WOMEN AGES 50+ FOR DECEMBER

:flowerforyou: Hi everyone

Well everyone sounds busy getting ready for tomorrow. I hope you all take time to relax and enjoy a bit of "you" time in the hustle and bustle of the day.

We are planning to take the dogs on a long walk in the afternoon, so I hope the weather isn't too cold/snowy/icy. As most of you know one of our dogs is not the friendliest dog in the neighbourhood and needs to be kept upstairs in DD's bedroom out of the way when we have people over. (not the one in the photo - that's Tara she's a little treasure!) At least he feels safe up there and can relax., then after lunch we can take him and Tara for a long walk and tire them out - and it's good exercise for us too :bigsmile:

To all my good friends have a happy and restful time and all good wishes for Christmas (or whatever you celebrate )

Viv

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone.

I too haven't been posting much but have been keeping up with reading the posts. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday with your loved ones. It's a busy, stressful time of year, so remember to stop and take a deep breath once in a while and be kind to yourselves.

My husband just told me about this thread. We're new to MFP and are working to lose weight and get healthier together. We live in Vermont and are empty nesters. We've been working with MFP for a month and I've lost about 5 pounds so far. I have one question that some of the folks out there might be able to answer. Today my husband and I went out for a walk in the snow. We walked the same distance in same time over the same terrain. When we went to log the exercise in on our separate accounts he was given 220 calories burned for the walk and I only got 155 calories. Why the difference?

Hello,

All the baking is done, now just the cooking over the next couple days. The planning has helped and things are falling into place. Unfortunately, my dear 80 year old mother is also falling: last night she fell down a whole flight of steps.

I think she was a little tired and her feet were sore but of course dear mom didn't want to slow down. So anyhow we all heard a great noise last night and found her at the bottom of the stairs. She insisted on getting up on her own with little help, but she did it and made it to her bed. We checked her out and nothing appears broken with no SOB, etc, etc. So got her settled into bed with ice and analgesics: it was 10 PM so Mom agreed she would go to bed as it "was time". This AM Mom is pretty sore and does have a fair amount of bruising on her left flank. She reports that deep breaths are easier now. We have her up into the reclining chair in the family room for the day so she can be in the middle of the action but we can monitor how she is and keep icing her flank.

We (my parents, my husband and me) were supposed to head to our cabin tomorrow after celebrations with other family completed here. But now we will not be heading to our cabin for a few days (at least!) to ensure she is ok and to be close to other medical resources if she develops any complications. From our home here in the city, my husband can plug her into the system pretty quickly if we are concerned anything more is developing. But at the cabin.....it is just me and my husband to take care of her (a long way from a good hospital)! So we have made the adjustments to the plan for the next few days as needed and everyone seems happy. I think Christmas cheer has prevailed and thankfully no crucial bones or spirits appeared to have been broken.

I continue to work on my goal of calmness through the season: it appears this goal is being challenged but so far I am feeling the calm I am working towards.

I am sending out wishes of health, happiness and calmness to all of you.

Karlene

Hello Everyone!!

I THOUGHT I was having a dinner at my house on Christmas Eve, but between illnesses and last minute invitations from family, my guest list dwindled, so I had dinner with myself and the three little piggies. We had baked chicken breast, steamed Brussel sprouts, rice pilaf and a small piece of raspberry filled chocolate cake with a little Redi-Whip.

Today I did a really DUMB thing. I absentmindedly prepared the meds that Mai Li takes each morning, and those for Bradley. I also dosed out my own. I somehow managed to give BRADLEY the pain meds intended for Mai Li!!! Not a good thing, since he weighs less than half of what she does, so I called my vet clinic and they took him in, induced vomiting and gave him activated charcoal. When I picked him up at 4p, he was in rare form. "Barkity-Bark!!!" to the max. He inhaled a large quantity of food once home, since he missed out on breakfast.

I was very relieved there were no ill effects. I did NOT want this to be the Christmas where I accidentally overdosed one of my "kids."

I confess to having an entire bottle of Pinot Noir, so it was a very RELAXING evening.

Merry Christmas, all.

Barb

I'm channeling Bill Engvall, the comedian here - You know your grandkids are getting older when you can get up make frosting for the breakfast sweet rolls and get a cup of coffee before they wake up on Christmas morning!! :huh: :noway:

Hope you all have a wonderful day.

