Wagon Jumpers - April 19 - 25th, 2009 (Closed, Waiting List Available)

Welcome 

(If you are interested in being on the waiting list, please read below and e-mail me. We currently have a waiting list of 4 people.)

Welcome to the Wagon Jumpers weekly thread. We are a group of CC members who have identified that one of our main challenges with achieving our weight loss, maintenance or general health goals is consistency.

This thread is designed to encourage long term commitment to our goals by publicly declaring them and asking the other members of this thread to hold us accountable. The primary focus of wagon jumpers is not how much weight you have lost, or need to loose, but what you need to do on a daily basis to meet your long term goals. 

There are two rules for Wagon Jumpers:

1. All members must post once per week between Sunday and Friday.

2. All members must check the thread for members who have not posted by Saturday (a short list is posted on Thursday) or are on the MIA list on Sunday and send them a polite and positive message to stay involved in the group and on track with their goals. 

If you would like to be a member of this thread please see the guidelines below and send me a PM if you are still interested (there may be a waiting list).

Medium Size Group = Some Time Commitment

The original idea of Wagon Jumpers was to create a close community where participants could get to know each other and hopefully form virtual-life and perhaps even physical-life bonds to create a support network as they attempted long term weight loss.

We quickly discovered that this was impossible with an 'always open' group as there were too many people coming and going. For this reason the group is capped at 30 participants. 

A medium sized group means that we have an active thread that produces between 40 - 60 posts per week. Members do not need to read / respond to every post every week. I do notice that those who respond regularly do tend to keep their goals top of mind, and have a better chance to achieve them. I estimate the average time spent by an active member on Wagon Jumpers to be between 1-2 hours per week. 

If you are looking for an always open group  on CC there are several that operate by different weight criteria, similar motivational patterns etc... There are also many small groups that cap their numbers between 4-10 people to keep the group more intimate, and easier for members to keep up with. 

Interested in Joining?

General Guidelines for Joining

1. Are you a wagon jumper?

Do you know how to loose weight, you often have success but then you find yourself loosing interest in your plan, or sabotaging your plan. It's not the "how" to loose weight that is the problem, it's the "how" to stay motivated.

2. Do you have a long way to go?

This group is designed so that members can get to know each other and support each other. Ideally you are planning to be a CC member and part of this forum for at least 6 months or more to achieve your goals and hopefully stay in motivation for a further 6 months or more.

Yes. This is, a long term plan.

3. Do you have the time?

This is a medium sized group, the thread does move fairly quickly each week. If you do not have regular internet access this is likely not the group for you. 

Still interested?

Send Supersized a PM. (Please do not reply on the thread)

An overview will be sent to you, you will have a chance to ask questions and an invitation will be sent to you once a spot is open. 

Google Group

We have recently added a google group as an option for members, past members, and members on the waiting list. If you would like access to the google group (and are in one of the above categories) send a message to beaglesmuggler (at) roger.com with your username and e-mail address and I will add you to the google group.

Wagon Jumpers Participants

Week 50 Riders:

Supersized  (myself)

Week 46 Riders:

Msmeg1984

Defrog3

Week 42 Riders:

Wenchie58 - away April 25th, 2009

Week 40 Riders: - Congratulations on 10 Months

Raven21  - Vacation April 17-28th, 2009

Week 39 Riders:

Tiegurl

Week 35 Riders:

Kyashiis

Unlimitedana

Week 30 Riders:

Nannygabber

Week 26 Riders:

Lam7

Week 23 Riders:

Maureenz

Week 22 Riders:

Cawilder

Week 21 Riders:

Figurethefat

Week 20 Riders: - Congratulations on 5 Months!

Pelkeyjm

Carryonandon

Week 19 Riders:

Constanza

Week 18 Riders:

Germaica - Getting Married! April 12 - 25th, 2009

Week 16 Riders: - Congratulations on 4 Months!

