QUEEN NEWBIES-MARCH

[cutevic]

Here were are again facing a new MONTH, new challenges and a new YOU. It's time to forget about the mistakes that were probably made last year and start fresh with a new resovle to get our goals met....and to those of us who made great strides, let's continue them throughout the new year.

Today is also a good time to re-read the Atkins book or any other plan you may be following...to refresh our memory, to remember what worked for us...and to stay strickly on plan. It's also important to remember to drink our water and to exercise.

One of the main ingredients to being successful in losing weight, is to be accountable. Posting daily or as much as you can will help you achieve that. Being supportive and motivating other's will help as well.

We must love ourselves first before we can expect others to love us the way we deserve. We teach people the way to treat us....So, Queens...treat yourselve like the Queens that you are, and you will be treated like one...Demand respect and settle for nothing less....

As always, keep in mind that you are beautiful, important, special and that you deserve the best. Lose the weight for you and not because someone wants you to...Make this year your best one yet Queens....

[cutevic]

I just wanted to let you all know that I keep having major problems with my computer. So If I'm not on for awhile for any length time you'll know why.

I'm still pretty much on plan. I stopped the m/e for a few days and I've been eating some lc bread, salads and fruits. I miss them. I'll start back on the m/e Monday.

I haven't done any exercise today so far. Water has been good. I'll use my weights and cords until I get over this cold and sore throat.

Have a great day ladies.

[Lizett]

Good Morning

Im doing much better today, me and miles painted the livingroom walls and the paint bubbled *L* talk about bad luck! The good news is that the bubbles are dryign up slowly. Justa couple of touch ups and it should be fine! We are planning a trip to winnipeg to see miles family sometime in early April, hopefully it all works out I exercised 1 hr yesterday and tonight i should be doing 20 misn running or walking and 30 mins squash, never tried squash so we will see how bruised i get!

VICKI: I hope your cold is better, *HUGS* sounds like your eating healthy! Good for you thats great! Hope your computer gets fixed soon!

[Lizett]

Good afternoon Queens

Im doing good, im tierd. I worked out about 1 hr yesterday. I did some walking and tried squash. Squash was fun, I really liked it. We are having a huge storm here, its windy and icy..i think i will just finish work and call it a night....days like today i just wanna cuddle up and watch movies

I hope everyone is having a great day, wish me luck on my weigh in tomorrow I gotta a feeling i gained

Talk soon

[cutevic]

Just checking in. I'm still having computer problems. It seems like I need another hard drive. My boyfriend is going to install it for me. So in the meantime from time to time, my computer will shut down and I'll have to restart and reinstall some things.

My cold isn't quite gone yet. I still haven't restarted the m/e. My water hasn't been that good because of my sore throat, but I'm getting down atleast 64oz. No exercise yet.

Lizett squash sounds like fun. I have to give it to you, you're always coming up with something new to do...plus the fact that they're also exercises in the form of fun..You go girl.

Deb..HT how are you ladies doing?

Have a great weekend ladies.

[HolyTeror]

I'm here we had our anniversary friday and we didn't end up doing anything, we were supposed to go to san francisco yesterday but *somebody* was tired. bleh. anyway we're supposed to go next weekend. I had rehearsal last week wednesday, then on saturday, another today, and another wednesday. I think I'm finally getting in some more exercise.

I ended up replacing my bean product. Now i just have to inflate it to use it

have a great day all

[Lizett]

Good Morning Queens,

Im doing good, I exercised sunday for 1 hour ( swimming). I will also exercise tonight for 1 hr. I weighed in on sunday morning and im down to 171 Lbs, I believe i was 172 two weeks ago then 174 last weekend ( TOM ) so i lost 1 Lb I guess. Im thinking its the new exercised im trying. Im also running longer and walking faster on the threadmill. Miles left for work yesterday. I really do miss him already He will be back next monday. We did some projects around the house so thats a relief. He really likes to fix things and i got a lot of things need fixing *L*. Im back on a strict diet. I cheated last week w. chinese food ( rice) so i dont wanna gain. I already ate today ( coffee, eggs and ham for breakfast) Im not doing strict induction but close enough ( about 30 or less carbs a day).

