@katmary71, hopefully once you get adjusted to your new blood pressure medication you will get your feisty back and be able to get a good mad on😁. I am hoping you will be able to come off that medication! Christmas only comes once a year, I know if I was a, as of yesterday we started to warm up. We were all laughing, it was -17°C, and we were just loving the weather. LOL! Although we have had this cold snap, I will definitely take this over the ice of the last two years! I think I have only had to wear the ice picks on my boots about three days when I have been out walking, which has been just delightful! Anyway, our weather trend is supposed to get up to around -10°C and that sounds just lovely to me!
I have been doing a lot of self reflection and analyzing this last month as far as my weight journey is going. I was doing well in maintenance, up until my son’s wedding. We had all the festivities involved with that, then a lot of company over the summer, much going out to restaurants with friends and family over the next few months. These are not excuses, just things that I need to learn to deal with and maintain my healthier weight. I definitely feel the extra 12 pounds I have put back on and I am determined to get that off in the next two months. I really need to focus on how to maintain my weight. I think that some of the strategies are so simple, but I have let them go since the summer…for instance, water! I am not drinking as much water as I used to, so I am back to the basics and drinking 72 oz. of water/day. I also have to reinstate no food after 7 PM and for the next two months, I will be weighing and tracking every morsel that passes my lips :-). I don’t want to get complicated, that leads to stress for me and I think the simple things will work.
In addition to my regular workouts, some thing I am really going to focus on is postural exercises. I saw a video of me running with Vannie and I was shocked! My posture has been become so bad in the last three years, I realized I am always bending over to either feed her or pet her as we are out and walking about, my shoulders are very slumped forward. Push-ups have never been my thing, but I started on them three days ago and I was able to do three proper push-ups lol. I think I really need to focus on exercises for my core and my back, push-ups seem to be a good place to start :-). If any of you have any great posture exercises that you like, please do share :-).
Well, it is a balmy -14° C here so I am going to get Little Miss Vannie out and we are going to get a nice walk in. I hope everybody has an amazing day!

I am so sorry, I don’t know what happened to my post earlier, it is missing the whole middle section, I do know I tried to correct something and I must have deleted much of it.
I am just getting ready to go out, but I want to try to quickly put in some of what I know I deleted out. (I wish I could delete that post above.)

@Trooworld how is your eye doing? It sounds like you had an amazing Christmas, sometimes they heartfelt words in a card mean much more than a gift ever could.

@Fushiakat huge congratulations to you for reaching your goal🎉🎉🎉. What a great way to end off 2022.🥂

@Cornanda I’m glad you’re eating was OK, I am sure with being at work and having much family around there are treats that are irresistible! I’m sure you had a lovely Christmas with your family

@katmary71, hopefully once you get adjusted to your new blood pressure medication you will get your feisty back and be able to get a good mad on😁. I am hoping you will be able to come off that medication! Christmas only comes once a year, I know if I was around cookies I would definitely be eating them.


The last 10 days our weather has been insane, between -35°C as low as -50°C. As of yesterday we started to warm up.
We were all laughing, it was -17°C, and we were just loving the weather. LOL! Although we have had this cold snap, I will definitely take this over the ice of the last two years! I think I have only had to wear the ice picks on my boots about three days when I have been out walking, which has been just delightful! Anyway, our weather trend is supposed to get up to around -10°C and that sounds just lovely to me!
I have been doing a lot of self reflection and analyzing this last month as far as my weight journey is going. I was doing well in maintenance, up until my son’s wedding. We had all the festivities involved with that, then a lot of company over the summer, much going out to restaurants with friends and family over the next few months. These are not excuses, just things that I need to learn to deal with and maintain my healthier weight. I definitely feel the extra 12 pounds I have put back on and I am determined to get that off in the next two months. I really need to focus on how to maintain my weight. I think that some of the strategies are so simple, but I have let them go since the summer…for instance, water! I am not drinking as much water as I used to, so I am back to the basics and drinking 72 oz. of water/day. I also have to reinstate no food after 7 PM and for the next two months, I will be weighing and tracking every morsel that passes my lips :-). I don’t want to get complicated, that leads to stress for me and I think the simple things will work.
In addition to my regular workouts, some thing I am really going to focus on is postural exercises. I saw a video of me running with Vannie and I was shocked! My posture has been become so bad in the last three years, I realized I am always bending over to either feed her or pet her as we are out and walking about, my shoulders are very slumped forward. Push-ups have never been my thing, but I started on them three days ago and I was able to do three proper push-ups lol. I think I really need to focus on exercises for my core and my back, push-ups seem to be a good place to start :-). If any of you have any great posture exercises that you like, please do share :-).
Well, it is a balmy -14° C here so I am going to get Little Miss Vannie out and we are going to get a nice walk in. I hope everybody has an amazing day!

