Question for those who successfully swayed pink...

[sweetpea]

Good advice, auroara! And that worked for you, so I guess I need to be more gentle on myself.

My plan from here on out is, if there has to be a cheat day for whatever occasion, then every other day that's not a special occasion just needs to be as close to the diet as I can. I'll try not to stress about it, but I just worry that I'm not going to be able to lose the amount of weight I want/need to lose to have a good sway, if I'm having lots of cheat days, kwim? I feel like time is running out and I still have so much weight to lose.

[Ribbons]

Sweetpea, now that my 1st attempt is officially over (!) I have to say that the first 5-6 weeks on the LE was very easy, and the last 4 weeks it was very, very hard to lose weight. I had lost 10 lbs at the 6 week mark, gained back 3 pounds, worked really hard to lose those 3 lbs and ended up losing a total of 11 lbs at the end. I have been maintaining at the same weight for 2 weeks, even though I have been cutting my calories down more and more (I really wanted to lose just one more pound, but it didn't happen!) I think now that my attempt is out of the way, I will just worry about maintaining and if I get a BFN, I'll not be too hard on myself and try to lose another 2-3 before my next attempt. And I still have a lot to lose too - I'm pretty happy with my weight overall as it is the lowest I've been in a LONG time, but I am certainly no skinny minnie!

So I guess what I am saying is, just do what you can and don't beat yourself up too much. You have to have SOME cheat days to keep you sane and not throw the whole diet out of the window in frustration! Just do the best you can

[sweetpea]

Thank you for the pep talk and the perspective, Ribbons! I appreciate it!

I think for you, the things you really have going for you (in terms of weight loss) is that you were in an overall state of losing, and then maintaining, during your attempts - which is a very good thing! - AND you are at the lowest weight you've been at in a long time, so that's great and can only help! That right there will be swaying for you, regardless of the fact that you're not a super skinny-minnie, like you say!

I want so badly to get to my lowest adult weight before swaying, but I'm sure that won't happen in time. I can probably make it about 5 pounds or so under my lowest conception weight by the time our first attempt is here, but that means I'll still have to lose another 27 pounds by the end of July. And with a few cheats for my birthday and some other events coming up over the next few months, I'm really wondering if I can do it!

[Ribbons]

You can do it, sweetpea!

[auroara78]

You can totally do it, sweetpea!!! Enjoy your cheats but be mindful too.....I believe in you!

[sweetpea]

Awww, thanks guys! DH and the boys made me a yummy breakfast this morning of scrambled eggs and french toast (DH was considerate of trying to make it a touch healthier by using wheat bread ), and it was a small-ish portion, so I definitely didn't overindulge there (and kept it vegetarian, too!). I'm going to try and hold out and not eat anything until we have dinner tonight with my parents, to keep my blood sugar levels low, by filling my belly with diet pop throughout the day. I hope I can do it!!

[Ribbons]

Yay sweetpea! Happy birthday, and enjoy!!

[Wishing4Princess]

Happy B-day Sweetpea! don't worry about a few cheats here and there Enjoy!

[sweetpea]

Thanks, everyone!!

Well, my birthday weekend was AWESOME - my hubby totally spoiled me! Friday was my actual birthday (the 4th), but he had something planned for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It was a seriously WONDERFUL weekend - mostly because he has been clocking in some insane hours on a project at work but took 3 days off last week - we got a LOT of family time in and it was just awesome having him home!

On Friday, my hubby and the boys made me breakfast (which I wrote about above), then they surprised me with a Kindle Fire (yay!!), then we hung out for a bit at home, went to lunch at an outdoor cafe (I only nibbled a little bit), took the boys to a kids' play museum for a few hours, had dinner with my parents, then went to a cute little cupcake bakery for dessert. I definitely over-indulged in calories and sodium (couldn't resist the salted caramel cupcake at the bakery - OMG!!), but kept everything vegetarian.

Saturday, I loaded up on diet pop, Benefiber drinks, coffee, etc. and only ate a tiny snack during the day. My hubby surprised me with a whole day of car shopping (I've been bugging him to go with me, but he never has time - plus he kept saying that we couldn't afford a second car), so that was a lot of fun, as weird as that sounds. After shopping around a bit and test driving cars, we met up with friends for dinner (hibachi) and I caved and ordered filet mignon but only ate a little bit of it (mostly ate the fried rice and veggies). Definitely over on sodium, again, probably on calories too, but then again, I barely ate anything else that day - my dinner was pretty much my only meal. I felt bad eating filet, but then I reminded myself that I've only had red meat two whole times this whole year so far (which is a HUGE change for me), and I did only eat a little bit of it for taste. Had some ice cream for dessert.

Sunday, once again, I only had one large meal and didn't eat any other time of the day (except for a snack before bed). We went to church on Sunday morning and Sunday night, and had lunch at my inlaws' house. She always cooks a big meal for whoever's birthday it is, and cooks whatever they want. I requested eggplant parm, because it is a vegetarian dish, but again, I knew I'd be over in calories, sodium, and fat again - but at least it wasn't meat!

I ended up caving and weighing myself on Monday, even though I told myself I wasn't going to. I had gained 5 pounds over the weekend! I'm sure a lot of it was water retention from eating a LOT of salty foods, but yeah, I have to be real with myself and realize that I'm sure some of that is actual weight I gained back.

I've found it harder to get back on track with food this week than I thought it would be - I thought I'd hit it hardcore again come Monday, but I was surprised to find that I was craving the same bad foods I'd eaten that weekend - and I craved them BADLY. I'm not eating too badly this week, but not doing the LE diet as well as I should be at all. I really do think I have a strong addiction to food. It seems that the only way to cut out that strong desire to sabotage my diet is to do a day or two of fasting (water-only or a juice fast) - that seems to kind of "break" me, and then I can go back to the LE diet and have a much better time with it. Man, it's amazing what a weekend of bad eating can do to me!

Anyway...that was my fun birthday weekend, and even though I'm not exactly thrilled with going backward a bit on my weight loss success, I'm not going to dwell on it, bc I seriously had such an amazing time with family and friends, and I really wouldn't change it for the world! With this awesome weekend behind - filled with great food and great memories - I'm ready to get back on the wagon with my swaying preparations/diet/etc.

Oh - and one last, kind of unrelated, update - on Monday, we went back to one of the car dealerships we visited, and we ended up buying a car!!! We bought a minivan, so now there is no worry over what we're going to do about fitting 3 kids into a car! Also, I've been stuck at home with the kids, with no car, for over 5 years (my hubby took the only car we had to work each day), so now we have a second car again and I can actually get out of the house with the kids whenever we want! Squeee! I'm super excited and just wanted to share the good news!

[Ribbons]

Sounds like a mega-awesome weekend, sweetpea!!! Don't worry, you'll be up and running again on the weight loss in no time! So great about the car too!