Welcome back, Donna! Great pictures. Fantastic job of pretty much maintaining weight while in Italy. Did you see anything new/ go anywhere you hadn't when you lived there? Nice that you had friends around to spend time with.

Jacque, I have an Instant Pot and love it. I use it every week with the meals I batch...for things like rice, beans, and soups. When I'm on an oatmeal kick I do that in there, too. Making food ahead is the best way for me to stay on track.

Mihani, grats on completing all 6 weeks!! That is so impressive. I'm not sure I've made it past 1 week of being totally on plan with the 6-week strict plan. Are you going to buy yourself a new item of clothing or do anything else to celebrate your success?

There's actually a break in the weather today and the sun is even peeking out right now. I got in a 30 minute walk during lunch. We might get lucky tomorrow afternoon as well. I would like to do a longer walk tomorrow, but I'll have to see how my hips and lower back are doing. They've been really acting up the last few days and I think its from doing a bunch of work at my computer. Hopefully the walk today helps. I am making a physiotherapy appointment next week.

This weekend we will be eating with my family to celebrate some birthdays. We are bringing our own main dish, and I'm making the dressing for everyone's salad. I haven't decided which one yet, likely either the tahini-crack or the creamy curry. The tough part will be saying no to the birthday cake!

Breakfast - smoothie
Lunch - tu-no salad over mixed greens, hummus, bite of Joe's hummus bagel!
Snack - orange or pear
Dinner - cuban-caribbean bowl

Karrie, Oops! I haven't closed my browser before replying before but I've hit a side mouse button that accomplishes the same thing. I feel your pain.

Great losses, Mihani! You are on a roll.

Jacque, I did a juice fast for 3 days to get rid of that "I'm hungry all the time" feeling, but fasting isn't my favorite! I think powering through it like Mihani did might be a nicer way to go. It has been so much easier for me to stay on track after getting through that stage.

This week I'm officially in Onderland! Yay! I was so close last week, but my weight fluctuated and I didn't get there. I'm down 1.8 lbs for the week.

I had my first real stumble yesterday when we were celebrating some family birthdays. I had a cupcake. I'm not going to beat myself up over it. It was sickeningly sweet (even though everyone else was commenting on how they were nice and not too sweet) and I had a sweet feeling in my throat for an hour after and felt ill. It also tasted really fake and processed. I had a little homemade trail mix later in the day with raw unsalted nuts, raisins, and dried cherries and that was a much better treat.

Both hips are still very sore and I had a hard time sleeping last night. Today is the last day without rain for the next week, but I'm not sure if I should walk or not. Maybe a 20 minute walk at a slow pace. The treadmill has shipped at last, which means roughly 12 more days until it arrives.

B - smoothie
L - mixed greens topped with leftovers, side of smokey black eyed peas
Snack - pear
D - tom kha soup w/ cilantro brown rice

Donna, the Mosaic school sounds so interesting! How much time do you have before the bike tour? Does he surprise you with these signups?! I bet it will be lovely with all of the wildflowers. What kind of temperatures are you likely to be biking in?

How's week one going so far, Lia? Did you make meals you've had before or are you trying out some new recipes?

Hmm, 5 must have food staples. Probably very similar to Mihani's! We have a huge variety of nuts and seeds in the fridge, with backup bags of them in the cupboards. We go through cashews and walnuts the most. We have dry beans in bulk (chickpeas, pinto beans, kidney, lentils, etc). We have about 6 different kinds of vinegar on hand at all times, mostly because the meal plans uses all of them. Also tamari, vegan Worcestershire and coconut aminos. We have sprouted grain bread in the freezer always, and a good supply of frozen blueberries. We always have a box of pre-washed organic baby spinach and mixed baby greens ready to go. We have bananas for smoothies and at least one other fruit. Right now that's oranges and pears. And I like to always have a homemade dressing in the fridge. Oh wait, you didn't ask for our top 100 staples LOL oops.

My favorite small appliance in the kitchen is my blender, followed by the Instant Pot. We have a big food processor with a ton of attachments and we use it because we have it, but we could get by fine without it for the most part. We started using it more now that we do batching on weekends because once it is out and dirty, may as well make use of it. It does a nice job of grating and slicing, but I find it hard to get the right size when chopping.

I did a slow walk yesterday and it started out on the painful side. It got better as I warmed up, and then got more sore again by the end of the walk. It did seem to help overall for the rest of the day and I got a much better sleep.

Today
breakfast - a change! Rip's Big Bowl cereal, the one with bananas and walnuts w/ almond milk
lunch - salad, island vinaigrette, chickpeas
dinner - korean bbq pizza, salad