Jessicaanne2001

Week 4 Riders:

Thesilverstar121

Missing In Action:

 The_Vitamin_Dominatrix

Missing In Action - 1 Week:

Missing In Action - 2 Weeks:

Current Membership: 20

Current Waiting List: 4

Outstanding Wait List Invites: 0

12 Week CONSISTENCY GOALS

(as set w/o April 5th, 2009)

By June 27th, I will be...

Msmeg1984 - Maintenance: I will continue to eat less than 1800 cals/day on average New: Exercise at least 3x a week at least 9 of the 12 weeks.

Defrog3 - To continue eating healthfully for me and my little fetus, which means I need to stick to 2,000 balanced calories/day. My NEW goal is to start exercising regularly, meaning moving my butt in some fashion for 30 minutes, 3 days a week.

Cawilder - NEW: Attain a 30 / 30 / 40 food combo 80% of the time. MAINTENANCE: Running @ least 5 hours / week and 2X weight lifting. 

Unlimitedana - Maintenance goal: Eat 1550-1650 cals a day. New Goal Achieve the 40-40-20 at least two days per week.

Raven21 - 1. Exercise at least 3 x a week (maintenance) 2. Average daily calorie intake of 1450-1650 (new)

Figurethefat - For maintenance:  I will continue to complete a minimum of 1,500 exercise minutes per month.  New goal:  I will drink at least 1.5 litres of water per day.

Supersized - MAINTENANCE: Continue to eat at or below 2,000 cal/day average for at least 6 of 12 weeks, and never over 2,500 cal/day average. NEW: start going to the gym (again), and achieve at least 4 weeks where I attend the gym 3x/week. 

Lam7 - NEW GOAL:  Participate in our Navan Walking Club 10 Week Program (Tuesdays) starting April 21-June 26; as well as attend 6 "Spring into Spring" Interval Classes which will run on Thursday evenings starting April 9th, 2009. 

Constanza - (new) Eat an average of 1700 calories/day. (maintenance) Exercise at least twice weekly (calculated by average)

Thesilverstar121 - Excercising at least 3x a week.

Kyashiis - Maintenance goal:Exercise for a minimum of 20 minutes a day 5 days a week. New goal: I will zig-zag on my food intake consistently throughout the week and end up with an average daily calorie count of 1,200 cals. 

Nannygabber - Maintenance goal of doing NROLFW 3x per week with an allowance of two weeks slack for this 12-week session.

Pelkeyjm - Maintenance: Exercise a minimum of 30 minutes at least 3x per week. New Goal: Log ALL food on calorie count.

The_Vitamin_Dominatrix - Maintenance goal - I will continue to eat 1400-1500 calories daily with a ratio of 15% fat, 25% protein, 60% carbohydrates. New goal - Gym or no gym, I will workout 3 to 4 times a week.

Previous Threads:

Wagon Jumpers - April 12 - 18th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - April 5 - April 11th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - March 29 - April 4th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - March 22 - 28th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - March 15 - 21st, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - March 8 - 14th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - March 1 - 7th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - February 22 - 28th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - February 15 - 21st, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - February 8 - 14th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - February 1 - 7th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - January 25 - 31st, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - January 18 - 24th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - January 11 - 17th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - January 4 - 10th, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - December 28 - January 3rd, 2009

Wagon Jumpers - December 21 - 27th, 2008

Wagon Jumpers - December 14 - 20th, 2008

Wagon Jumpers - December 7 - 13th, 2008

Wagon Jumpers - November 30 - December 6th, 2008

As always all members are encouraged to tag this thread so that it is easy to find.

This Week's Topic: You Don't Make Friends With Salad!

Share your best spring / summer "love it!" Salad recipe. Make sure you use the recipe tool, and post a link in your reply for this thread so that others can easily tag your recipe. 

