guysis

Julie - I am a very "modern" - Mom, Grandma - my grandkids call me when they want to go to Victoria Secret to buy "slutty underwear" (their Moms are "backward" in their opinions and won't do it for them).......just took my little 15 year oldest grandaughter over there to get a push up -(with gel no less - )..............they know I'll spend the money on them and love it! Before my boys got married ((they were in their mid 20's - (not doing this quite yet for my little 15 year olds): - my Mom and I went shopping for sexy nightgowns for their live-in fiance's................see it's inhereted))...................I grew up in the dark-ages..............when you are mature and ready and responsible (is that you???) go for it! I hope I don't get banned from this thread!!!

Thanks again Julie - you've always been such great support! It's ok to have what 16 year olds have - what fun! I'm living it all again thru my grandkids and you! I just hope my grandkids (they are 15 - two of them) progress a little slower than my wishes for you - you go for it - all at once - go Julie! Denise - you are welcome on this thread - no matter how far from goal........and whatever exercise you can do - that is great.......I'm not a runner - but get in something almost every day......what a difference this past year has made in my life - from couch potatoe to buff 67 year old grammy! I'm a fellow Oregonian - live in Lake Oswego - off exit 290 on Hwy 5! Boo - looking forward to Sunday, the 5th - give me a call with details (or PM me)!!!

Julie - You are a doll! Thanks for the BB offer - I think I've decided to get one - now that I'm hyped I want it now! The TT and BL are out for me - I've decided to be a naturally hanging grammy! I've come to terms with it (I think).............all my family are against my doing it - and I have to admit that at my age it's probably not the greatest idea! My brother who is only 62 (the one that I tried to talk into having the band) just had a stroke - he's morbidly obese, has diabetes, has had heart bypass surgery, has pulmonary problems................gettting worse and worse....................I think I'll take my 67 year old buff for a grammy body and be happy with it a'natural! That said, for health reasons I think I can use another few pounds downward............so, BB here I come..........I think I need a new push and hope this will be another tool to help me along! I'll give it one last try.............if that doesn't do it for me............I'll try and be happy with maintaining my 165-170-175 ish bod.

Tracy, Wow, you are doing great! Look at those stats just since April.......proud of you! Happy to hear you joined a gym. Julie, still trying to decide if I want to spend the money on the BB - I have spent so much money on weight related items that I gave up on in a short time........still thinking about it and if I really want to commit to actually taking the time to do all that is involved............guess that goes along with the fact that I'm not certain I want to commit to losing another 20 - 30 lbs????............and doing what I need to do in order to accomplish that??????? Into being buff again..................did my NIA class this morning (yesterday also)..............starting to feel like my old self. I missed not having the exercise routine that I've grown acustomed to the past months.................happy that I have no major travel plans for a while.

Dawn, So happy to hear from you! You are truely amazing with your fantastic success - truely an inspirational woman who shows what you can do with this little band and hours of healthy moving! You, Julie and Boo have pushed and prodded this now "buff" grammy down this wonderful road to health and happiness! I too have a little one - grandson - (he just turned 9) with Asperger's (high functioning - he reads at a level about 5 grades ahead & is a math wizard) or at least labeled that so that he can get the "special ed" that he needs. These past couple of months have been rough. I've been fighting to keep my weight within a 5 lb range...........went thru an unfill, refill, too many trips (that is travel - fun and exhauting), company from hell (another story)............now wanting the rest of summer to saunter by so I can enjoy the sun for a few more weeks. I've decided that I do want to loose another 20 - 30 lbs.............been going back and forth for months on "yes I do"/"No, this is goal". My exercise sessions have plummeted this past month......had lots of excuses.......but, no more! Went to a fun new exercise class "Zumba" on friday - latin dance.....worked up a great sweat and going to my beloved NIA class this morning. Julie, thinking I might get a Bodybugg to pep me up and have a new gadget to help get me going again. Do you still use yours and what do you think? Is it worth the investment? If so, I can either get it on-line and have the 2 training sessions by phone or I can go over to 24 HR Fitness and get it from them (I do not belong to that gym-it's a meat market) and have them do the sessions at their gym...........what do you suggest - did you get yours on-line...is it easy to set up? I need a push and something new to motivate me and get me going again.