Faye

Merry Christmas dear ladies. To those who celebrate it have a good one. To those like me who don't, still have a stellar Saturday.

Much love and happiness coming your way from me to you!

Season's Greetings, Barbie and everyone. I'm back again. Some of you know I kind of dropped out when my Mom moved in with me in July. She struggled for the last six months and then passed away December 2nd. I don't quite have my "mojo" back yet, but I'm really hoping to find it soon and get back on track. Happy New Year and may your seasons be bright!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Wonderful Saturday to every single one of you!

Make healthy choices, drink lots of water and, most of all, have a great day!

Barb

Sounds like you had a nice dinner with your "piggies". Sometimes spending an evening with the little ones are the nicest. It's quiet, you are surrounded by them, you have a nice meal ready and it just feels comfortable. So did they get to share the meal with you too? Sounded healthy enough for them too!:happy: Maybe not the raspberry cake, but that sure sounded good to me. I love anything with raspberry. White cake, chocolate cake topped with raspberry...hmmmmm.

I am so glad nothing happened to your puppy. Thank goodness for emergency vets!:drinker: I have done that before too, mixing up medications, except I was the one who took the puppies medicine. Whenever I have had to get a puppy to barf, I have used hydrogen peroxide. It never fails. My vet told me that trick because I was always visiting the vet and he was trying to cut me a break!:laugh:

At any rate it all worked out good for you thankfully.

:flowerforyou:
Today my caregiver came over and brought his weenie dog to visit Boo. He was so handsome! Boo fell in love with him and was all over him, but, alas, she was unable to charm him. Sparkie, (his name) kept running between his master's legs and was afraid of Boo. I told my caregiver that Sparkie obviously didn't like dominate women.:laugh: Boo couldn't understand what the problem was. I mean she did all the right things, like sniffing his bottom. Just didn't turn him on.

Merry Christmas Everyone!:drinker:
Chiclet

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you - and hopes for a beautiful season for those who don't celebrate the holidays. :smooched:

I had a wonderful day yesterday. starting with a call at 7:15 a.m. from my daughter (who lives about 400' away). She said, "If you want to come up for Santa Claus time, come up now. I've been holding Olivia back since 6 a.m.) If she'd called me at 6, I would have told her I'd be up later, rolled over, and gone back to sleep. But, 7:15? I could do that.

We had such a good time. The gifts were low-key this year because budgets are tight - and that was just perfect. No frenzied tearing into one package, taking a look, then going onto the next. The kids savored each one. Most of the gifts from Suzy, Pete, and kids were homemade...snowmen ornaments made from rounds of wood cut from trees on our property, some big snowmen that stand on their own, and the gift Pete and the kids made for Suzy: a big reindeer with branches for antlers and crookedy legs for the front porch.

Santa gave Kate and Olivia a battery-operated Jeep, big enough for the two of them to sit in. They'd been wanting one for years. Suzy got a great buy on the Jeep at a surplus store. Unfortunately, Santa didn't realize the battery needed to charge for 18 hours before using, so he left a note. The girls finally got to zip around in it, faces glowing with delight, at 3:45 p.m., just before the rain started. (By the way, by this time they'd had a chance to open my gifts and their faces were wildly made up with the makeup I gave them. Quite a picture.)

Joe got some cool clothes and a cell phone. At 14, he's the last of his friends to get a cell phone. He is officially a teenager now! The phone came with strong cautions about number of minutes and, especially, number of text messages. He is a very good kid, so I think he'll do fine with it. It's a big step in trust though.

Santa also brought the kids some jammies (of course!), a big stuffed tiger for Kate, and two medium-sized stuffed bears for Olivia. The stuffed bears were an afterthought, purchased (by me) early on the day of Christmas Eve. Suzy was worried about being "even" (she's a perfectionist like a couple of others I can think of, self included). Although the two bears cost the same as the tiger ($20), they didn't look as amazing.

Suzy kept me up (all her fault!) until early Christmas morning writing a story about the two bears, who started out as lonely onlies then, after an adventure, became best friends (forever!) I liked that one bear was black and one was white. Although they'd never, ever seen a bear of a different color, it didn't matter at all.

