feedyoureye

Keep a graph (like on MFP) It really helps to see the overview. I weigh every day, but check the graph and can see what is going on much better, also measure your measurements and body fat if you can now and then, these tell you as much if not more about where you are...

Very interesting article- 4 parts, read them all.... gut-microbiome-bacteria-weight-loss http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/gut-microbiome-bacteria-weight-loss?page=1

Hijack much? This might best be covered in a separate post?

I do like monday/ths best.... I did Tue/ths and it was too long like you say.

I work in a day program for adults with Developmental disabilities. Love my work! Glad this is working out well for you! I have been noticing ketosis at the end of fast days, the morning after.... I am down the recient bounce, plus another .2.... lowest yet this year. And HURRAY COOPS!!!!!

Swizzy, transportation walking is a lifestyle! Thats the best kind of exercise! I clip the fitbit to my bra, and forget it. The good thing about the One is you can recharge it... the zip uses batteries The One logs stairs or elevation, and sleep...and if you want to use it has a vibration alarm to wake you up.

My coworker has the zip, she loves it. I have the One. I love it! I had an ultra for a while... bought second hand, then went all the way with the One. You can compare them here: http://www.fitbit.com/comparison/trackers

Your tummy has not stopped working. It works as good as ever, if you use it the right way. You want to get to goal? Get back on the wagon. I am 2 1/2 years out, got to within 5 pounds of my goal, stalled out then gained 22 pounds. As of Jan 2013 I got back on the wagon, tried three different methods to get the 22+ off, and the third one is working the best. 5:2. NOT for people under a year out, people who are pregnant or that have eating disorders and are prone to being underweight. ... in my opinion. Like Georgia said, do some research, we have posted some stuff here, and there is more on line. As a newbie, I asked every question in the book. I also spent a lot of time researching, and still do. I have made mistakes, but learned from them. I have learned how to (mostly) not panic. Slow and easy. For the long haul. Leave hate out of it. Get informed, patient, accountable, honest. Get moving, make myself into the person that can get healthy and stay that way. Develop a support group. Yes. I tried to pay it back for the first couple of years, and never left this forum. About a year ago I just didn't feel like I had so much in common with the newer members. I needed support for myself and my struggle, and newbie advice was full of hubris and "I have lost this 20-30-100 pounds FOREVER" and "what am I doing wrong? I haven't lost any weight in a week! or two, or three..." I understand this. I said it too, but I needed someone to talk with who has the same experience level that I have...its not the same as early on. As others have said, Easy to stall, Easy to gain, Hard to lose, Easy to eat more, Hunger. The good part is the restriction is still there if the tool is used well. The honeymoon is a very exciting time, don't forget to enjoy every day of it! I still am so happy I got the sleeve, and it still serves me well. I love the Vets group, and they give me lots of support and I hope I do the same for them. Really, I think having a slightly isolated think tank of vets can be very useful for people closer to the surgery. When I was early out, I totally looked everywhere for people and research about people 3-4-5 year out... not much at that time. We can be that reality check. We are not everyone, I don't know what everyone else is doing that were on this forum years ago when I started here... some are coming back and its nice to see them, some are working thier a$$es off still, others, who knows. My Docs assistant said 50% of his sleeve patients hated the sleeve. She was surprised I liked it so much and was doing so well. What the F&%@? I just find that hard to believe, but thats what she said. You have to be a fighter. You have to get rid of your ideas about hating diets, hating weighing, hating counting calories and weighing food, exercising. Loving life and living a different way can be rich and good and it can work. "Dieting" is a small price to pay for a greater life! Learn to be grateful for the chance to turn things around. I am now 8 pounds from my lowest weight post sleeve. 13 from goal. Im almost there at 2 1/2 years. I am optimistic I will get there this time. It might take a while, but I have not given up, so it is still possible. Then there is maintenance.....which is pretty much more of the same forever (or maybe its not! Only the future will tell!) Good luck to you all, and welcome to the Vets forum soon enough....

Congratulations on all the success you have seen over the last three years! (even though it may not have looked like it at the time)

You have done great!

That is great! Im lucky if I hit 7000 a day, I think in 6 months Ive gotten to 10,000 twice or three times! Darned right thats exercise! you hook it up with its website, fill in your stats, connect it to MFP then clip it to your bra in the AM, wear it all day, use your phone or computer to upload wirelessly, and it will sinc with your MFP and tell you how many calories you have burned in a day. It also can tell you how many times you wake up at night, and how long you actually sleep. You can then log extra, non walking activities into your MFP and that will round out your exercise profile. I LOVE IT!!! Give it a try! I eat my exercise cals back, not all do, but anything over 1200 makes my day that much easier to do (on feast days, I dont add them on fast days of course) Girlfriend! Get that fitbit charged up and get it on! I find it very motivating and walk more for sure.

