I am jumping in to say hello. I'm back to PPLP after 14 months off and a 45 pound gain.

I do not know how you can give up dairy. That would be harder than giving up chocolate. I really depend on it.

Lisa - congrats on your new baby. I always lost the baby weight by low-carbing. It just seemed to fall off easily. Especially after the pregnancy cravings went away.

I definitely would not have been able to do it from day one! I'm enthusiastic about it right now because I have a good repertoire of dairy-free recipes and stand-bys, even treats like chocolate. I love Indian and Thai food, which is easy to make dairy-free. I could eat that every day!

I think I might talk to the lady at the Asian grocery store about buying a case of coconut cream.

Well I haven't given dairy up (yet) because I'm trying desperately to survive the month of birthdays! 2 more cakes to get through and then we'll be done. So, I'm using it as needed in the meantime.

Congratulations, Lisa! I never stopped in to say congrats. I hope you are enjoying your little bundle of love!

It was easier to give up dairy than I thought, but if you look at my menus (not on this site - over on Stella style), I've let dairy creep back in during the holidays. Feel better without it, so its going out soon.

I find it easier to give up dairy than to be congested and achey all the time.

I do hope that I'l lbe able to eat dairy again after a few months of being gluten-free. I really don't miss the grains much, and anyway I can eat rice, corn, or quinoa if I really get a craving for it (they might make me fat, but they won't make me sick.) Coconut milk is fine in my coffee, but I do miss having cheese and butter.

This has been a good week for me. I am staying on plan and exercising. That has to count for something. My husband and I had a little tiff tonight, so I'm trying to stay away from the chocolate. Emotional eating. I wish I could really get a hold of this.

I think it may be emotional eating that keeps me from losing weight. I'm never not emotional for one reason or another. I don't necessarily go offplan, but I eat way too much of something acceptable. Yesterday was a very long stressful day and I told DS I was going to do relaxation exercises on the 'puter before eating, but I didn't. I just grabbed 2 handfuls of nuts and my diet coke and read my blogs. Not way off, but I don't know the damage yet. Since my stressful day wasn't over at that point I should have done the relaxation. When I came home at 9:30 it was even harder to behave. I had plain yogurt w/ flax meal. We'll see what the scale says today.

Sara, I'm not sure if you meant the same thing I was thinking but I tend to be an emotional eater for ANY kind of emotion. And you make a good point about overdoing it with "acceptable" foods. But I think tracking, staying accountable and always approaching each day as a new opportunity to feed ourselves well is the best we can do.

I am certainly not where I want to be PP-wise yet, but I'm making progress. I think it's time to re-read my book and start fresh. I need to get back to noting what I eat and weigh in Fitday and just trying to make good changes each day. My first was to back way off of the sugar (being pregnant really threw me with those cravings and I caved). The next is paying strict attention to quality...absolutely no HFCS or trans fats, organic when possible, few sweeteners and strictly Splenda, simple ingredients (limit on specialty LC "Frankenfoods") and selecting the best carb options possible.

The next step after that will be exercise, but I'm also trying to be cautious right now as I heal. I'm only two weeks postpartum and although I seem fine I don't want to do anything stupid. Remy, great news that you're exercising and keeping on track. Keep it up! Sara, you make a good point about destressing and how important that is. We need to take time for ourselves and when we do I think it continues to promote us taking better care of ourselves..if that makes sense? It's a funny chicken/egg thing right?

My next step after crawling into bed now (until the next feeding) is to go to the salon for a mani/pedi tomorrow. It's time for MamaLisa to treat herself a bit.

So, I resisted temptation all week. It is getting easier and easier. I did my workouts even though I didn't feel like it. Now I have been rewarded with a weight loss.

I did my bodyfat percentile and I'm still at 110 pounds of lean body mass. That means that I am losing nothing but fat! My goal is to hang on to that lean body mass and add more if possible. I don't want to crash my metabolism again.

MamaSara - I have to stay away from the nuts. I can't seem to lose if I eat them. When I do eat them, I eat 7. Only seven. It's torture to see everyone else in the family downing handfulls while I nibble on 7 nuts. But it works for me.

I haven't been "good" all week. I had my daughter do a gluten-free trial for a week (with no noticable changes in her health or behavior) and my willpower was way down having ready access to potato chips, rice cakes, etc.

I also tried some goat milk again (I have the powdered stuff in the pantry) and it made me feel congested and achey all over again. Darn- I used to tolerate goat's milk very well.