Recipe Tool:

1. Go to "Food" menu. 
2. Go to "New Recipe"
3. Fill in servings & ingredients
4. Check to make sure all were captured. Tip: if the recipe tool does not recognize some of the ingredients find them in the database and look in the browser bar for the ID number, then put he ID number in [square] brackets. 
5. Save Recipe
6. Tag it so you can find it.
7. Recipe will now appear in Food Menu under "My Recipes"

Link

1. Go to your recipe, and highlight the address in the browser bar, copy it using Control+C or right click on mouse (however you usually copy material).
2. Come to this thread, reply as usual, enter in the text you would like to link to, this may be the recipe name, or "click here".
3. Highlight the text
4. Click on the chain link icon that appears at the top of this box.
5. Paste the copied address into the "Link URL" field.
6. Hit "Insert"
7. Finish replying as normal. 

Woot, I browsed my recipes and came up with this salad one.  I like it because it's got lots of protein, something that is sometimes hard to come by with salad.  Thanks for getting me motivated to browse through my existing recipes Sara.  Sometimes I forget some of my "creations."  This one is Pink Salad.  

I don't have any recipes for salad really. I like to buy mixes from the store - Grand Parisian is one of my favorites, i love broccoli slaw mixes too!

But my favorite "salad" is fruit salad. You can make it with whatever you have. I like to make it when i have lots of fruit on the brink of getting too ripe.  I'm not going to put this one on my recipes if that ok, since the # of servings and amounts/types of fruit vary depending on what you like.

Instead, here are my favorite fruits to add to fruit salad:

• Fresh Pineapple (none of that canned stuff)
• Variety of apples (granny smith and honeycrisp are good and tart!)
• Strawberries
• Kiwi
• Banana
• Peaches

Just cut 'em all up, throw in a bowl and enjoy!

I'm so early this time!

As it turns out, I don't have a single salad recipe written down, despite the fact that I make and eat them all the time (or maybe because of it?)  I'm going to formally recipe-ize one of my favorites in CC and post it, it's a pretty californian mix of veggies and my fave salad dressing ever.  On the check-in front, I've just mapped some walk/run routes from my new house to the beach trails nearby, and am trying to get excited about getting out of the house regularly to exercise.  Today it was blazing hot here in SoCal, and the hubby and I did the last of the moving/cleaning from our old place.  I figure I'd better get the exercise habit started now, so it's all part of the new place/space package!  Wish me luck.  I'm also working up the guts to post my little (very little, Julie!) spreadsheet on our googledocs page   Hope everyone's week gets off to a good start!

This week's topic:

I am most certain I will make some friends with this one!  Green Goddess Garden Salad

Lee

Today is so not a salad day here in Toronto, cold, windy, rainy a bit of ice pellets.... BRING SPRING BACK!!!

I am however a salad freak. One of my best salad discoveries was making my own dressing. It always sounded much too time consuming especially for something that was so readily available at the grocery in every conceivable variety, that I simply could not see the benefits. Well one year later and a great little recipe book, we have absolutely no commercial dressings in the house. The taste difference and freshness is simply so big. 

This is my most basic (and always get tonnes of compliments) dressing:

Lemon Garlic Dressing

Great on tender green leafy salads. 

Green Goddess Dressing

Always a hit with pot-luck crowds

Pasta Primavera Salad

Really Tasty and can easily be made vegan

Szechuan Salad

If you want something a little more spicy and light. 

Thai Noodle Salad

Because, it's awesome!

Sara

Mmmmm salads! One of my favorites is not really a salad, but a salsa: black bean salsa

I marked that it serves 20, and it seems like it does, but I haven't made it in a long time. Also, I've started off the week well with logging and eating the right amount - yay!

Quiet day on wagon jumpers...

Hi,

I have gained about 8 lbs. It is depressing. I have to back away from comfort foods and get to more healthy foods. The stress is starting to fade somewhat as my mother died last Thursday. I wished I had been there but I did what she wanted me to do and I got on the airplane to go back and take care of my family.

My salad is more a dressing that I put on salads -- it is so easy that I won't put it in the system:

about 2T of good quality olive oil
4T or more of lemon juice (I have tried fresh and reconstituted and honestly could not taste a difference)
fresh ground pepper to taste
1T or more of capers

I started to make this for just Greek Salads and then now i use it for all salads - it keeps in the fridge for a while but can get goopy because of the oil. I just take it out and nuke it for 10s to loosen it up.