Fast day today, in the habit of putting an ESA carb control chocolate into my Iced decaf, drink that until I get home, then fix dinner. Works pretty well. HOWEVER today, I was trying to stay away from artificial sweeteners.... my iced tea is without... but the ESA is sweet. Oh well, at least I stayed away from the crystal meth... I mean crystal light!

I gained 1.2 pounds , but Im sure its the carb fest I had yesterday, fasting today, it will come off soon.

Thats what I thought it said too, but after looking at it again I realized that researcher said less protein was one way to get protection, the other way is fasting(the 3 1/2 day fast that Mosley did) which is protective, but goes away after a while. So Mosley went to other researchers who were studying alternate day fasting (the cheeseburger girl) and said you could get the protection with reduced calories on alternate days as well... (or the guy that was a calorie restrictor at the beginning who ate the bowl of fruit) So protein restriction did not become a big part of the 5:2. I believe I read in the 5:2 book that 50 gms min protein? I will have to look it up again.... I have been reading all kinds of fasting blogs and mix up some of the "facts"

I mostly use stevia.... however I think the point of the "opinion piece" is that when you eat something sweet, even artificial, it fools your body into thinking it has eaten something sweet (natural like honey, sugar) and it gives you a chemical response as if it was sugar. The calories are not there, so you may or may lose weight from using it...studies vary.... and think about if all those artificial sweet things we drink and eat were made with sugar, it might be a LOT of sugar, and we would really have a sugar addiction that can lead to diabetes and coronary desease... this is (may be) the bodies response to eating fake sugars. I know that sweet and low is very addictive to me... it is soooo sweet, if I start using it in my ice tea, thats all i want after a while! Not so much the other ones, but yes, them as well....

I can't eat sugar alcohols at all... My bowls complain so much, Its revolting! I mostly use stevia or splenda....

Being WLS people, I don't know if that changes things or not for us. Daisy, Just go with what you usually eat... I would say 1300 is probably OK if you do a little exercise. I eat 1200 if I do absolutely no exercise... up to 1600 if I walk 5 miles.... thats the range for me.

He didn't go into it to lose weight, but to get healthy, so that didn't cross my mind reallly. We have lost so much weight Georgia, we are now right there with him! A few more pounds, and even better numbers!