Later, my son, his wife, and their two boys came over and we opened their gifts and the gifts from Grandma Mimi (that's me). Breakfast (bagels, lox, cream cheese, and all the trimmings) and lots of other goodies lasted all day.

All in all, it was a perfect day.

What does all this have to do with food and eating? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Except that I continued what I'd been doing for the last couple of weeks and ate too much! I'd decided ahead of time not to weigh or measure over the holidays and I stuck to my decision! :laugh: :laugh: I enjoyed the eating - it wasn't fancy, but it was yummy. Now I'm bumping my head against that 200 lb marker and more than ready (yearning) to get back to weighing, measuring, and logging.

I see so many new folks on here and lots of "old" folks. It warms my heart to see everyone. I love how we have become like family, encouraging and motivating each other (and putting up with each other's foibles from time to time!)

I want to say an especially warm "Welcome back" to my friend, Randy. I've missed her.

Hugs and fond wishes to everyone.

Hello,

Christmas day went very nicely, considering the changes we had to make to accommodate my mother's mobility restriction following her fall down the stairs night before Christmas Eve. We opened all presents and did brunch, buffet style in our family room. I generally decorate the dining room and have a nice sit down meal. But instead, yesterday everyone filled plates from a buffet I set out in the kitchen and ate with plates in lap so mom could remain in the middle of things in the recliner chair. It was lovely. It was so nice I suggested next year I would forego all Christmas decorating (I had already decreased decorating I did this year due to my illness). My daughter protested and said next year all the decorations will need to be out as her 7 month old son, my first grandbaby, will be old enough to enjoy a reindeer collection I have put together over the last few decades. Maybe she is right but I will wait to see what next December brings.

So I committed to myself that I would continue to record all in over the holiday season and generally watch what I was eating and not drink any alcohol (as my liver enzymes are still floating around), but I would eat the seasonal favourites so much apart of our Christmas. Interestingly, at 53 years of age and with a fairly extensive education in health, etc. etc., I still learnt a great deal over the last few days about why I have trouble keeping weight down which I would like to record and share with you:

Lesson # 1 - Only about 150 calories extra (a day) will keep my weight at the current level (in 5 weeks) -
On the 23rd I was over calorie daily goal as I had a piece of gluten free matrimonial cake (matrimonial cake is a prairie favourite made with dates and oats). I have not had matrimonial cake for a few years as until recently gluten free oats have not been available here but we have a new supplier of good certified gluten free oats so we made the cake (with California medjool dates from the Costco yum). The new GF recipe looked fantastic and MFP recipe tool helped me to calculate exactly the impact of having this treat. So with this level of information (and as you can see thinking/dreaming about a slice of cake!) I decided to eat cake. It was definitely worth it! The best slice of Matrimonial Cake I have ever had. Even my Mom, the matrimonial cake expert (and at that time pre-fall and not grouchy with pain) agreed. I must admit I was a little surprised when I recorded this extra "treat" in my food diary at the end of the day and the MFP system told me a potential outcome should I continue having this amount extra for the next 5 weeks!

Lesson #2 - Christmas Eve days my daily caloric in was over by ~250 calories: at this extra in each day the MFP system said I would be only a pound more in 5 weeks. Okay that is interesting information: only ~250 extra calories???.

Lesson #3 - Eating an extra 1000 calories is very very easy -
On December 25th, in addition to regular meal, I had some cookies, carrot pudding with sauce (again another prairie favourite adapted/substitution for the British Christmas plum pudding that the early prairie settlers developed with the ingredients on hand), nuts, and, eagle brand candy (a delicious recipe my grandmother developed and we have all been taught to make only at Christmas). So interestingly, even though I did generally watch what I was eating, all these prairie favourites so loaded with nostalgia and history are so incredibly calorie loaded that I had 1000 calories without really eating what I considered to be very much. This food was developed for those who needed to go out and milk the cows by hand after the meal even on Christmas Day! Honestly, I must admit, though I knew our family Christmas favourites were high calorie, I never really thought through exactly how high!

Yesterday AM, was my usual weigh-in time: down .2 of a pound. Today after a 1000 extra calories I just wanted to see what that would mean: up 2.6 pounds. So I know besides the extra calories, yesterday was a high sodium day. I am being kind to myself about this change and plan to get back to watching the in, making sure to being just under the calorie daily goal (so I get the nice little message from MFP system) and getting my water in. With the extra care Mom is needing right now, I don't think I will get time to exercise today but I will try to incorporate exercise in the next few days as well.

