Ptarmigan74

If you are thirsty on so much water per day, have you been screened recently for diabetes? Drinking a lot / peeing a lot is a symptom. Problems with blood sugar/insulin could be causing problems with your weight loss, but of course diabetes is dangerous in general anyway.

Congratulations, but isn't this more of a Scale Victory than a Non-Scale Victory?

You can easily "gain" or "lose" several pounds from day to day based on what time of day you weigh, your level of hydration, how much water your body might be retaining from (for instance) salt consumption. It's meaningless. You have to look at the trend over time.

Soup is mostly water, so even though it's a fairly decadent soup, it doesn't have all that many calories. Most soups don't unless they are pure cream. That soup at Olive Garden isn't creamy like a clam chowder, it's just slightly creamy.

I sprained my knee in January, and even last week, the elliptical caused my knee to extend too far. Maybe I just did it wrong or not carefully enough, but I can't recommend it. Perhaps cycling (stationary or otherwise)?

I didn't say anything about cancer.

Diet drinks don't have any calories, so no matter how many you drink, they won't directly cause weight gain. There are some studies in rodents that suggest that regularly drinking diet drinks can make you less satiated by sweets (maybe because your body "learns" that they have no calories) and so, if that's true in humans…

Appreciate it! I think I prefer WW points, but now that I've discovered the social networking aspect of this, I can't let it go. For me, points kind of makes it into a fun fantasy game rather than being as dry and plain as calorie-counting is, but when I do both, they don't layer well mentally even though they're actually…

Weird. I don't usually bother to thaw mine at all, since I am generally tossing it into something else rather than, say, grilling it. But I can't imagine why you'd need to remove the plastic first.

For me it helps to focus on the positive. Instead of thinking, oh, I want that but I shouldn't, but I want it, but I shouldn't, etc., I remind myself that if I don't overeat, I'm going to feel awesome about it once the craving passes. I'll feel like a superhero. That seems to work for me.