Posts by shoe1200

I can really identify with your "pig out tonight and start tomorrow" dillemma. I'm a horrible procrastinator.

Some ideas I had for you were to get rid of/stop buying the stuff you can't stop eating. For salty snacks, get the  lighter microwave popcorn or pretzels. For sweet, try apples with fat free caramel dip. (They are a bit messy and hard to eat while doing other things, so you tend to eat it and then stop so you can get on the computer or fold laundry, etc.) If you have to buy food for others in the household, tell them that your snacks are "hands off!"

Another idea is to buy the Hungry Girl 200 under 200 cookbook. I just got it a few weeks ago and have already made several recipes that are really great. They have a fluffy cinammon fruit dip that is wonderful.

I'm a diet Coke fiend. I find that if I drink more water during the day, by the time I finally get a cold diet Coke with Lime, it's a real treat and a great substitute for whatever other kind of snack I might have eaten.

Here's the best tip I can offer for the late night snacking: GET BUSY OR GO TO BED. I am very susceptible to snacking at night so if I'm not busy enough to keep my mind off of what's in the fridge, I'll just go to bed.

And just log your food into this site. Even if you go a little over on one day, start that fresh slate the next day and log your food again.  Maybe each day that calories consumed will go down.

I wish you luck! This site is a great motivator.

I'm with Kick in that I have always been trying to lose weight. I got heavier with each pregnancy and when those damn coordinated sweatsuits came into style in the early 80's, I got spoiled to the comfort and my sizes just kept creeping up. I remember when my mom gave me a pair of her slacks and I wore them all the time just because they were larger and more comfortable.

I found CC last year while thumbing through a Prevention magazine. I was successful with it, but the Thanksgiving holiday came and I was totally destroyed. I think because this site works, I DID get overconfident that I could just pick up where I left off and the weight would just start coming off again (and that's true, but you have to get back on the program and count the calories and exercise but I never really got back into it and kept it up.)

This year, I finally committed to a trip with my daughter to a dude ranch next June and after being matched with a draft horse on my last ride, I knew I didn't want to feel like some poor horse was going to suffer next summer just because I want to go riding! So I jumped back into my account here with both feet and, yes, the weight is coming off like it should when I'm diligent. I feel lighter some mornings! I was telling a friend on this site that my karate kick pants are looser now.  And if 17 lbs feels this good, I keep wondering happily just what the next 17, and the next 17 and the next 17 will feel like. I might just float instead of walk!

I do an occasional journal entry to keep myself motivated, but the forums here are a daily visit for me. I love to hear success stories from others because it reinforces the fact that this does work, and eventually I'll have a similar tale.

One last thing: I don't know if I'm unique here, but I never FELT as big as I am/was. Whenever I see pictures of myself I am shocked. So every time I see one, it's another little "moment" where I decide to keep counting and not look back.

I'm a cereal fiend! I love it. I love all of them! (Even Bran Buds, remember them?) I eat cereal plain as a snack and have to avoid stuff like Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Suger Pops or Sugar Smacks or Coco Krispies because I lose all self control.

I generally love to have frosted mini wheats around. Good for fiber and easy to snack on, plus my spouse likes them, too. My favorite cereal is Life, though. And I quit eating Cp'n Crunch because it tears up the inside of my mouth. (But I love it.) And after I started watching calories and fat, I stopped eating the granola-type cereal (can't remember the name) but I really loved that, too.

No doubt, I just love me some cereal!

Books are the meat and potatos and movies are candy.

I never would have read Lonesome Dove if I hadn't seen the mini-series. But after I read the book, I went back and rewatched the series. It held up very well.

My favorite book of all time is the Lord of the Rings and I was so excited yet scared to learn that it was finally coming to the big screen. But it was fantastic.

A movie that was way better than the book was Jaws.

I'm almost guaranteed to see a movie based on a book I've read, even if I didn't really care for the book. (That's not often though, since I usually like whatever I read.) And if I see a movie that I like, I'm very likely to read the book, too.

