BBR 3/28 Week 4 Day 28

I woke up this morning to discover my weight was in range to be at goal! It has slowly dropped over the last week and today was a bigger drop. I went to the WW center to weigh in and get my etools voucher! I'm good now for March and I'm hoping to keep this trend going so I can weigh in next week for April.

Thanks for the encouragement this month. I wonder if the increase in activity with the Body Pump classes I started this month helped. Regardless, staying OP and drinking lots of water has helped too. I'm going to stick with the program!  

Also: 

Some of you mentioned keeping our etools vouchers and saving our confirmation emails. (which I've done) I just put the numbers in for this month's etools voucher and I noticed something new on the account status page. There is a link for "Print Billing History" that I've never seen before. When I clicked on it, my payment history was listed since December, 2012. I'm not sure why that is the starting date since I started earlier. But, every month was listed up to the current month. It's a great record to show all of the 2 month subscriptions I have received for free etools. I saved the document onto my computer. It's a 4 page listing and as long as I have a saved copy I don't need to print it.



Has anyone else seen this? Is this a recent addition or have I just not noticed it?

bbbearsmom  As we are all learning, being at maintenance, even for years,  means that gaining back weight can easily happen to all of us. It's a good lesson for all of us to stay mindful. Every day.  Glad you're ok on your weigh in.

I'm going to wait until tomorrow to weigh in for this week's WI with the Beck book.Over the weekend when I was sick I lost 1.2# but only took half of it for my WW WI b/c I was having diarrhea.I went on the BRAT diet and with all those carbs as of this morning I gained it back b/c now the IBS-C is acting up bad.I'm not skimping on meals today like Beck suggested so will see where I am tomorrow.

Congrats linda72 at getting back to goal and free e-tools.


bbbearsmom,You will lose yours again in no time.Portion creep does get us all.

Tammy  I absolutely am evaluating what happened this month. I really want to lose 3-4 pounds to get safely under goal so I don't have this stress. I'm hoping the new weight lifting classes I've started this month will help me. I will continue these classes and to be strict about my points. I've almost decided that 30 SP may be too much for me, unless my activity level increases. I double tracked most days this month and I've averaged 1100 calories/day on 30 SP. For an older, shorter woman, that is enough calories to live on but not to lose in any sort of timely fashion. So, I have to increase my activity and hopefully these Body Pump classes help. I do feel the effects of the classes including hunger afterwards so I know I'm exerting some effort. But, I don't want to be so strict that I can't enjoy an occasional treat or drink with DH. So, now that I'm at goal again, I'm not letting up. Thank you again for encouraging me last week. It was the extra push I needed to really focus and it helped a lot.  

linda72, Here is how it was for me when I made goal.
I was WI in a 1/2 pound tankini. I did not consider this a good permanent option.

I ate my points using a Wendie distribution (one super-high day, some medium days, and some low days). Using this distribution, my weight was usually lowest on my WI day, and about 3 or 4 pounds higher at the highest during the week. So, I was living with the knowledge that I could not WI at WW on some days of the week. This was not a permanent solution.

I was losing maybe .4/week on losing points. I knew that if I stayed on losing points during the entire 6 week maintenance period, I couldn't lose more than the weight of a solid set of clothes! I decided to not add any maintenance points during maintenance.

I knew that if I stayed at losing points it would still take me months to get a 5 pound cushion. And I knew that it would be months before I wasn't worrying about being over at my monthly WI. I decided to stay at losing points for a while. Once I got a 5 pound cushion, I was willing to start looking for a stable place. Basically, at some point, I started plateauing. Every time I would stall out in weight loss, I would add a point or 2. Finally I settled out. At some point (maybe 6 months to 1 year) after making goal, I noticed 2 things: 1) losing points felt stressful 2) if I had too many low days in a week, I felt a little depressed and overwhelmed.

The goal is to walk that fence between depressed, stressed, and overwhelmed and gaining. And to find the level of eating that allows you to stay there.

By the way, at the last LTer meeting, the leader shared that SP was "designed" for you to get all your nutrition (solid food) in 24 SP and to have about 6 points for small treat. Depending on my thyroid, there have been times where I couldn't have the small treat. I can eat a little extra with fencing, and I try to eat about the number of calories that I burn fencing. (One tournament, a teammate was wearing a fitbit and burned 2000+ calories in an event - about 4-6 hours.)

Tammy: Thanks for the great posts.

Linda: Thanks for the link to the article.

I figured out my portion creeps and added up the calories. I had started to eat an extra 200 calories per day. If that is over the amount my body burns each day that is about a two pound gain per month. I worked on my lunch today and will work on the two snacks the next few days.

@beckyw2016 I thought the 2 mile walk would be enough too but I think my body is so used to it so I need to shake things up. We walk briskly but not too fast. 2 miles in 38-40 min. so about 3 mph. When I had an active link (with WW) I got no credit for my daily walk because it came first thing in the morning instead of later during the day. That early walk became part of my base line. I walk a very fine line between calories eaten each day and my metabolism. I've also been trying to vary my points each day so it's not exactly the same daily. Since my breakfasts and lunches are so similar, my only variety comes with dinners. I wish we had our big meal at noon but that schedule doesn't work out for us.

My doctor told me last month I have lost 2" in height since my 20s. I'm still using the higher height for my goal so I guess that is probably cheating a little. But, I'm not lowering my goal because I would never make that! She recommended the strength training as a way to rev up my metabolism. I hope it works!

ETA: I think I was on 29 PP when I started in 2011 and a few months later, they dropped it to 26 PP. Everyone howled about that but it really increased weight losses.