VICKI: I sure hope your cold is gone now. I never want to exercise when im sick...its way harder. Hope your computer can work so we can chat later

HT: Thats too bad you could go to san francisco Im glad your exercising though. Sounds like fun

Talk tomorrow queens, keep well

[cutevic]

I had a great weekend. It was sunny and not to cold. I spent the day with my boyfriend. We went out enjoying each other's company and the weather.

I still have my cold and now I'm coughing and hoarse. It's been a week now and it's still lingering on. I know I need to start taking my vitamins again.

HT Happy Anniversary!!! I'm sorry it didn't go as you planned. Maybe you can make up for it next weekend.

Lizett congrats on the loss. I'm glad you and Miles are having so much fun together.

Have a great day ladies.

[Lizett]

THE CHALLENGE


Ok me and Vicki have made a challenge for eachother but if anyone else is interested please join us. My little challenge is for me to be 166 Lbs by April 6 th ( thats when i go on my mini trip) and me and vicki have made a pact for June 11/07. I wanna be down to 159...Thats a loss of 12 Lbs and Vicki wants to be down 40 Lbs by that date ( also her Birthday) we will post dialy on our progress. I say we can do this, we have been stagnant for awhile and need to move it up a NOTCH!!!! I wanna be atleast near 159 by June so it will take a bit of work since my body has been stubborn but we can do it!!!!

I have lost around 5 inches of my arms, waist, hips, chest since January and lost 8 Lbs but to me its a bittersweet victory since im just losing what i gained since october 2006 but soon i will be 165 and back to where i was last summer.

I will weigh in every saturday and post on monday how im doing

[Lizett]

Good Morning,

i exercised 1.15 hr yesterday and burned 550 calories, I ate on plan and feel good.

I got good news yesterday, seems like Miles is gettign transferred here, so we will be together finally but then this morning i got bad news...looks like he wont be transferred because the plane that was going to replace his got damaged, gesh now i feel pretty sad I will get over it eventually

hope all is well w/ everyone

Lizett

[cutevic]

The Challenge My goal is to lose 40lbs. by 6/11 or the end of June, a big stretch I know, but I did lose 19lbs. one month doing the m/e. I'm working on that as we speak.

Although I need to lose weight all over, it's my arms that are causing me the most problems. When I gain, I gain there first. Which is so odd. With that in mind, I'm paying special attention to them and doing some rigorous arm workouts. I want the weight to start coming off of them first and as much as possible.

I'm back doing the m/e strick. Taking vitamins and calcium. I'm on my 1st. liter of water. The plan is to drink 4 a day.

Lizett you're the exercise Queen. There is no way I can compete with all that you do, but I will do my best with the resourses I have.
Good job on the inches and exercise.
Things will work out for Miles, you'll see.

Deb I hope all is well with you and your new job. let us know when you can.

Have a great day ladies.

[Lizett]

Hey Vicki

Im glad your back on track, the M/E is hard. I dont know if i can ever do that. I was researching the Detox diet...maybe do only liquids for 3 days.

I talked to Miles and he is a bit sad but we will get through it...im just tierd of being disappointed. Im crossing my fingers my divorce will go through, its been a week...and no response from the courts other than that nothing really new happening....im trying to keep calories under 1500 and carbs under 40...i did go over a bit on carbs yesterday but thats because i ate a Low carb P and B sandwich no more bread!

anyways me and Vicki are gonna Kick but i know it Its on Vicki

[Lizett]

This was posted on the CLA thread I believe, I read it and its great and made me understand a bit more baout weight gain and loss, hope you all enjoy it

WHY THE SCALES CAN LIE:

We've been told over and over again that daily weighing is unnecessary, yet many of us can’t resist peeking at that number every morning. If you just cant bring yourself to toss the scale in the trash, you should definitely familiarize yourself with the factors that influence its reading. From water retention to glycogen storage and changes in lean body mass, daily weight fluctuations are normal. They are not indicators of your success or failure. Once you understand how these mechanisms work, you can free yourself from the daily battle with the bathroom scale.

