Trig- Hahaha you had me laughing my butt off over your frozen meals experience!! I haven't tried any beef ones yet but the turkey ones have been all right with me. You are right that there is very little meat in them for sure. I mean, LITTLE. I'm really needing/preferring two meals on these down days over one big one, so I can make it work. I do a wrap and a quarter apple for one, and then a frozen meal and quarter apple for the other. Add in a coffee and a diet chai and I am finishing right around 500 for the down days with no hunger or unhappiness.

The great beauty of the plan is that we are given ~500 calories to work with and a blank slate on how that is actually going to be accomplished! Lends itself to a lot of creativity and frankly, WAAY better meals when only one is eaten in a day.

It has been sort of shocking to learn the kcals of everything. Like, I grilled two chicken breasts and then decided to weigh out what 2 ounces looks like. You know what it looks like? It looks like NOTHING! I was really shocked. And that is a very lean meat. That part of it has been super informative as well. Just realizing how many calories are in portions, and by and large I am not really a volume eater. I'm learning that every person in this country eats more by volume than they should, even low and middle volume eaters!

Lori- I am glad you keep sharing about your meals. I really wonder, when DS17 goes off to school next year, if I can get DH on board with trying this. He is pretty picky but your DH seems to be faring well. It really might be worth a shot and at the very least keep things more interesting.

Enjoy your day with the house all to yourself!

Jaz- Safe travels and have a great trip with those littles! So you will see them two weekends in a row? Your DD has done a great job with training them. I had mine doing the same thing with the 'quiet time' concept. I desperately needed that break each day!

Jaz, it's up to you but I strongly suggest that you read the book and get an overview. It is meant to be an up-cal day alternating with a down cal day and I couldn't tell if you were getting that with your plan to get 7 frozen meals? You definitely don't want to do strings of down days. You know? The alternating is meant to protect lean muscle, support the thyroid and keep the metabolism from going wonky.

Also, get just a couple of frozen dinners, that way if you love them as much as Trig did, you won't be stuck!

My book club just read "Enchantress of Numbers" which was MEH, IMO, and then I picked "Look How Happy I'm Making You" which is a book of short stories for mine, which I haven't yet read. I'll take it on my Kindle and read it on the trip. My turn is October 1.

Sounds like Bees hit you hard. It has been many years since I read it and in fact I wouldn't mind rereading it at some point.

Right now I am reading two Certification books: "The Wonder Weeks" and "Jack Newman's Breastfeeding Guide"(or something like that) and then I am also reading "The Gifted School" and "Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World."

••••••

Today will be a 'medium' day. Technically it should be an UP day but I really want to save my UP day for Football Sunday. We'll see. Maybe I will do two medium days. I've gotta think on it.

Down again today for a total of 3.6 down since starting about ten days ago. This is really working for me thus far in pretty much every way. I feel happy, I am enjoying the every other day of 'freedom' yet not losing my mind.. in fact, for the last year or two this is about how far I would make it on LC before falling off the wagon and undoing everything plus some. Not saying this is some magic bullet or panacea, but it is meeting my psychological and mental needs right now in regards to weight loss. I desperately needed a change and an ease of restriction.

Oddly, I feel more uncertain about the UP days at the moment than the Down days. Having the 'whole world' open to me is sort of intimidating!

I got two of my lessons completed yesterday so I am pretty well caught up. The only one not completed is the one that released yesterday, and I will save it to do at my Mom's. I'm actually taking several things to work on there because there will be a literal crap ton of time with NOTHING going on. She will sleep long, long hours and likely not appear until the afternoon, and her DH is nice enough but very difficult to talk to as 1) he can't really hear and 2) he is not a good conversationalist. I tire of that quickly. So I will mostly be hiding in the bedroom I guess. I've never even been to his house before. Ugh, I'm trying not to think about it because the whole thing sounds unbearably awkward when I do.

I'm taking a couple of certification books, my book club book, my lesson to do and my computer. That should do me. I just pray that they can figure out their wifi password or else I will be very sad!

My Mom is also driving me a bit nuts about the car sale (part of the reason I am going.) She needs to find the title and she hasn't 'gotten around to it' yet. I'm arriving on MONDAY. So hopefully that can be located at her house (oh lord) or at the bank or else we are going to have to jump through many hoops with this car purchase that will really drag things out.

I leave ATL on Thursday morning, pick up a woman I have not yet met that is my friend's friend, and then we head to Blue Ridge, GA for the Girl's Weekend. I *think* that will be fun. There are four of us, including me, and I know one of them. The other two I don't know yet, although we have all texted and they sound fun.

I am happy to say that I have the basement level to myself, god love my friend!, which has a bedroom, bath and a little den and kitchenette. I will be able to escape when I need to!

DH and I might go see a movie today called "Brittany Runs a Marathon" which looks super cute. I am also thinking about trying to make some homemade gummies out of Crystal Light drink mix. That would be a great low cal snack to take along with me! I saw a recipe for it online.