NON WW & WW NEWBIES, OUR NEW LIFE, THE START OF SOMETHING WONDERFUL

@TrishasTime Merry Christmas!!!

@theslightedgeforever I'd say you did very well, congrats! I liked the book, if it is on sale it might be worth picking up.

Hello all! I'm glad the food hazards are done for the year (unless we have a little shindig for NYE). Now I can concentrate on how I'm going to improve myself. Tracking better is a step in the right direction and I like that idea, so thanks @theslightedgeforever for your wise advice as usual.

MERRY CHRISTMAS / HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL!!!

Morning everyone

@gemwolf110 _ Merry Christmas to you too

@theslightedgeforever - Well done on changing something on Christmas Eve (one of the hardest days bar Christmas Day) I bought my husband a "Google Home" and the arguing between him and the grand daughter was like having 2 young kids in the house.

@TeresawW2010 - Do you have the WW app on you phone or ipad/tablet. If you do, they have some wonderful groups in connect you can join like Recommitted, newbies, walking and other hobby groups. You could join them whilst getting over your cold and get some motivation, follow some people who you think are in a similar situation or have done the hard yards like you.

@trooworld - I think if you track, you learn more about yourself and how to cope. I went well yesterday, enjoying myself until after everyone left and then I had a fruit mince pie and rice crackers which I did not really want but I was tired. It bit into some of my weeklies - which is okay but the thing is I was not hungry just tired.

Today is boxing day and I have my son and 4 yr old GD again and of course DH parents. Son is coming up for lunch again so DH parents can see both grandchildren. I have just checked the fridge and I only have to nip out for 3 things and then start prepping again. It will not be on the scale of yesterday as DH's parents in theie mid 80's eat simple food.

Hoping everyone is out by 4pm, so I can clean up and get ready for work tomorrow

Hope you all have a relaxing day


Trish

@cbabie HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! When is your birthday exactly? Yes, we love stickers!!! One of my quotes that I saved on my vision board I will post here, it's along the lines of what you just said. I don't know if the Buddha truly said it lol, but I like the quote. I've missed you, I'm glad you are back.

@TrishasTime Oh I love when my Fitbit shows the fireworks, that's fantastic! lol Good for you for going to the studio today rather than waiting, I think that is great. And that is a great idea to get up and walk every 40 minutes and have a walk at lunch. You should have a good step count today.

Hi all. I am so glad it's already Thursday, just one more day and I'll have a 4 day weekend again! No real NYE plans except my husband, dog and me staying home having appetizers and beverages. Then on New Year's Day, we will have pork and sauerkraut for good luck/prosperity. Do you all eat anything special on NYE or New Year's Day out of superstition or tradition?

Good morning!

@cbabie, Happy Birthday!! Your example of points vs calories is one of the reasons I decided to go back to tracking points. I was finding myself being too lax on the calories. I think it will be easier to draw a hard line with points. We will see!!

@TrishasTime, I do have the WW app on my phone and I've gone on Connect a bunch of times but it's not a great place in my opinion for making connections. I love the before and after pics that get posted and I do follow a few inspiring people. I also have two really great groups on Facebook that I follow, as well as two challenge groups I do here on MFP, and of course this amazing group of ladies in this thread.

@trooworld, I think your calendar and sticker idea is a wonderful visual and will be a great help in keeping you focused on your goals!! I'm doing something similar and will share below. We don't do anything for New Years. We are currently binge watching The Amazing Race (starting with season one) so we will no doubt watch a few episodes and then call it a night by 10 pm. We are such party animals!!

@theslightedgeforever, so what is your game plan for the coming year? What words of wisdom can you give us that will keep us on track and focused for the whole year? I've already decided that biting off the year in chunks is a good idea for me. See below.

Ya'll, I don't even know what day it is anymore!! I've been stuck in my house all loopy on cold meds and binging on eggnog and peppermint bark! Stop the madness!!! I did spend most of my day yesterday thinking about the coming year and how I plan to get to my goal weight. One of my FB groups is doing a 100-day challenge and I really liked the idea, so I made up the chart you see below and I plan to tackle 100 days at a time and break those down in ten-day chunks. If I do my goals then I will either put a sticker (love that idea ) or color it in with a marker. My goal is to complete all 100 days with no slip ups and to lose at least 1 pound every 10 days. Doable if I'm consistent. I'm starting on January 1st and for the next five days I'm going to detox the crap I've been eating and get ready to start the New Year fresh and clean and ready for battle!! Who is with me!!

This is my chart:

@trooworld So is tracking going to be your January goal? Are you going to be tracking progress by day or by meal? Oh, I just saw your post about the stickers. Stickers are fun. The only thing I do traditionally on NYE is watch the ball drop. If I was married to someone different, I would be at a party somewhere. He doesn't care about balls dropping or counting down to midnight. lol But I'm always thankful I get to spend the next year with him. Nice Buddha quote.