Water makes up about 60% of total body mass. Normal fluctuations in the body’s water content can send scale-watchers into a tailspin if they don’t understand what’s happening. Two factors influencing water retention are water consumption and salt intake. Strange as it sounds, the less water you drink the more of it your body retains. If you are even slightly dehydrated your body will hang onto its water supplies with a vengeance, possibly causing the number on the scale to inch upward. The solution is to drink plenty of water.

A biologist at Berkeley shared something very revealing on the low-carb BBS system about 4 years ago that helps us all through the erratic weight fluctuations you invariably encounter:
“Fat cells are resilient, stubborn little creatures that do not want to give up their actual cell volume. Over a period of weeks, maybe months of “proper dieting”, each of your fat cells may have actually lost a good percentage of the actual fat contained in those cells. But the fat cells themselves, stubborn little guys, replace that lost fat with water to retain their size. That is, instead of shrinking to match the reduced amount of fat in the cell, they stay the same size! Result – you weigh the same, look the same, maybe even gained some scale weight, even though you have actually lost some serious fat.”

This is what we have been telling folks. You lose inches but not pounds because your body plumps the fat cells. I tell them it is a complicated biochemical process that your body replaces the fat molecules with water and fluids until you exceed your bodies predetermined fluid level. Then your body will release a chemical that releases all this stored water and you get sudden overnight loss of several pounds. Then the cycle starts over again with inches gone and the scales lag behind.

The good news is that this water replacement is temporary. It’s a defensive measure to keep your body from changing too rapidly. It allows the fat cell to counter the rapid change in cell composition, allowing for a slow, gradual reduction in cell size. The problem is, most people are frustrated with their apparent lack of success, assume they have lost nothing, and stop dieting. However, if you give those fat cells some time, and ignore the scale weight fluctuations, your real weight/shape will slowly begin to show.

Excess salt (sodium) can also play a big role in water retention. A single teaspoon of salt contains over 2,000 mg of sodium. Generally, we should only eat between 1,000 and 3,000 mg of sodium a day, so it’s easy to go overboard. Sodium is a sneaky substance. You would expect it to be most highly concentrated in salty chips, nuts and crackers. However, a food doesn’t have to taste salty to be loaded with sodium. A half cup of instant pudding actually contains nearly four times as much sodium as an ounce of salted nuts, 460 mg in the pudding versus 123 mg in the nuts. The more highly processed a food is, the more likely it is to have high sodium content. That’s why, when it comes to eating, it’s wise to stick mainly to the basics: fruits, vegetables, lean meat, beans, and whole grains. Be sure to read the labels on canned foods, boxed mixes, and frozen dinners.

Women may also retain several pounds of water prior to Tom. This is very common and the weight will likely disappear as quickly as it arrives. Pre-menstrual water-weight gain can be minimized by drinking plenty of water, maintaining an exercise program, and keeping high sodium processed foods to a minimum.

Another factor that can influence the scale is glycogen. Think of glycogen as a fuel tank full of stored carbohydrate. Some glycogen is stored in the liver and some is stored in the muscles themselves. This energy reserve weighs more than a pound and its packages with 3-4 pounds of water when it’s stored. Your glycogen supply will shrink during the day if you fail to take in enough carbohydrates. As the glycogen supply shrinks you will experience a small imperceptible increase in appetite and your body will restore this fuel reserve along with its associated water. It’s normal to experience glycogen and water weight shifts of up to 2 pounds per day even with no changes in your calorie intake or activity level. These fluctuations have nothing to do with fat loss, although they can make for some unnecessarily dramatic weigh-ins if you’re prone to obsessing over the number on the scale.

Otherwise rational people also tend to forget about the actual weight of the food they eat. For this reason, it’s wise to weigh yourself first thing in the morning before you have had anything to eat or drink. Swallowing a bunch of food before you step on the scale is no different that putting a bunch of rocks in your pocket. The 5 pounds that you gain right after a huge dinner in not fat. It’s the actual weight of everything you have had to eat and drink. The added weight of meal will be gone several hours later when you have finished digesting it.