I've posted this before, but the sites that sell that stuff are full of scams. If you absolutely must try a shortcut, magic bean solution like that, be very aware of what you are signing up for before you buy online or over the phone. I deal with people all the time who end up with strange charges to their credit or debit card after buying stuff like the acai berry or teeth whiteners, etc.

I had a very similar dream when I was pregnant for my first child. I dreamed I brought the baby home and then my mom came over to see it. At that moment, I realized that I had left the baby upstairs for weeks and hadn't checked on it. I had an overwhelming sense of terror and ran upstairs to find the baby alive, but emaciated. I think the dream was just my anxiety about whether I would take good care of a baby.

Since it's so similar to your dream, I wonder if you have a new responsibility or are about to take one on (or lordy, are you pregnant?)

Original Post by clairelaine:

I gave up on dating, then met someone 9 years older than me, short, chubby, bald, and the world's nicest, best, kindest human being. We got to know each other at book club meetings at the library and discovered we had mutual friends who acted as sort of character witnesses.  We've been together nearly 25 years and he's stuck with me through fat and thin, and I with him. 

 

That's the nicest thing I've read in a while. It just goes to show that you should do the things you love and if you're lucky, you'll meet someone else who is interested in the same thing.

On the original topic, I think that everyone does judge by appearances, but I have to say that appearances include the way you present yourself. There is a body type that I might be attracted to, but it's so superficial and I classify it as just looking at something lovely, not something I must possess. I think that  a man who comes across as confident and happy can get to you no matter what he looks like. Oh, and nice. look at how they treat others.

I work in a credit union and that green tea and acai products are notorious for tacking on extra charges to your credit or debit card. I don't know if they work, but if you order them, be SUPER vigilant about the fine print and what charges you'll see. Most of the time, the extra charges come from other health related services and they are very hard to cancel. And the charges are usually smaller so they're under the Mastercard and Visa chargeback threshhold and your financial institution just ends up eating them if you contest. Almost every time I am asked to investigate unauthorized charges for a member, it turns out to be related to acai or teeth whiteners.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm running Vista right now. I keep going back to Picasa because everytime I google the features I want, I get links to Picasa. But when I check out the site, it doesn't really spell out the tools it has. I am not so interested in editing photos, but streamlining my import and organization process.

I did try the MS photo editor and will go back and check for features. I was impressed with a suggestion for Adobe Lightbox, but even though I'm not averse to paying for software, $300 was a littly pricey. They have a free trial version, but I'm trying to whittle the field down a little before I start installing and testing.

The ideal solution would be software that would automatically start when I plug my camera in, then according to settings that I program in advance, move the photos to an appropriate folder on my computer, with a name formatted according to a template, then resized copies at the same time. Then, that folder would open so I could do some tagging and deletions and narrative. The last tool would allow me to create a presentation with text and titles and music if I need to, but that I can do with any number of programs I already have and isn't critical to the organizing and archiving that I really want/need to do.

Again, thanks for the suggestions. I think I might be inclined to at least make Picasa one of the programs I download and try.

You are not gay or bi...These are choices that people make either because they are confused or in many cases abused.These choices are more prevelent these days because of Hollywood and others promoting this activity as normal,which it is not.If you have girl parts you are a girl and naturally that means you were created to someday be with a man, built the way he is to be with a girl.

When I read that I thought back to a book I read when my daughter was in college. It was called "As God Made Him..." Can't recall the author but it was based on a true story of two brothers, one of which was badly damaged during a circumcision. Because they didn't have the methods available today to repair him, the parents and doctor thought it would be better to raise him as a girl. They dressed him appropriately and discouraged boy-like behavior. Eventually, I think in his teens, this poor kid learned the truth and felt some kind of relief that he wasn't crazy after all, that he was truly intended to be a boy and all his feelings were natural. He did go back to being a boy, and eventually opted for surgery to reconstruct his penis. He even got married. But if I recall, the whole experience of being forced into a gender he wasn't left a lot of emotional damage. It was a good book and explored the "nurture vs. nature."