Hey y'all, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Mine was great, everybody came over and a couple extras that had no where to go. A short funny story, my son got me 2 charms for a Pandora bracelet, they are absolutely beautiful. I hugged and told him I love them, then I told him that I don't have a Pandora bracelet and asked him if he wanted to return them but, he said, "No" you are getting a bracelet. Lol, I guess there was a miscommunication between him and my oldest daughter.

I have one more Christmas brunch tomorrow because one of my daughters and her 3 kids could not be here and one of my grand beauties will be staying with me for a few days. She says she needs "some grandma time." Be still my beating heart 🥰

I'm going to be working on getting back on track but, I have a lot of cookies that need to be eaten so, I'm going to try and limit those to 2 after dinner. Lol... I'll also be pushing them onto everybody that walks into the house. I'm going to make slow and steady changes this week and then next week it'll be game on.

Y'all have a great evening.

@happysquidmuffin - you sure did!!! I can’t believe I wasn’t a bit more active 😅 I’m gonna challenge you again to start getting back in the habit of hitting my goals. How was it with the trainer!?

@Fushiakat - Congrats!!! How exciting!!! I can’t wait until I’m logging in to post I’ve hit my goal weight!!!! What a great ending to this year!! When I hit goal a few years back I stayed in a 5lb. Range. When I was at +5 I knew I needed to switch things up. It worked for a good 6 months, life stepped in and got really hard then and I no longer cared about maintaining.

I’m happy to hear everyone stayed safe through the arctic blast, in Oklahoma we had two nights of -14°f which I think I heard someone say was a record low but we all managed just fine. My brother and kids lost power for a few hours but the ice and snow was minimal so all ended well for everyone I know.

I’m in a weird mood. Can’t sleep right now and woke up wide awake after only laying in bed for 4 hours. Yesterday I woke up thinking it was cleaning day and I was really eager to put away all decorations. It didn’t happen. My mom wanted to go shopping but all the little shops took an extended holiday! I did manage to throw away all trash left from the party, wash all dishes, and organize my clothes back so not a wasted day.

I don’t think I shared my family drama here but I did post it to my FB wall this summer. After my moms first knee replacement I had left to go on the road like usual and she didn’t talk to me much. I assumed she was upset that I didn’t stick around to help her out afterwards like I did when she had her hip surgery but come to find out she was informed that my sisters 6 kids had been being molested by her bf and it had been going on for quite some time. He is actually the father to her youngest girls. Her cousin was given emergency custody but eventually the 4 older went to live with their dad. This week was the first time we’ve seen them in 5 months. My mom was so torn by all of this and the drama and emotions that followed but I know seeing them and having me here really made her year!!! It was news to us that the two boys actually went to live with their other grandma but the girls got to come here Christmas Eve and are now staying the rest of their school break!

While I am so super happy and excited, love being around them and spending time with them…I realize I’m not in as good of a place as I thought. After just 24 hours I could feel my nerves were shot and I’m looking for ways to get a break from them (they bicker and argue a lot; 10 and 7 years old). It’s been awhile since I was around little kids for long periods of time.

Their is still so much drama swirling from all of this, my mom and sister aren’t speaking right now and although I was staying on good terms with her so I could still see my youngest nieces I was really blown away when my husband got drunk one night and told me that my sister and her cousin went over to hang out with him. 😳

I don’t plan on dwelling in drama.

I ran into my old hs best friend the other day and I really feel this urgent need for friends. I’m not sure if trying to reconnect with old friends is the way to go though, I know we have all changed so much. I also feel very strongly that I need to have a night of drinking 😅 I’ll need to go hang out with one of my brothers or have my daughter take me out but with everyone working all different shifts it gets difficult. I might plan a fun night for NYE we will see.

In the meantime I’m applying for other jobs and my aunt has asked me to come help her clean her house back up after the holidays. That will give a bit of spending money and keep my mind preoccupied as well as give me a break from the girls and let my mom get her fill of them 😂

Looks like I’ll be putting off getting 100% on track until the 1st! I’ll sit down and write out my goals this week and post when I’ve got them done.

I hope everyone ends this year in a good place and starts next year in a better place!!!

happysquidmuffin
Weigh in: Tuesday
PW: 137.5
CW: 139.5

😤 *long high-pitched screams*
Hey, it was Christmas. I ATE STUFF.

@shaunarlr83 the trainer was helpful; we didn’t get to the fitness test part but we’ll do that Thursday. It’s waaay too expensive though so I’m just gonna do these 2 more free sessions. Yes let’s do another challenge; that definitely kept me more active than I would have been otherwise.

I went to a group cardio class Saturday morning and last night, and I’ll try to do another this week. Icy roads due to freezing rain, but I did some light cardio in the living room today. I am really trying to go hard at this. I want to hit my weight goal really bad, but I’ll also settle for 135 before my cruise.

I hope most of right now is just water weight and not fat gain.

@shaunarlr83 thanks for the welcome. We all need a place to get stuff off our chest. No judgement from me - everyone has some kind of family drama. Looking forward to being encouraged and encouraging you and the whole team!! Let’s go Mission Slimpossible!!