Exercise physiologists tell us that in order to store one pound of fat, you need to eat 3,500 calories more than your body is able to burn. In other words, to actually store the above dinner as 5 pounds of fat, it would have to contain a whopping 17,500 calories. This is not likely; in fast it is not humanly possible. So when the scale goes up 3 – 4 pounds overnight, rest easy, it’s likely to be water, glycogen, and the weight of your dinner. Keep in mind that the 3,500 calories rule works in reverse also. In order to lose one pound of fat you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in. Generally, it’s only possible to lose 1-2 pounds of fat per week. When you follow a very low calorie diet that causes your weight to drop 10 pounds in 7
days, it’s physically impossible for all of that to be fat. What you are really losing is water, glycogen, and muscle.

This brings us to the scales sneakiest attribute. It doesn’t just weigh fat. It weighs muscle, bone, water, internal organs and all. When you lose “weight,” that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have lost fat. In fact, the scale has no way of telling you what you have lost (or gained). Losing muscle is nothing to celebrate. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue. The more muscle you have the more calories your body burns, even when you are just sitting around. That’s one reason why a fit, active person is able to eat considerably more food than the dieter who is unwittingly destroying muscle tissue.

Robin Landis, author or “Body Fueling,” compares fat and muscles to feathers and gold. One pound of fat is like a big fluffy, lumpy bunch of feathers, and one pound of muscle is small and valuable like a piece of gold. Obviously, you want to lose the dumpy, bulky feathers and keep the sleek beautiful gold. The problem with the scale is that is doesn’t differentiate between the two. It can’t tell you how much of your total body weight is lean tissue and how much is fat. There are several other measuring techniques that can accomplish this, although they vary in convenience, accuracy, and cost. Skin-fold calipers pinch and measure fat folds at various locations on the body, hydrostatic (or underwater) weighing involves exhaling all of the air from your lungs before being lowered into a take of water, and bioelectrical
impedance measures the degree to which your body fat impedes a mild electrical current.

If you thought of being pinched, dunked, or gently zapped just doesn’t appeal to you, don’t worry. The best measurement tool of all turns out to be you very own eyes. How do you look? How do you feel? How do your clothes fit? Are your rings looser? Do your muscles feel firmer? These are the true measurements of success. If you are exercising and eating right, don’t be discouraged by a small gain on the scale. Fluctuations are perfectly normal. Expect them to happen and take in stride. It’s a matter of mind over scale.

By Renee Cloe,
ACE Certified Personal Trainer

[cutevic]

I'm going to see if I can post some pics...Before and during.


at 429 lbs. Dec. 2001 before Atkins


at 266 lbs. Oct. 30, 2004...Lost 163 lbs. in 18 mths.

My goal is to be back to 266 lbs. and continue from there. I was wearing a size 18...

[Lizett]

Good Afternoon Queens

Im doing well. Im a little tierd. I worked out 1 hour on the threadmill burned 510 calories but I did eat after I got home, some almonds, PB and Jelly Low carb sandwich and a atkins bar hopefully i dont gain? I really wanna lose 1 or 2 lbs by this saturday weigh in. Miles should be home tonight or tomorrow. hopefully tomorrow. Nothing really new to report. I really hope i can get down to 170 by this weekend.

VICKI: I think You look great, I know you get down to 266 again, Im here for you Did you exercise yesterday? Hope so or else

[Lizett]

I just read this and thought it was interesting, Hope you guys enjoy it.

But yearlong study can't predict high-fat plan's long-term safety, experts warn
By E.J. Mundell, HealthDay Reporter

Find More
Today's Health News


TUESDAY, March 6 (HealthDay News) -- The low-carbohydrate, high-protein Atkins diet has nabbed first place in a yearlong, U.S. government-funded study of four popular weight-loss regimens.

Women on the Atkins plan lost nearly 11 pounds on average over 12 months—almost double that of participants on the Zone diet, the Ornish diet, and a diet favored by nutritionists called LEARN.