What I took away from that was that you can't change someone from the way they were born just by dressing them a certain way or by treating them as something they are not. If someone is gay, there's no way to fix that. You can't change them.

But here's what I took away from Mac's post: We are all born heterosexual, but that we all have the capacity for sexual desire for the same sex. Just like any other sin, right? We all have the capacity to lie, or murder. But according to Mac, gay people are simply straight people who have been led astray. They had a choice. So according to him, even Mac has a desire for the same sex, but he doesn't indulge that because he believes it to be a sin.

BUT Mac is probably thinking, "No way. I've never wanted to make it with a dude. Dudes just don't turn me on." He probably is convinced that no one could ever influence him to like guys in that way.

So what makes him think that all those other "heterosexuals gone bad" could be "turned"? How is it that we can change them, or even change them back? Is it too much simplification to liken it to Twinkies? I mean, I don't think I can be taught or influenced NOT to like them.

I hope Mac never has to address this issue with a close friend or family member.

We saw it last night. I've been in kind of a pleasant fog ever since. I was thrilled with the ...ahhh...<spoiler alert>

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I'm going to white this next section out. Highlight if you've seen the movie or don't mind being spoiled....yikes, I can't Well, don't read any more if you don't want to know.

...way that they got around canon, that this was an alternate timeline. Of course, it all makes sense now. Nero had been back in time messing things up for 25 years! No wonder they were familiar with the Romulans already. Ummm, can we save the variations in character ages? I don't know, but the movie and casting was so good that I really didn't care.

Bones was great! Complaining about space travel from the get-go and giving Kirk innoculations for all that ailed him. I was absolutely charmed by Chekov, Sulu and Scotty. (Especially Scotty!)

And Quinto...I don't know what else to say. He was stunning. As was the "new" relationship between him and Uhura. It was totally weird to see them snogging on the transporter platform (and Spock in his right mind at the time.)

"i'll eat that tomorrow."

I like that. A friend sent me some Bliss Dark Chocolate bites for my birthday. I just cringed when I saw them because I have been doing so well and when I opened the box, I was very hungry at the time. I thought about taking them to a party tonight and sharing so that I don't eat them all. But I ate one, and then I logged in here and found out that it was just 33 calories (7 grams of fat, though) and I realized that I could eat them if I just limit myself to one each day. Not bad, eh? But I have a tough time eating only one, so I'll still take them to the party tonight.

So that is my "eat it tomorrow" suggestion. Get the junk food down to a tiny portion that you don't feel too guilty about and then just have a bit each day.

I second the advice to join a class. I do kickboxing and it's great! You do get a lot of confidence if you put forth the effort to learn.

He sounds like a very shallow guy.

And if he ever, ever comes crawling back, just tell him that you can't help but look for nicer guys whenever you're with him. Tell him that he's just not nice in comparison. ;-)

Original Post by boston93:

If you like horror novels, you might try Salem's Lot by Stephen King. It's a fantastic book.

I'll second Salem's Lot. I think it was King's best, although I've been thinking about re-reading The Stand, too. I don't normally read westerns, but try "Lonesome Dove." It was great! And if you haven't seen it, watch the mini-series after you read the book.

My favorite book of all time is The Lord of the Rings, although it's hard to recommend because it is tough to start.

Another book I loved after a friend recommended it was "Follow the River." It was based on a true story of a woman who was taken by Indians and her trip back along the Ohio (I think) river.

That same friend recommended "Gone With the Wind" which I read and surprised myself by loving it.

I spend too much time on the computer. I used to read, read, read. Computers are evil. I need to set aside one night a week to leave the computer off and read instead.

Good for you! 10 lbs is two bags of sugar or a big bag of potatos that you're not toting around with you any more!

I had almost forgotten what it was like to have some crazy number catagorize me as obese! What are the ranges anyway? Is there a place on CC that tells what BMI is what?