IvoryParchment Member

Everybody poops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQTW7Pd1vqc

You usually lose a lot the first few days due to eating less salt -- you don't retain as much water. The real weight loss is slower, but it's in there, too. If you have the smart phone app, with the neat little progress graph, you'll see the L shape from the rapid initial drop and the slower continued drop. Going down is…

Do you have the smart phone app? Do you have a food scale? Give yourself the tools to succeed. This is basic math, but who wants to do story problems just to be able to eat? You want MFP to do it for you. Log the food as you eat it, so you can choose portion sizes that fit in your calorie allowance. Weigh and measure…

Your diary is private, so I can't comment on specifics. But most food labeling simply doesn't include the potassium. You would need to look it up on a site like the USDA nutrient database to see what you're really getting. Also, if your sodium is very low, you don't need as much potassium. You lose potassium from your…

You're 22, you'll be okay. Me, not so much.

I grew the herb. Chewing a leaf tasted like saccharin to me, so I never bothered learning to use it in cooking.

You wouldn't have eaten that way if you hadn't had a stressful schedule to begin with. But I had to eat fast food yesterday when I was downtown. It was just a hot dog, but it lay on my stomach like a ton of bricks. I have definitely been enjoying eating lighter and fresher.

saute butter with flour. Stir in milk to make a white sauce. Salt and pepper to taste. Add frozen mixed vegetables and canned salmon. Put in a casserole. Cover the top with the pastry sheets. Bake until the pastry is done. Voila! Pot pie. Hint: It may be helpful to slice the pastry into serving size squares before putting…

Make sure you're getting the basic nutrients like protein, calcium, vitamin D, potassium. It's probably more important to develop muscle strength and flexibility, to allow you to protect yourself when you fall but also to prevent accidental falls in the first place. And use proper protective gear for sports/driving.

The "normals" are listed as the same for everyone when you go to the doctor, but African Americans have a much wider range of BMIs for a particular body size. The normal BMIs assume everyone has the same percentage of fat, muscle and bone in their bodies. For a small "continent" like Europe, that might hold, but for larger…

You have to eat dark green vegetables. No over the counter vitamins will supply 100% of your vitamin K requirements.

If you're depressed, talk to your doctor. It's medical. If something happened at the gym that makes you uncomfortable attending there, is there a trusted friend who could intervene and try to get you out of the contract so you can join somewhere else?

If William "The Refrigerator" Perry could run, so can you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLAS1Ih0EZk

Don't compare yourself to pictures of models. They're stomachs are flat because they have the photos taken before they've eaten. Then they eat and the stomach rounds out like everyone else.

I don't have time to exercise regularly. I get on our home treadmill when I can, just so I can eat more, but mostly the weight loss is entirely from calorie restriction.

I have pretty severe reflux. If I drink something cold and lie down, I can feel it backing up into my chest. It happened before I gained weight. But the heartburn started pretty abruptly. I can pinpoint the exact month it happened. I had been able to take aspirin up until then. I not only took it without food, I could take…

Also I noticed I get headaches if my clothes are too tight around my neck, waist or chest. I won't wear belts around my waist if they don't have elasticity to them, because they are too tight when I sit.

Sometimes my migraine trigger was another type of headache, like sinus or tension, so it was worth learning to deal with those. Look for things that keep your neck tense for hours (cradling the phone on your shoulder while typing, sleeping on pillows that aren't the right height for you, sitting in a chair that is an…

A month is too soon to see a trend. You gain and lose so much water weight from day to day that it will mask the small changes in fat weight that occur. Over several months, you see the definite trend. That being said, make sure you are measuring things precisely and not just assuming how large your portions are. I see a…

The best part of menopause was leaving those behind! When I was getting them, I abstained completely from caffeine. I had hot chocolate every morning, and if I was traveling and the hotel didn't have it, I would get a candy bar from the first gas station. (Withdrawal from either gave me migraines that lasted for days on…

Wow, your mood looks like it lost as much weight as your stomach.

I agree with what was said about making sure you're meeting your nutritional needs. Not only does filling up on sugar mean you're likely nutritionally deficient, being low on iron can give you cravings. Ice cold Pepsi is popular, and don't try to talk them into diet Pepsi or even regular Coke. It's gotta be Pepsi.

Rather than going to bed earlier, you may be more successful staying up later until you work your bedtime around 24 hours. Schedule your eating at times that make sense for the schedule you're on. Or move to New Zealand.

Food is just food. Weights and logs are just data. The purpose of a program like this is to control the eating by separating it from the emotional overlay. I would agree that counseling would be good to try to understand what emotions you are attaching to food. I was thinking that some creative outlets would be useful,…

Patience is important, too. That saggy skin will shrink with time and stop looking like saggy fat. (It will weigh less, too.)

Get a smart phone to use the MFP mobile app. If people at work bring treats, log the food before you eat it, so you choose a portion size you can' accommodate in your daily totals. People aren't going to stop having birthdays on our account. It's a shame hospitals don't have fitness rooms for their employees.

Supposedly you burn a lot more calories if you're deprived of sleep, but I seem to gain weight instead. I think part of it is retaining water in my legs if they aren't up in bed a full 8 hours a day to mobilize the fluid.

I found lots and lots of water helped prevent the drop off in milk production.

Sugar makes me crave more. If I don't eat sweets, I'm much more satisfied. I still like sweets, but I don't expect them every day. One thing that helped me withdraw was making more things from scratch -- for instance, I had a yogurt maker, and I gradually decreased the amount of sugar in my yogurt, as I began to prefer a…

You mean 7p to 7a? Whichever, you need to be able to bring your own food, healthy stuff that no one will want to steal out of the fridge, and filling enough you won't be tempted when people are ordering out. Lots of raw veggies and greek yogurt dips, cottage cheese, fresh fruit, yogurt cups. Buy produce in the morning on…