I have started to run more and more as my hip is getting better. I have run about 2 1/2 hours so far this week but only ran about 1 1/2 hours last week.

My husband, as usual, is freaking out about my weight and that just adds to the overall anxiety. It sucks but I will get through it. I really want to be a size 8 and now I am a 14.

Oh, well, life in the fast lane...

Hi Everyone!!!

I chose a delicious recipe that's not technically a salad.....I usually eat pre-made salads from the grocery store and add fresh veggies to it. So instead I chose a chicken salad recipe. It's easy and it's full of protein and can be put on top of salad and did I mention it's extremely easy? Enjoy!

Check-In:

This week has been ok. I'm not logging...at all. I'm exercising and that's going well but I need to get going on the logging. It's been rainy off and on here so I've been going to the gym instead of running outside. I prefer running outside than going to the smelly gym. I really should start adding a lifting routine to my exercising so I'm going to look into it. Any suggestions? I have some magazines that I've tried before so I might try to do those again.

Carol Sorry about your mother passing, even an expected death is never easy. I'm with you on the weight gain, I need to find a way to stop let the stress control my eating. It's not going so well.

If you have time to post the recipe the reasons I ask people to post them are

1. We know how many servings are in the recipe
2. We know how many calories are in it
3. We know the nutritional breakdown
4. We can easily tag it and add it to our own food logs. 

I tend to find no matter how easy a recipe is, if I have to go to the extra work of entering it myself I'm less likely to get around to trying it. 

Jen I think it depends on where you are in fitness and what you are looking for from a routine. Reading the New Rules of Lifting for Women (NROLFW) definitely helped me because it broke several myths I had about what was and was not effective lifting, most of those myths I had got from various women's fitness magazines (Shape, Cosmo.... not my lifting friends anymore!).

The trouble with NROLFW is that it is a great program for building muscle which will work wonderfully if you are in your last 10-15 lbs of loss. If you need to loose more than that, then you likely need a fat burning program as well. This is where I started to look into HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) which is generally a combination of anaerobic body weight lifting exercises and aerobic exercises.

I can't really say how well it's working yet, as I'm not that far in, but I feel better equipped and more knowledgeable going in.... and if pain is gain... well I over did it a bit last week. 

I have a T-shirt from the Marines... it says "Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body."

I giggle every time I decide to wear it to the gym.

Be back later with a real post, it's been a crazy week so far, about to get crazier.

*toasting my protein shake* - Healthgain to all,
~Julie

Hey there,

There's a bulgur wheat salad that I've been meaning to input into the system for some time.  Its super-yummy and full of fiber (don't need to eat a lot of it to feel full!).  Will post later this week.  I've been a bit run-down with a headcold (I'm so mad that I can't take any medicines!  Its killing me!!).

cheers,

Denise

'Tis the week of quick posts. I made it to the gym again today. yay! Doing the HIIT after the NROLFW made a big ginormous difference! As did the youtube video I found for the prone jacknife exercise which made no sense to me in the NROLFW book. Outch that exercise is hard!

Trying to get to the gym again on Friday. 

Like the T-shirt Julie

Sorry about the headache sans relief Denise, tell the little one to quiet down mummy's got a headache!

Sara.

Hello all!

My recipe: Green California Salad.  Due to recipe analyzer limitations, I couldn't put in the salad dressing that goes with it, so I'll include it here.  I use (and *only* use) Annie's Sesame Shiitake Vinaigrette for this.  It's ridiculously delicious and has a significantly lower fat content (nutrition info here) than the generic vinagrette I included in the recipe, which would help the nutrition rating of the salad - I was totally shocked when I looked at the analysis, but figured it was better to leave the substitute in for calorie counting purposes.

Carol I'm really sorry about your mom.  I also live far away from my family and the distance makes it much more difficult to deal with loss and life transitions.  Try not to let the weight get you down even more - maybe focus on how much you enjoy running again?  Sometimes life is just plain rough, but you'll make it through in the end.

