Anamdalta

Wow! What an inspiring story - thank you for sharing it! So lovely that you're in a roll where you can share your journey with others on their way. :)

I admire your attitude! I'd be happy to be one of your MFP friends :)

I'm going to start tomorrow. So, today it's okay if I over-indulge. Again. That became an ex-excuse last August. I'm grateful for that :)

Oh. My. God. Kat, you are my hero (and, fabulous shoes, btw).

I did discover that a while back. I track my sodium, too. The default sodium levels on MFP are (IMHO) way to high - I adjusted down to 1500mg/day and track it daily.

This, exactly. Couldn't have said it better :)

Do you have friends you could swap childcare with? Trade an hour on alternate days, so that you can get your time in; if she's in daycare while you work, make sure you get some activity in before/after your work day. See if you can find a "stroller fit" group - bring her along with you while you walk/jog with other parents…

My DD isn't chubby, but we'd both love to get outside into some of the awesome green spaces in/around the Hammer :) I probably wouldn't know a Sumac if it reached out and slapped me. Can we come? :)

I don't drink pop at all any more, and rarely eat processed food, fast food, chips, or chocolate. I drink my coffee (one cup/day) black (used to be 4 or 5 cups with cream and sugar)... I'm working on eliminating wheat. I don't eat much of it, but what I do eat still causes my arthritis to flare up a bit...

^^ This, definitely. And, really, why stop @ 750? Surely you'd lose weight faster if you just cut out all that pesky eating. (Rolls eyes.) Your doctor is a Grade A moron, sorry to say. Glad you're smarter than to take that terrible "advice." Some people wouldn't be. Hopefully she hasn't made anyone sick because of her…

A couple of weeks after I turned 40, I got really sick. I realized then that I had to do something different. It still took me another 2 months to get off my butt and into the gym. I've always eaten relatively healthy, but with an added layer of junk food (I'm the QUEEN of snacking after 8pm). So, I stopped eating junk,…

Yep. Quite a few Hammer-dwellers on here :)

I smoked on and off for about 20 years. Sometimes quite heavily, sometimes not. I got to the point that you are at - I was determined that I wanted to quit. And, so I just stopped. At that time, I was probably only smoking 3-4 a day, but I was really psychologically attached to them :) I am fortunate that none of my…

This ^^ I totally get what the OP is saying, too, though, because I have friends with whom I feel the same way. When we start feeling good, and looking better, it's easy to get evangelical about it, and forget that you have to hit your own wall and make the choice to make a lifestyle change in your own time. Doing it…

If they're foods you eat regularly, use the recipes section to add them as you prepare them and/or the "my foods" section - then you can simply select them like anything else in the database. easy peasy.

One of my MFP friends uses them. I'll copy the thread to her - maybe she'll have some suggestions....

Seconded, because, as LadyMisery says - why would you stay with someone who is emotionally abusive. Because that's exactly what that is. You can't make your partner stop being an emotionally abusive a**hole. But, you can certainly make the choice to not tolerate it, and leave an unhealthy relationship. Congratulations on…

Do you eat back any of your exercise calories? If not, maybe you need to, periodically, to give yourself some wiggle room for the occasional donut. For me, it would be ice cream -- normally, i leave it alone, but every so often, it's an ice cream kind of a day. If it doesn't fit in my count for that day, I work out a bit…

:) We're pretty much oil/salt folks, but you could try things like dill, or garlic powder (or, really any powdered spice). They're also good with brown sugar and cinnamon, or honey and a bit of salt (salty and sweet - yummy). :)

I did the same. I love coffee, and I'm a bit of a coffee snob. Good coffee is good black. And, it was a really quick way to cut several hundred cals (cream + sugar) out of my daily intake.

No fast food; no eating after 730pm; stop eating when I'm not hungry, rather than when the plate is empty; stay away from chips (which is the most difficult one for me); eat my veggies. Really, just clean food in moderate portions.

Cool. I hate it raw. Every Vietnamese restaurant in town buries every entree in it. >:P

Soda, for sure. I used to drink it daily. I think I've had one (and it was 1/2 a can of coke zero) in the last 3 or 4 months. Cream and sugar in coffee. Makes a HUGE difference to my calorie count. Chips. I eat popcorn, or raw veggies instead. This is the one that hurts the most, by far.

Sodium, caffeine (really, water retention in both cases) - if you're eating fast food, even if you're under your cals, that's likely the culprit. The default sodium numbers on MFP are WAY too high (imho), so you might want to look at that. Also hormonal fluctuations around menstruation can mess with your water retention.…

Oats are SO much better than breadcrumbs in stuff like this - thanks for posting this recipe - stealing it :)

This. It's not like there aren't thousands of Zumba instructors in the world - shouldn't be difficult for them to find a great one who actually wants to *teach* the class.

This. You are fantastic, truly!!

The idea that lifestyle change is more important than dieting is kind of comforting - dieting is awful - eating well and being active feels great, so keeping it up should be something we're pretty motivated to do. I'm with you on the wine, though :) Cheers.

All excellent advice. What I meant by high calorie crap was high calorie garbage food - not the nutrient dense foods that you're talking about... I've been avoiding a lot of those, because they put me over my goal... I'm kind of looking forward to being able to eat things like cashew butter :) Smoothies are a great idea...…

Thanks, Picante :) Structure and accountability... sounds like a plan. I can't imagine how I'll eat the extra calories every day, because I've eliminated all the crap that was providing those high calorie numbers... it's a good thing I like nuts, I guess :) I was wondering about the whole "hungrier on more cals" problem -…