So now I need to really get back on track with eating well and avoiding the foods that make me feel sick. I see no point in keeping my kids on a strict gluten-free diet (at least until I can get some lab tests done on them to see if there's any medical reason, and a GF diet can make the labs unreliable) but I want to keep my house gluten free to keep myself safe. I think I'll keep the house GF but let them eat gluten away from home, and maybe allow non-crumbling GF foods that won't contaminate anything else (like cereal and granola bars.)

thanks for the update Ruth - I was wondering how the kid's GF week was going.

Also thanks Lisa for your update on the bebe and post partum life. take it easy on yourself - you are doing great. :-)


My update for the month so far: My eating is all over the place. Cravings, emotional eating, dairy, no-dairy, lc grains, not so lc grains, higher carb veggies...I'm struggling to find the right balance in maintenace (which is where I feel like I'm at right now). I vowed to go back to using fitday or myplan for a while to track my maintenence eating, but I can hardly find the time to do other (needed) things that are piling up...maybe all the money I'm saving in the budget needs to go to a personal assistant? LOL

As to the budget/debt-loss diet: things are going well here, again, trying to strike a balance. We are nearly out of debt to my family for the house (yea!) and closing in on having a real emergency fund. We are about 10 months to a year from paying off the credit card debt. I did manage to lower the interest rate on some of the debt - which helps, but I sooooo want it all to be gone. Not unlike how I felt after losing 20 pounds...that urgency to "finish" as if I was not adopting a permanent lifestyle change; in this case diverting money from the monthly budget that is currently paying debt into retirement and savings.

On the home front: my older kitty has been diagnosed hyperthyroid and is currently on medicaiiton to see how he, and in particualr his kidneys respond. Things are going well so far: he seems to be responding, time will tell, and we are relieved that there are longer term medical interventions that mean we may not have to do twice daily meds forever (soooo hard to find a pet sitter willing to do this unless you pay them a lot). After having spent 5 years with a diabetic pet (2 shots a day) I was wondering how I was going to deal with it this time around.

Thats all from here....

Jen

I'm having a hard time staying motivated, especially at night when the carb cravings are strongest. I'm back up to 170 lbs.

I'm hoping it will be easier next week when my oldest and youngest go back to school.

Can I ask what you folks eat for breakfast? It is the only meal I have trouble with since switching to PP. I can't eat eggs, and at times we don't have leftovers. I'm not a "breakfast must be breakfast food" person but I need to figure out some options that are fast and contain enough protein (about 34g for me). Any help/thoughts most appreciated.

Jen, it was great to see an update from you. I'm very impressed with the budget work you've done and like everyone always tells me...please don't beat yourself up about emotional eating. It's amazing what life imbalance can do to mess with our food intake, isn't it? You've proven yourself time and again and done so even with serious food limitations. Maybe you just needed a break and now you can start fresh again. I know that even though it's frustrating it can be a good opportunity. Hugs for your kitty too. We just had a sick kitty this past summer (sadly we had to say goodbye as well) - he was my love and it was so hard. So I feel for you!

Liz, if you can't do the egg thing and you don't have leftovers...oh yeah, and you don't want to do canned fish like Larry (just teasing you Larry! hee hee)...then I might suggest a nice LC protein shake? I used to do those all the time prior to heading to the gym because they digested easily. I found a great, yummy chocolate one (can look up the brand if you need me to - can't recall at the moment) that worked beautifully in just water! Then there is also the possibility of just snacking a bit and not getting your full grams for breakfast, but making up for them later. I know that's not the accepted approach but I did it plenty of times and it still worked out well for me. I would often view my protein goal for the day as an overall amount and not a per-meal. Of course I would do the full amount at one meal, but I was pretty flexible with it.

Ruth, I see by your stats that you were at 168.5 and now you're up to 170...and I'm thinking that could easily be water weight based on your eating being thrown off. So I'll just say hang in there and keep at it! You have been very successful eating this way and you'll get through this period. I can't wait to get back myself. I'm working on it and "failing" daily, but like I always say...true failure is not bothering to try.

Nice reminder, Lisa, that True Failure is not bothering to try! Isn't that what many of us do here daily? Maybe sometime I'll hit the Eades' magic 80/20 rule and the 80% of the time I'm on track will actually make me lose weight! At least I hope I'm reaping benefits on a cellular level.

Unfortunately, I don't know that I am. I have more aches and pains and cellulite than ever. Eeeew. I'm really buckling down tomorrow---pulling out PP and PPLP today to look over. Today is the last birthday. Hooooooray!

I don't have any breakfast suggestions---I either fast or do eggs or a flax muffin. Unless I feel like leftovers. Sometimes, I'll have whole milk, plain yogurt w/ berries and nuts. But that's probably too high in carbs and not high enough in protein!