I forgot I was signed up... its free and very interesting! 'Caution' Warranted if Consuming Artificial Sweeteners Troy BrownJul 10, 2013 Consumption of noncaloric, artificially sweetened beverages (ASBs) is associated with an increased risk for disease variety of chronic diseases, according to an opinion article by Susan E. Swithers, PhD, a professor of behavioral neuroscience at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, published onlineJuly 10 in Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism. "[F]requent consumers of these sugar substitutes may...be at increased risk of excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease," Dr. Swithers writes. "This somewhat counterintuitive result may reflect negative consequences of interfering with learned relationships between sweet tastes and typical post-ingestive outcomes, which may result in impaired ability to compensate for energy provided when caloric sweeteners are consumed," Dr. Swithers writes. The prospective studies Dr. Swithers reviewed found an elevated risk for weight gain and obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and hypertension in those who consumed ASBs. No decreased risk for weight gain or increased body fat percentage was associated with ASB intake. It was often difficult to compare the magnitude of increased risk with that of participants who consumed sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), in part because of differences in intake. Participants who regularly consumed ASBs tended to have higher baseline body mass indexes compared with participants who did not, but some models that adjusted for that difference still found an increased risk. Studies that separately assessed risk among those who were not overweight or obese at baseline found that the risks of becoming overweight or obese, developing type 2 diabetes, and experiencing vascular events were increased even when considering baseline body mass indexes. Hormones, Brain Response Altered Dr. Swithers reviewed 2 interventional studies. The first found that children of normal weight who consume ASBs may have decreased weight gain compared with those who consume SSBs. The study did not compare children who consume ASBs with those who consume unsweetened beverages. In the second study, overweight and obese adults who substituted Water or ASBs for SSBs had no greater weight loss at 6 months than an attentional control group. ASB intake was not associated with improved fasting glucose, but water intake was. Brain responses are altered in those who consume artificial sweeteners compared with those who consume caloric sweeteners. In imaging studies of the human brain, sucrose activates dopaminergic midbrain areas involved with reward, but sucralose does not. Sucralose also reduces activation in other pathways related to taste when compared with sucrose. In addition, studies in humans have found that the release of hormones and markers of postprandial glucose homeostasis typically seen does not occur after ingestion of artificial sweeteners. Studies that combined artificial sweeteners in various ways with nutrients found that "artificial sweeteners may not augment nutrient-dependent release of insulin or the incretins in the same way that caloric sugars do," Dr. Swithers writes. "[C]urrent findings suggest that caution about the overall sweetening of the diet is warranted, regardless of whether the sweetener provides energy directly or not," Dr. Swithers concludes. Frank Hu, MD, PhD, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology and codirector of the program in obesity epidemiology and prevention at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, commented on the article in an email interview with Medscape Medical News. "Overall, I think the jury is still out regarding whether drinking diet sodas instead of SSBs is truly related to obesity and [cardiovascular disease] outcomes, in part because of the complex methodological problems in studying the effects of diet sodas in epidemiological studies. Small, short-term, [randomized controlled trials] do show that drinking diet sodas instead of SSBs reduces weight gain or induces more weight loss in controlled settings," Dr. Hu said. "Because [the] intense sweetness of ASBs may condition people towards greater preference for sweets and may enhance appetite, and because of the possibility that some consumers of diet soda may use this as a rationale for consuming other higher-calorie foods, caution is needed for recommending regular consumption of ASBs," Dr. Hu explained. "In [the] short-term, ASBs is preferable to the use of SSBs. For those who want to kick the habit of drinking sugary soda, diet soda may be the beverage equivalent of a nicotine patch: it can be used in small amounts, for a short time. For most people, plain water and unsweetened coffee or tea are more healthy alternatives to either SSBs or ASBs," Dr. Hu concluded. Walter Willett, MD, DrPH, Fredrick John Stare professor of epidemiology and nutrition and chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, commented on the article in an email interview with Medscape Medical News. He said that although he agrees with the author "that regular consumption of artificial sweeteners is not optimal, as these leave us conditioned to a high level of sweetness, which can distort our food choices," he considers a substantially better option than regular sugar-based choices. He notes, however, that the review by Dr. Swithers excludes a large analysis of beverages and weight gain, and some studies are misrepresented. "The risk of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease associated with artificial sweeteners is less than the risk associated with consumption of sugar," he emphasizes. This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Hu and Dr. Willett have disclosed no relevant financial relationships. Trends Endocrinol Metabol. Published online July 10, 2013. Full text

I'm not sure I'm ready to give truvia up....I did find non sweetened flavor drops on line.... I have a jug of decaf tea with Guava drops steeping in the fridge right now. I'm going to try and "use" that tomorrow fast day instead my instant green tea with honey, coconut and Fake sweetener that I love so much! I think there is something to getting used to a sweeter profile on my intake because of fake sugars. It's only two days a week.... I'll give it a try this week.

Looks like it to me! What page is that on? Looks like I'm right on the money. That seems kind of counter intuitive... if you want to stay the same eat what you need to stay the same for 5 days a week, and eat 1/4th of that 2 days a week.

Artificial sweetners http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/807615

I have been reading the studies saying your body acts like Artificial Sweeteners are real sugar... not the calories, but all the chemical reactions, so people who use artificial sweeteners have a higher incidence of Diabetes and Obesity than non users... even people who do not have a weight problem that were in the study may gain weight and have increased Diabetes.... lalalalalala!!! I don't want to know... I use them a lot too! I am trying to cut back.... and Southbeach talks about having Proteins along with sweet things to mediate the insulin kick back.... I don't know. SAD FACE. http://www.medscape....warticle/807615

I went out for nephews birthday lunch at Spaghetti Factory.... I got out of there for under 800 cals. Not that bad really. small dinner tonight and fast day tomorrow. I have kept off my last loss so far... feeling smaller! Do watch the BBC special I posted on the links page, it really tells the whole tale about how the 5:2 got started, and some details not in the book. It makes me feel even better about doing this! This program has been taken down from most of the web, so watch it quick, this sight may pull it as well. (don't know why!) Worth a look.

BMR is how many calories your body uses at rest...TDEE (I think it stands for Total daily energy expenditure) is how many it uses adding everything else you do as well during the day, exercise, walking, cleaning house, moving around at all...