There didn't seem to be a downside to the Atkins diet, either—at least in the short-term. The Stanford University researchers who conducted the trial of 311 overweight women found no differences in heart disease risk factors between the four groups, despite the fact that Atkins practitioners were given free rein when it came to fat intake.

"We've all been worried that the high saturated fat content of Atkins would be bad for you," said study author Christopher Gardner, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford. The plan's high-fat levels "still make us nervous," he said, "but I think the weight loss that comes with the diet must be more powerful" in keeping cholesterol and other heart risk factors at bay.

The study, published in the March 7 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, is perhaps the most independent and rigorously conducted comparison of popular diets yet attempted. Even so, it had its critics.

[cutevic]

Lizett Thanks for the info and the vote of confidence.
And yes, I did exercise.
Enjoy your evening with Miles..

Nothing new to report other than my cold is here in full force. I had tuna salad and a small banana earlier. I don't have much of an appetite, but I'm going to make some chicken soup with Dreamfields pasta. I'd said I wasn't going to eat anything but the m/e, but I really need the soup. It always make me feel better.

Cya tomorrow ladies.

[HolyTeror]

Morning ladies

I wouldn't mind being 20 lbs lighter by then. I'm in a challenge to lose 10 lbs by april 1. I don't know how well i'm doing (too nervous to check the scale, tom on the way and last couple of weeks haven't been eating so great) but I've been getting in extra exercise (more than what i was getting...NONE) plus i've been taking my vitamins/supplements. So I'd like to be at 174 by then....

[Lizett]

hey Queens

Im doing good, exercised 1 hour yesterday and burned 455 calories. I did eat ok until miles got home and had mcdonalds...i didnt eat anything REALLY bad. i ate a hamburger w/ nothing on it....so its like 2 carbs and the bad thing was i ate like 5 french fries..thats IT i swear. I did drink 3 litres of water and took my CLA and multi vitamin...for some stupid reason i weighed in at 5 pm and was up 1 LB so now im all paranoid...i knew i shouldnt do it but i did anyways ...we will see what i weigh in on saturday.

I exercised 15 mins this morning (ab roller) and ate on plan ( 2 eggs, bacon and coffee)

HT: I know if you stick to eating on plan ( easier said than done, I know) you can get down to 175....hope all is well at home.

VICKI: Hows the cold? hope your feeling better...and the soup sounds good, use thed reamfiels spaghetti and break it up so it looks like chicken noodle soup when its all cooked

[cutevic]

I woke up this morning feeling worse, so I went to see my doctor. I didn't want whatever it was to turn into bronchitis or pneumonia. I've had both a couple of times. I have a bad case of some flu that's going around. I got some antiobiotics, cough syrup and was told to drink plenty of fluids and bed rest.

So for the time being all I'm eating is chicken soup and drinking some green tea.

Lizet that's exactly what I did. I broke up the Dreamfields speghetti and it was just like chicken noodle soup. I just wished I'd made more.
The 1 lb. is probably just water.

HT you might be closer than you think to your challenge goal.

Have a good evening ladies.

[HolyTeror]

i stepped on the scale it wasn't friendly. but TOM's on the way so i'm hoping that's why

[Lizett]

Good morning Queens

Im doing good, ate late last night and im dreading weighing in on saturday morning I think im stalling cause im drinking more milk w/ my coffee than usual, I basically make a latte...erghh so miles is helping and im gonan cut back on my portions, no cheating and no milk...and more green tea..and no eating after supper ( around 6 pm). we will see what the scale says, i shouldnt have gained but weirder things have happened before....i really wanna be 166 by april 6.

HT: how much did you gain? Could be water? or TOM....what have you been upto lately?

VICKI: How is your flu today???? Hope all is better. I hate the flu, makes me tierd and i hate being tierd! Talk soon,

Well im gonna go exercise tonight ( walking 30 mins, squash 20 mins and ab roller 15 mins). I will try and post my weight tomorrow, I have a computer at home now too

[cutevic]

Just checking in. Nothing really new to report. I'm still sick, but I feel like the antiobiotics are kicking in. It's just a matter of time before my flu is gone and I can