@teresaw1020 2019 is your year! Are you feeling better? Are you picking a January goal? That's interesting perspective on you with calories versus points. I'm sitting here trying to figure out how it would be easier to go over 200 versus go over on 3. I love the chart. But then I'm a chart person. This reminded me of the book 100 days of Weight Loss. I bought that book years ago but it's still good. Here's a free PDF version We could all get it and comment on it each day. Like a daily devotion. ebooksdownloads.xyz/search/100-days-of-weight-loss

@gemwolf110 I hope you had a nice Christmas. That house looks like Teresa's.

@TrishasTime Rice crackers are my nemisis. I can't seem to stop eating them so I had to stop buying them. Good for you for losing weight on Christmas. My daughter wants to see Mary Poppins.

@cbabie Teach your family to make their own Oreo fudge using my recipe. It's so easy. Just three ingredients. No basic cooking except for melting the white chocolate chips. I promised my son I would make him a batch to take to his friends since he only got one piece this last time. But that stuff is like crack. So it's not sitting in my house. While I was making it I was thinking about buying pretzels and making those like you used to do and then I had other bad thoughts come into my head about all the things I could do with this recipe. So the trick is to not buy those darn chips. How about concentrating on the things that you did well for the day. You might have done 3 things well and 1 thing not so well and you will say the whole day was bad. What are you doing for your January goal? How about "keeping track of things I do well".


My January goal will be 1) track and meet or exceed my calories burned goal each day 2) track and stay within my calorie limit each day. I have three different calorie goals during the week. EDIT: I just reread my post and decided limit was such a negative word. So I'm going to change it to allowance. Stay within my calorie allowance each day.

So I think our success all boils down to habits or daily actions. That's why I didn't choose a weight goal for January. With sodium bloat, hormones, etc. I don't think I could control a number on the scale for a particular day. But I can control my actions and habits. Everything I'm reading says to make the habit a tiny one and build from there. We all want to start running 5Ks but don't have the habit of getting out there to walk daily yet. Or we decide we are going to cut out all our sugar instead of seeing what your current intake is and reducing it. My sugar goal for instance is 50 gm. In the last 30 days I went over 10 days (probably more since I didn't track the last week, that's not like me at all.) So I might set my goal to 8 days. Or to be positive, I met my sugar goal 20 days out of 30. For the next month, I will meet my sugar goal 22 days. See that little tiny increase? That's what my username SLIGHTEDGE is all about. Just a small change or adjustment over a period of time.

Anticipate your obstacles in meeting your goals each day and create a solution ahead of time. So off the top of my head using my goals:

Burned calories:

My obstacles are
not in the mood to exercise,
telling myself 30 min is enough (I exercised didn't I?),
telling myself I'll exercise later in the day

Solutions:
Make it fun. Watch one of your TV shows while you are on the treadmill. Just do 5-10 minutes.
Keep track of calories and burn the required calories for the day. Walking 10 minutes around the room or house is still walking. It burns calories. Find exercises that burn more calories per min. Leslie Sansone videos burn more calories than walking on a treadmill for the same amount of time.
Never trust your future self......Once I'm done with my breakfast outside, keep moving and go to the gym or exercise. Don't sit down to read or just look at my phone.



Stay within calories

My obstacles are
Not having a plan for the day
The food I plan doesn't appeal to me so I'll grab something else
Not tracking my food right after I eat it but wait until the end of the day and now I've gone over calories

Solutions:
Pre-plan your meals either the night before or first thing in the morning.
Learning to stick with the food that is planned is a habit to be developed. Eating the same foods that made me fat will keep me fat. I'm not a smoothie fan, but I will eat the same ingredients whole but separate. Tell myself, just this once I will drink a smoothie. I did find a chocolate smoothie recipe I like using cocoa, hershey's sugar free syrup and stevia. Find healthy foods I like.
I'm pretty good about tracking my foods daily because I preplan them and just eat what I've planned. The problem comes when I don't eat what's planned and my brain tells me I've already tracked. So I forget. I could set a reminder on my Fitbit.

So think about your goals and what obstacles have been keeping you from reaching your goals?

Way too crazy with the season, shift work, new twin grandsons etc
Will get my act together after jan 7
Do the best you can

Karen

Morning everyone

I am still battling with new watch , after having a fitbit for so long, it is totally different and exciting. It woke me this morning and said time to stand and move. That is what I meant with battling, I need to fond that setting and say "not before 7am on weekends" I did do well yesterday - actually I am proud of myself. All the food came out and I had a couple of slices of pineapple and complimented everyone on what they made and bought. We have an lady , with us and she made some sort of flavoured rice. I told her that I would have some at lunch and she made sure I got some. So I ate around it and then popped my lunchbox with her rice in and it back into its bag and brought it home to the bin. I was determined to stick with the plan

@theslightedgeforever - My Goal for January will be to get 20 blue dots out of the month. Blue dots mean that you have tracked and have stayed within 10 under to 5 over your daily allowance. I want to walk 30 mina day 6 times per week. I like that you put things into a half glass full scenario. Can you please share your 3 ingredient fudge receipe?