So I guess the learnings over the past few days: a little more consciousness of what I am eating and the immediate impact. I don't think I will make any big commitments to cut anything out. But I want to continue to be more conscious on a day to day basis of the in and hope this will help in making sure things don't get out of control. I also becoming more aware, that for me, what I am eating is tied to achieving or maintaining the the calmness or "not spinning" in other areas of my life that I have been thinking/writing about. Sorry, I may be waxing a little philosophical, but it is that time of year!

Sending out health, happiness and calmness to all,
Karlene

Hello everyone,

Our Christmas with "friends" did not go as planned. For the 3rd time, they came, they ate and left in less than 90 minutes. They really hurt my DD's feelings when they did that to her 16th birthday party and they really hurt all of our feelings yesterday when they rushed through dinner not wanting to wait for our last guests to get there and did not even see the deserts we baked before leaving. After all the parties, graduations, weddings for their kids we feel very cheated by their visits and that their kids don't do for ours as we did for theirs. I can honestly say this is the last time we will ever invite that group over or bring a present or contribute to their family. (If we turn the other cheek and ever see them again). We have run out of cheeks to turn. They are not honest in their intentions when they come to "visit".

Our other friend John and his family made up for it. We sang and watched movies. We were asked to be Aunt and Uncle to the baby as he gets older. John said we were the only family he had within 400 miles. When I started to cry when the other group got snotty about why they had to leave and I was being unfair about it, John jokingly said "Here, I have a fix for that." and handed my the baby. He was right. It fixed my tears.

I overate, overindulged and enjoyed every minute of it. Today I will get back on track and stay on it. I just had to have a piece of each of the cakes DD made. They were her first cakes!

Jeannie

PS: Welcome to all newcomers. Glad to hear so many of my old friends in this forum had a great day yesterday.

Oh, it’s so good to be back. Thank you for the warm welcome, Barbie.

Today was a really low-calorie day for me. Not on purpose, but I ended the day with a couple hundred calories left over. By the time I realized that, it was too late to eat. This makes a good, new start for me.

I’m on a roll again with the fruits and veggies. If any of you look at my diary for today, you’ll laugh. Hmm…tangerine (a Cutie), mushrooms, eggplant, butternut squash, sweet potato, asparagus, mini peppers, persimmons, and tomatoes! All the veggies roasted, of course. :happy:

If you look, you’ll also notice the chocolate!! (A Mozart marzipan – yummm.)

Karlene, I appreciate your wise advice. Thanks for sharing (via PM) info about some websites for gluten-free cooking. Cooking for Olivia (who has celiac) can be a challenge. She’s great about sticking to her gluten-free diet even though she's envious of the other kids sometimes. It helps that she was so young when she was diagnosed.

Julie, welcome! Good for you for getting a head start. I started losing weight on January 1 last year. It’s the first New Years’ resolution I’ve every kept. I feel much better now, and look better too. (Although my head keeps telling me I look the same!) I’m revved up now to get going again.

Jeannie, you are such a sweetheart. I’m sorry your “friends” were so obnoxious. They really weren’t friends at all. That’s hard to realize but at least, now, you can put your energy into relationships with people you love and who love you. My older daughter, Karin, told me something she’d learned from her counselor once. Karin, like me and, I suspect, like you, wants everyone to like her. (It’s so upsetting when they don’t!) The counselor asked her why she expected everyone to like her when she didn’t like everyone! Good food for thought.

Robin, Sometimes venting helps! I’m glad you have other nice, kind people in your life. It helps make up for the ones that plain old aren’t. Years ago, my younger daughter, for good reasons, “divorced” her father. She hasn’t looked back since. That’s a healthy thing to do when the relationship isn’t repairable. Sometimes there’s just no getting along with people. Better not to try.

I feel a little sad about spending the day by myself after all the good company yesterday. The girls did come whizzing by in their little Jeep a couple of times and stuck their heads in to say hello. The second time, Kate came without a shirt! What a goofus she is…our little nature child.

It’s raining again. What is this, Washington?! I can’t complain too much though. It’s a gentle rain, not a gully-washer.

Good night all.