Julie I think I need a tshirt like that. 

On the check in front, oh dear.  I hadn't been logging these last few days, between finishing the house-moving and attempting to catch up on my LSAT class homework I just haven't spent time with the computer.  I have been diligently writing down what I ate, though, and this morning I got online and logged it all.  Ouch.  Now my spreadsheet clearly shows me where and how I undid all the conscientious tracking from the week before.  Blehhhhh....  In theory at least, that should be a lesson for me.  Today, reeling in horror, I've planned all my meals in advance, and will try to do that for the rest of the week.

The good news is that yesterday I went out to the nature reserve by my house (about ten minutes walk) and it was gorgeous.  I'm hoping to convince myself that I'm a person who exercises every day - I'll be walking/jogging there again this pm. 

And that's it for me.  Hope Wednesday's being good to you all!

PS I edited the recipe, so if you go check it out soon after I post this, it may not be the final version - give CC a few hours to register the new version.

Holy cow, guys, I had no idea how GOOD this recipe was until I just put it into the analyzer. Black Bean and Bulghur Salad with Parsley and Lemon, from my pregnancy cookbook.  Its far too delicious to be this healthy, really. Its not exactly low calorie, but honestly I get 5-6 servings out of this recipe, even if it calls for 4.

When we first got the cookbook, I didn't initially make for dinner b/c I didn't think that my husband would like it.  He really surprised me one week when he decided to include it in our dinner menu plan.  He loves it, too, so its perfect for our vegetarian nights!

Another one from my pregnancy cookbook is Romaine Salad with Mint, Dates, Oranges, and Almonds.  Not nearly as good for you, but I really like making my own salad dressings.  Has anyone else noticed how most commercial salad dressings have High Fructose Corn Syrup or some other unhealthy stuff in them?  When I was out of work last year (and had LOTS OF TIME on my hands), I spent about an hour in the grocery store, reading the labels.  Very discouraging.  I think its so easy to whip up something myself with very basic ingredients--Olive Oil, some kind of vinegar, mustard as an emulsifier (optional), and voila, instant salad dressing!  And I know what the ingredients are!!

Ok, gotta' run--dinner's ready (spicy sausage and kale soup tonight!)

Cheers,

Denise

TWO DAY REMINDER'S

It's been a bit of a quite week here on wagon jumpers, here is our list of members who have not yet checked in, please watch for them to post today or tomorrow, if they have not posted by Saturday or are on the MIA list on Sunday please send them a polite and positive reminder to stay on track with their goals and involved in the group. 

Tiegurl

Kyashiis

Unlimitedana

Maureenz

Jessicaanne2001

Thesilverstar121

Missing In Action:

 The_Vitamin_Dominatrix

I don't know where the time has gone this week.  Poof... it wasn't there.  It's my birthday today.  My husband surprised me by giving me a nice spring green hat.  Since we walk all the time, I wear hats quite a bit...  My daughter gave me a nice summer looking rattan handbag that looks small until you open it up - then it looks like a suitcase - really kind of amazing.  I always carry a lot of stuff, so it's great.

I did well this week until a couple of days ago.  I just got busy and sloppy with logging and exercising.  I have a bad back ache and hay fever from the cypress pollen in the air.  I have a rough, rattily cough that I guess I am stuck with until the pollen stops flying. 

I have some salads (enjoyed the posting that I have had a chance to see so far...), but they won't get posted for a couple more days when I can catch up.

Carol - it's sad to hear you lost your mom... I hope you can bear up.  My mom passed away about thirty years ago.  I still miss her and think of her often.

Sara - sorry to be sluggish getting the assignment done...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATHY!

Happy Birthday Kathy!!!!

I know what you are saying about the pollen. We woke up this morning and our vehicles were completely covered in pollen from the trees. ICKY! So - i'm about to get sick in a few days I imagine...

I just logged 3.5 miles over lunchtime. The weather is beautiful!!! I feel great now :)