Sending a huge hug with my flappy bat wings! I love you all!!!!! * Cyndi *

WOW! 85 lbs that is so awesome! You look wonderful! Hugs! Sue

Sue, I track all of my calories very closely. I want this weight off as quickly and painlessly as possible. I'm not even sure that I have heard any solid recommendations on calories. I have set my personal goal at 8-900 calories. I'll admit that on the weekends it seems to go up to closer to 11-1200. I still try to hit my goal of 90 grams of protein and regularly do that. I do notice that the days that I get a good jump on protein early in the day, I tend to do better overall. If I don't have half of my protein grams by lunch or lunch with afternoon snack, I get more discouraged and tend to make "less positive" choices for the rest of the day. I have pretty well weaned myself off all protein powder suppliments and focus on chicken and fish as my main protein sources. I do really like the Snickers Marathon bars that WalMart sells as they taste like a Snickers bar to me. At 20 grams of sugar, I usually only indulge in a half bar at a time maybe every other day. I am having to work harder on the water now that school has started up and I'm in my teaching mode. My dear wife gave me tremendous motivation the other day to stay right on track. As some of you know she has been working at losing some of her excess weight (without WLS) and has been eating a lot more than she was during the summer (when she was really motivated). With genuine concern and love, I asked her how many calories that she thought she was eating in a given day. She thought that maybe she was at 1200. I said that on some days I was having close to 1200 and she was eating considerably more than I was. I offered to run her calories for her on fitday if she would keep track of what she ate for a given day. Needless to say, she was not very open to the idea and did not even appreciate my "kind" encouragement. She wasn't outwardly mad, but she came back with the comment..."well, your last 50 pounds are going to come off slowly". Fortunately for me, that was just what I needed to hear....and he is off and running for that last 50 pounds. I know it WILL come off slower, but I'm going to make it as fast as I can. Do the plan and it will come off my friends. So much for my quick reply Sue.. John

Many of us seem to be going through some sort of a slump judging by some recent posts and the Sunday WI post. I figure I'd lighten the mood by offering a giant cyber group hug to everyone who needs it. HANG IN THERE MAY'ERS!!!!!!!!!!

Calories I'm not exactly sure yet. You may want to ask your NUT. I asked my doctor at my 3mo appointment but all he said was that aslong as I wasn't going over 1400, I'm doing just fine. Doesn't help much, does it? As for protein, this calculator will tell you how much you should be consuming. You're suppose to have 1.5g of protein per every kilo according to my surgeon's nurse. Here is that calculator: http://www.thinnerself.com/files/calculator.htm