Wednesday April 12

Good morning and welcome songbird.

No walking but food was good.

Happy hump day everyone.

Wt 216. calories I don't know. We ate out twice and it would be a guess but over 1800. Two meals without N&Y. yea me. We accomplished a lot but 6 hours in the car is brutal. I had planned to drive again to spray the yard at our house. I may just hang around here today.

More later, David

136.4. No exercise. I had planned to but had worker's in the house all day yesterday installing A/C upstairs and another one checking out our freezer that died. Just couldn't muster enough energy to post yesterday but I did read most.

Ongoing struggles with teens, DH not feeling well now (to be expected) and feeling like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders and that isn't helping the weight around my middle. It is probably time to seek some counseling for me....though I'm not sure when in the day I would have time to go.

Paula

You need a hand or two. Is it helpful to have your mom/parents in the house? If so, can they come back? If not, please share with a friend that you are overwhelmed. Let the friend share that info with your wider network.

People want to help but don't know how. It's ok to have them hang out while repairmen are in the house, for example. They can even do that while you are somewhere else in the house. Let someone else take the reins and you can be the aloof big boss.

I think it might be harder to accept help when you aren't the one who was diagnosed. But, that diagnosis lays on the whole household. Everyone on the outside recognizes that.

When someone offered to clean my fridge I thought that was sweet but I didn't want anyone cleaning my fridge. Now I think back and wonder why not? I could have napped. (Full disclosure, I probably napped anyway and let stuff grow in the fridge.)

Your employee assistance program might be able to help with a flexible counselor. I don't know if all EAP's are alike, but access to ours is super fast and I think you can have 6 counseling sessions thru them. A friend of mine had her EAP counselor meet her in the lobby at work so maybe the counselor can come to you? Might be worth a call.

xoxox

Shel

From an emotional stand point it is great to have my Mom here. Both she and Dad are limited physically though so help with "stuff" isn't very practical. They could house sit with repair people here and drive kids if needed though. I do call Mom and vent on the phone and that helps. She is my best friend!

Sounds like you need a good hug! Wish I could take some of your burden away. Listen to Shell. I'm sure that wonderful ladies in your church would love to step up and help you in any way they can. Wishing you strength and positive energy!

I do need a hug! And a mini vacation somewhere warm without my children! Just wish DH felt good enough to do so!

Good morning,

I had to go see if someone named songbird joined the group :) At first I thought we were talking about early birds singing in the morning. Welcome Songbird!

We have a lot of hummingbirds. A fair amount of them over-winter but others have joined them and hummingbird wars abound. DH keeps a welcome mat out with feeders and balls of cotton for their nests. So much fun to see them go about their business. (Would anyone enjoy watching me go about my business? Pretty sure not!)

Daytime compression wrap on my lymph-arm has been helpful. I think I can literally squeeze out more benefit by keeping that up over the next few days. I have a love-hate relationship with those stupid wraps. How amazing is it that DianeO can squeeze out 3 lbs in a day? Wish we had the equivalent for squeezing out excess calories.

123's. I'm finally finding a groove in my new work hours including space to fit in yoga. In a week, a major project at work and home should wrap up. I think I had posted that my mood had been off lately.....on Monday I woke up feeling like myself again.

Hope springs!

Hug your skinny tight,

Shel

Another drive-by (and quick read). I'm sorry it is piling up on you Paula. You do need to stay healthy mentally and physically to deal with all of this.

Weight 115.5; calories 842. I've kind of gotten to feeling that 115 is my "Cinderella " weight. I have been trying to keep calories lower (without going crazy) when above that number and it seems to be working. I feel that I would get more aggressive on lowering calories if above 117.

David-isn't it amazing how eating out calories add up, even when we're eating such small portions, and even when we make good choices? It's a wonder everyone I know isn't my pre-surgery weight!

Liz-842 calories wow that sounds so low! I'll be interested if this is your maintenance level or if you'll be able to get away with more. 1200 calories for me now feels like a deficit. I'd say I generally feel good eating 1400-1500 calories--but even with my sleeve, at 7 years it's unfortunately easy to get up to 1700-1800 calories if I'm not eating the good stuff or snacking too much.

Paula-I agree with Shel. Allow yourself to ask for help. Or at the very least, let the unimportant things slide. If you're like me you probably try to say yes to everything and take care of everything. Delegate and trim down to necessities right now. No one will function if you cannot function! So take care of yourself first (that whole oxygen mask in an airplane thing)

Afm Weight 155.6 Calories: 937+couple handfuls of cereal in the middle of the night, Exercise: 1 hr. cardio (approx. 500 calories)

I was not feeling my workout yesterday. I felt like my hips weren't wanting to work the way I needed them to. I don't have hip trouble per se, but some days if I try to run or walk at too great of an incline I feel like one leg is compensating for the other. But I made it through and burned a good number of calories.

I assembled a stacked enchilada casserole before heading to the gym and once again put it in the oven on "cook time" when we left. We came back to cooked casserole and watermelon. I forgot how much I miss casseroles. I rarely ever eat them now--unless I'm at someone else's house/event, or occasionally if I have a large group to feed. But I ran this through MFP recipe builder and I don't think it's too bad. Definitely okay every once in awhile. It made 6 servings and each was 321 cals, 26 carbs, 25 protein, and 16 fat. It's never the calories in the casseroles that concern me (well, some do of course), but it's the insufficient protein. But I'm going to do some investigating to see if I can't find other lower-carb, lower-calorie, higher-protein casseroles. Especially now that there's high protein noodles.

DH is already preparing to be sad tonight. We'll take DSS to the bus station at 7pm