@gemwolf110 _ Glad you had a relaxing time with Christmas. I think we all are in the mindset that 2019 is the year

@prisoner2food - I do hope you have a small amount of time to yourself each day. Hope things get easier after Jan 7th

@trooworld - Hope you have a relaxing days off. As @theslightedgeforever says - it is habits that make a change. That it is why WW is concentrating on wellness - which is all the little good habits we build into our lives. If we keep doing that then the weight will follow automatically. I personally think it is a more holistic approach.

@cbabie - I am trying to adopt more of your sisters way. Instead of saying I have to go to work, I am now saying I get to go to work as a lot of people do not have that option. Before I would say, I did not do that walk in a certain time. Now I say I walked today which is the better habit that I am trying to achieve rather than berate myself for not walking fast enough. As you say, we are not giving up and I for one am glad that you created this and I found you guys

Take care

Trish

@gemwolf110 The new year is a great time to start anew. I wish you the best!

@prisoner2food Hello. I hope things slow down for you soon.

@cbabie I am looking forward to relaxing these next few days. YOU bring words of wisdom along with your sister, I would like to remind you. The insight must run in the family!!! ((( HUGS )))

@TrishasTime Great job! I agree with little good habits. I've been making small changes for years via WW and on my own. I've come miles from where I used to be but still have a long way to go.

@sme5056 Hi there! When I was doing WW, I just did whatever program they were offering at the moment. I think that whatever program you will stick with is the best program for you...give iBites a try and see if you like it. I know a lot of people do like the older programs, so maybe you would like those better. Good luck and welcome!

Hi all. Well, I don't know what I ate yesterday but last night I either had food poisoning or I had a stomach flu. I seem to be better today but it was no fun last night. It started after dinner so I suspect it was something in the salad I ate. See what I get for eating salads? :P We are going to see Mary Queen of Scots with my sister-in-law today (as of 7:15 a.m. we are) that is the big plan for today. I hope we won't eat out, but we may. I hope you all have a great day!

I'm here but no time to talk. My kids are leaving tomorrow so we've been having a lot of family time with a fire and playing cards.


@sme5056 Welcome to the group. I think all of those plans work if you work the plan. It depends which fits better into your lifestyle. I started with points plus but I can see how the transition to the other plans seems to lean toward healthier foods. For me, points plus was eat whatever I wanted to as long as I stayed within the points. Then they started making the unhealthier foods higher points so it made it harder for me to stay within my points. I say choose whatever plan will make it easier for you to lose weight. I have prediabetes and tried tracking with Ibites and MFP but it got to be too much for me. So now I just use MFP. Have you tried Freestyle? Filling your plate with mostly zero point foods and then adding pointed items.

theslightedgeforever wrote: »

Try this link for the 100 days of weight loss book:

weightlossjoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/100DaysJournal.pdf

Thank you!! That is awesome and I'm going to incorporate this journal as part of my daily plan to stay on track for the 100-day challenge.

I just listened to a woman I follow on FB and she said something that I really liked and hadn't ever thought of before. "Our problem is not the habit of consistency, but what areas that we are being consistent in." How true is that? I have consistently allowed myself to do less than what I know I should be doing. That is because I have an all or nothing mindset, which is crap. I have soooo much to think about!

Thanks to those that answered my question....much appreciated!!!

I’m finding it REALLY hard to follow MFP. I mean I’m not eating healthy but staying in my calories. I feel like there are too many choices and I can’t function with this kind of freedom. I’m too weak!!

Would weight watchers be a good option for me? If so, the new one or an older program? Please help!!!!

By the way, if anyone is wondering how I got that ticker, it's under APPS ---> TICKERS.

@TrishasTime I now know what gave me the food poisoning or whatever was happening: it was definitely the blue cheese. When I saw the sad little lump of blue cheese that DH wanted me to put on my salad, I knew that wasn't the lump of fresh blue cheese I just bought the week before, but I didn't say anything for some reason. I just put a whole bunch of it on my salad. I discovered my untouched fresh blue cheese yesterday when I was looking for something else (our fridge is a bit of a black hole). The blue cheese I ate must have been at least a month old, possibly a lot longer! It's no wonder I got sick. I hope you have a good day at work.

Hello all. Tonight being New Year's Eve here, we celebrating by having appetizers and drinks. I am making the appetizers as healthy versions of them as possible, but they are still not super healthy:

Reuben Pigs in the Blankets (made with turkey little smokies)
Instant Pot Sweet BBQ Meatballs (made with turkey meatballs)
Stuffed Mushrooms with Bacon and Blue Cheese (made with center cut bacon)

I will drink wine spritzers: 3 oz wine + 3 oz diet 7-up. That's low in cals, much lower than beer or hard liquor. Does anyone have any plans tonight?

Morning everyone

It is New Years Day here ( we are 12 hours ahead I think?) so when I type this, you will be out (or not) celebrating NYE.

We stayed home and watched our basketball team play on the other side of Australia. We had sushi and I did plan to have treats, but my stomach was playing up (guess too many vegetables), so they all got left alone.

I went to bed with the word "lifestyle" on my brain. This year I am going to change my lifestyle and own everything I do.

In the meantime, I wish you a health and happy 2019


Trish