shanchamber

Do something nice for yourself. A bubble bath with a glass of champagne, a good book, something along those lines. And write an email to a friend to say how much you miss her and that you'd love to hear back.

Also, this thread reminds me of another reason not to run. People who run become like Jehovah's Witnesses: blathering on and on about how their religion is the One True Religion and if you have reservations, it's because you're ungodly. I would not want to become one of these people.

Because every runner/jogger I know has serious knee problems by the time they're 50, no matter how many special shoes they buy or knee braces they wear. The point of exercise is to stay mobile for as long as you can, not to get less mobile.

God, I hear you. As for the BSers on this thread, just wait until they hit their own long-term plateaus. They'll be singing a different tune. Some people's bodies are remarkably adept at adjusting to exercise and reduced food intake. (See, "set points.") For all of the people waving "science" in your face, they should keep…

Jesus Christ. You know that little red line that shows up under your words when you misspell them? Honestly, you shouldn't be spending so much time thinking about somebody's else's failures.

Yes, exactly.

Your co-worker is just sitting there trying to eat her lunch and do her work. You're popping up on an Internet messageboard and asking for advice. And it seems like you can barely put a sentence together without multiple grammatical and spelling errors, so there's that, too. I wonder if your co-worker is sitting in the…

This, too. I hate it when people post something like this and say, "I don't want to be mean, but..." No, you do. You think that you're morally superior to this woman because you've decided to eat differently than she does. Is she hurting anyone but herself? No. Therefore, the question of morality is not involved.

Everyone knows about calories at this point, so it's not really your business to be an educator. When you get fat, your body sends your brain signals to eat more calories. In other words, you're not necessarily fat because you eat poorly; you eat poorly because you're fat. Moral judgment from other people isn't helpful, no…

I learned long ago to set limits with my mother up front. When she starts to talk about my weight loss, I say, "I find that comments from people about my weight loss do not help me with the significant mental challenges surrounding long-term lifestyle changes. I'm not just trying to lose weight; I'm trying to change my…

http://theworldaccordingtoeggface.blogspot.com/2007/06/my-favorite-protein-shake-recipes.html I've tried a lot of these low carb, low sugar, high protein shakes created by a woman who went through bariatric surgery, and they're all pretty good. Most of them can also be converted to low carb, high protein ice cream recipes,…

As I'm sure your doctor told you, surgery is, empirically speaking, the best and maybe the only way to lose serious weight. Morbidly obese people who lose through more conventional methods generally gain it all back, and then a little extra. Which isn't to say that some surgery patients don't gain it all back--but it's…

You obviously didn't get very far in the process, did you? Whether or not you're told to lose weight before the surgery depends on your starting weight. Some people are too heavy to operate on. Usually the surgeon asks you to lose about 10 lbs. right before the surgery to shrink the size of your liver, so that it is easier…

Um, sorry, but this is just so insulting to anyone who's had this surgery that I can't let it slide. When you have weight loss surgery, your doctor spends maybe five hours operating on you. You spend the rest of your life trying to balance the demands of getting enough protein, nutrients, and physical activity, while…

Um...you obviously don't know a thing about gastric bypass surgery. It is far from a "quick fix" solution. Indeed, it is a lifelong commitment to eating healthy food, and not very much of it, to avoid vomiting and other unpleasant side effects. The prejudice against weight loss surgery on this thread is appalling, and so…

Someone told me once that it's because chocolate has a lot of caffeine and is therefore a natural painkiller. I'm not sure. But I do know from bitter experience that anything taken to an extreme is ultimately bad for your health. And that includes cutting out food that you like, or exercising. Health is about more than…

I say that you can afford to baby yourself for one day out of the month. Take a hot bath, eat some chocolate, have a glass of red wine, and rest up. Be French.

*thumbs up*

No, not this at all. Walk around and greet the guests at your reception, or have a (free) receiving line. (I feel a need to specify free because it seems like a lot of you here would probably post a sign with an admission charge at the front end if you felt you could get away with it.) Also, it's ridiculous to think that…

If you didn't want both sides, why in the world did you phrase this in the form of a question? Also, I find it interesting that you're not even planning a wedding and you're already deciding how to hit up your guests for cash. Impressive.

Personally, I'm insulted that you're invoking our shared Polish ancestry to justify hitting up guests for more money in the crass display of base materialism. Also, just because something's a "cultural tradition" doesn't mean it isn't horribly tacky, or, in worse cases, actively harmful. That's why cultural traditions…

"Sorry, anytime money exchanges hands from guest to either host or guest of honor in order for the guest to acquire hospitality that should have been given graciously and freely, there is no good way to redeem it or sanitize it. There have been many creative and gracious alternatives to Money and Dollar Dances offered on…

I also find this a little annoying. There's some evidence to suggest that when you go from a higher weight to a lower one, your body does not burn as many calories as most calculators think that it does. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html?pagewanted=all.) I'd suggest not entering…

I think the person who started this thread is one of those people who posts pictures of his kid's ****ty diapers on facebook and solicits content on consistency and color. Time to add a new vocabulary word: OVERSHARE.

Here's some encouragement, if it will do any good. I was once very, very obese. Nobody then ever referred to me as fat. I think because I was invisible to them--this big blob that they didn't even want to contemplate. Now that I've lost 145 lbs. and am merely on the sort of chubby, size 14-side of normal, I get called fat…

I agree with you completely that people (here, and elsewhere) treat nutrition like more of a science than it actually is. Health is also such a subjective thing: it's possible for people at higher weights to be and feel happier than people who are closer to the "correct" weight for their height. My failure story is this. I…

It seems like a good way to fail is to measure your success solely in numbers. I find the arguments recently made by Gretchen Reynolds in The First 20 Minutes (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/the-surprising-shortcut-to-better-health/) really convincing. Most of the benefits of exercise (and eating right, too) come…

Yeah, I don't think that's a plateau. I'm a month out from RNY surgery, and I've only lost about 35 lbs., compared to your...what, nearly 150? I started at a lower BMI, but still. In my third week after surgery, I didn't lose anything, according to the scale. But the next week, sure enough, 5 lbs. came off. It happens in…

Good luck! I started at 343, got down 70 lbs. by myself, and last month, I had weight loss surgery. My best advice is not to weigh yourself frequently. I'm struggling with this myself. It's hard to get on the scale after a day of starving and see no movement because of something arbitrary like water or muscle gain and not…