though, because of the baby, I don't smoke around her, so it isn't as handy to light one up as it used to be. I need to quit, but right now I don't have the willpower, and I want to lose some of the weight I gained being pregnant before I try to quit! It terrifies me that I will put on a ton of weight when I quit!!!!!! But my hubby says he would rather have me fat than dead. Good point, I guess.

Whisker's mom- well, the cucumber slices are there just to give a hint of a taste to the water, sounds weird, but at least I liked it, but then again, I like cucumbers.

And the vegetarian thing... Well, there's lots of people who wouldn't consider me a "true" vegetarian since I do eat eggs and fish, but I guess my reason is that I don't eat anything I wouldn't be able to get for myself, and I couldn't kill an animal for my food, while I could collect eggs or fish. My main reason for becoming a vegetarian was becoming disgusted with the way many "meat animals" are treated today, and I didn't want to support those practises by buying the meat.

Okay, got off track there. Guess my point was that me becoming a vegetarian (only 1,5 yrs now) was for ideological reasons, not for health and I have to say I haven't noticed much of a difference. This is the first time I've been sick in about 3 yrs, but can't even attribute that to my change in diet. The benefit I have noticed is that I feel much better about what I eat... It's not like I ate much meat before i stopped eating meat and meat products (so if a product has something like 'animal fat' in it, I don't eat it), but now I don't have that nagging guilt about eating what I do. For some reason I've felt strongly about eating animals for a long time, so in that respect, I guess at least my mental health has improved. Of course that's not the only thing I do, I try to buy organic products as much as possible, avoid certain companies' products (that use child labour etc) and buy the fair trade products too etc.

It is harder to get 'junk food' when you're vegetarian, of course it's easy to get pizzas and such, but you don't really go out to hamburger places or such much, because they usually don't have much for me to eat. So I have cut down on eating junk food a lot, and I have started eating much more vegetables and fruits, even though I've always eaten plenty of those anyway. So although there's been a bit of a change for healthier food (I do eat more healthy now, use less fat, and more veggies etc), it's not very dramatic, I don't think meat as such is unhealthy, even if it's often pointed out as the culprit for gaining weight and bad health.

As for recipies and such, yes, there are quite a lot out there, but I'm not a very good vegetarian. Out of fish, I only like a few, I don't really like eggs much, I don't eat stuff like tofu or the soy replacement products, and I don't really go much for beans, although I do try and eat them, since I do need to get certain things into my diet, when I don't eat meat. And of course I'm always looking for easy, fast recipies, and it seems most of the 'yummy' vegetarian dishes I've eaten or seen, are quite a lot of work or are quite fatty. I tend to eat a lof of pasta (which isn't exactly low calorie food...), since it's rather easy to prepare no-meat dishes from that, or various soups etc. Although there are much more vegetarian options out there today, there's often only one in restaurants etc over here anyway, so sometimes it can be a bit of a challenge, but it's been pretty easy so far. My mom actually bought me Weight Watchers vegetarian cook book last year, and that has some pretty good recipies in it. It just feels it's harder to get variety into salads and such.

Btw, about quitting smoking, I read about a study that was done, where there had been two groups, one that tried to quit without doing anything else, and another that combined trying to quit smoking and going on a diet as well (or rather changing their eating habits into healthier ones). It turned out that especially for women, they are much more often successful in quitting smoking if they are also on a diet, since for women it seems that a major reason for failing at quitting smoking is that they are worried about the weight they'll gain. Thus combining it with dieting made that worry go away, and it was easier for women to stop smoking. I thought this was really interesting, and it sounds like it might well be true.

http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6914&highlight=Getting+off+the+nicotine+patch
Miste, Try the patch. You'll find some good ideas in this thread. I wish you the best.

Thanks for the support. I don't have the money for the patch, nor do I have the money to keep smoking. Mike's job ends on the 25th, and then I'll be the sole source of income until he gets unemployment. At present I smoke about 1/2 pack a day. As for the period thing, I don't have periods due to the pill. I've never had too much problem quitting, I've quit 2x before. Last time I started again, it was from depression, and I'm going to be getting help for that this time. I'm mostly worried about not gaining weight again.

Lheeza....I have to confess! I have that picture pinned up in my office!

Ahem......where has everyone been today???? It seems pretty quiet here. Hope everyone had a good, healthy day.

Alas....I was not too good today. But, tomorrow is another day.
Hardly drank any water. Naughty girl!!! (I'm not mentioning all the bad things I did).

So.....are we all ready for the new start tomorrow? It's water/fruit/veggie week!!!! YAY!!!!! I wish you all luck.

BTW: Wore my pedometer all day. The total is: 5960. I'm far from 10,000. I'm planning on wearing it to work tomorrow. I think I may hit 15,000 in 8 hours there ! I figure once I'm feeling 100% better, I'll make sure it becomes a daily thing. Tonight, I'm not even going near the treadmill to make up for the missing steps. It's rest time. My whole household is asleep!

BTW: if anyone has any good, healthy recipes to share, it would be a bonus to have them here also. I'm so un-imaginative that it may encourage me to try something new.

Have a great evening and an even better morning start.