Julie - You are the inspiration of all times! Makes me almost want to go to fitday and do the 800 calorie thingy - maybe it's time? You rock baby girl! Love Your bandster Mommy - Betty

Yeah Boo! I need to see you - so you can give me a kick in the tush to get going again! I'm alive, well, and doing good................just very busy with small trips and company thru this week................I'm reading, but not finding the time to put words down "on paper"! I'll get back in the sharing groove next week............Have a great week-end/week all.

Did my NIA class this morning........then came home and worked in the yard a long time...............too long, I'm a hurtin Grammy. Going up to Olympia for my refill tomorrow...........then on Tues have my sis from San Diego and another friend from San Francisco coming in to join myself and my Mah Jongg group - we're going to Sunriver (near Bend, OR) for a couple of days to play Mah Jongg - a bunch of us "bought" this 2 night - cabin that sleeps 8 - thingy at an auction (for a charity group)............so 8 of us girlies are off on Wed morning. Be back on Friday................you all have a great week.

Boo - I have this image! Kate Winslet? I must be right, right? Great talking to you! I just told Boo on the phone that I've been thinking of putting off my re-fill.................it's sort of nice being able to eat what you want! I'm going off with some friends next week and wouldn't it be nice not to worrry about what I can and can't eat!.......................I've decided not to put it off! I need my band filled! This is a first for me since April 06.....and it's been an awakening (all over again)! The band made me feel "normal". Without the band I am not "normal"..........This is the way a normal person eats (oh!).

Becky - you hit it right on the head! I'm going to be 68 years old in a couple of months..............it's about time I accepted the good stuff! Thanks for keeping the important things in our faces! Bubble - I hate weights also................but, I do belong to a gym and yes, I'm one of the oldest and least fit..............I've found that if I do a class - at our gym we have strenght and conditioning and Group power classes - it goes fast and is sometimes (????) even fun! I've been unfilled for a couple of weeks now - it's very hard! I have no restriction - I can eat anything - I've got an appt on Monday to get filled up again..............can't wait - I neeeeeeed this band!

Iky - Skittles - I'd do a "like it" size heath bar and pecans with coffee ice cream at Coldstone maybe 4 or 5 times in a row (ok maybe twice)!

Oh my - this thread is getting better and better! I'm a wreck - I can eat everything (I'm trying not to) and I don't have to chew good or go slow! Having a full - unfill - is so great (woops - I mean horrible - ?????). Amazing what 2.8cc of fluid will do - how frightening (woops - I mean great)...............I really did not believe what this band was doing for me - I do, I do, I do believe - Halleluya! Come on 16th when I have my appt to get filled back up! IT IS VERY FRIGHTENING TO SEE HOW FAST YOU CAN GO BACK!!!!!!!!! Alan and I walked to breakfast this morning (my half of the veggie omlet that I normally eat 1/4 of almost all went down quick - I caught myself in time - out of terror).............I'm off to NIA tomorrow morning.........the scale has crept up a few lbs (lucky I was at a low point because I couldn't keep anything down before the unfil)...........how I need this band - what's a gastric sleeve Julie.............I'll have to look it up - why would you do that if you lost your band vs another kind of surgery?

I'm back in the exercise grove! Did my NIA class Sat & Sun morning - both classes extra tough and I'm sore - haven't been to the gym since last Sunday - walked but with Alan that is not exactly strenuous - he lags a bit - now that I'm feeling better going to try that walk, jog thingy! Well, food goes down way too good now! I have no fluid in my band - what a difference. Going up to get filled up again on the 16th - going to go slow this time - I don't want to be that tight again! Julie, you are a stud! You and Boo passed me up (my ticker says 167, but it lies sometimes - I only change it when I go down but don't tell anyone - it's actually hovering just above 170 ish)..............you are twins and I'm fat! Today is my fat feeling day - and I'm a bit scared because of the open band.............how I've learned to rely on this helper (another thing to worry about!). A great week to all.

Sheila - Great to have you back with us...............look for us at: Passing For Thin - Support Thread for Those Approaching Goal

Go Julie - come on 60's! Thanks for the info on the panni - I'll def look into that.....................but...........unfortunately..............there is a bit more hanging................ah well................some days it matters and others it doesn't! I think with summer here - it brings it all to the surface a bit more in clothing - I want to wear sleevless, and have perky boobs popping out as well as wear low rider shorts with a firm junk in the trunk - in another life I'll do that and be 5'10"! Today is a great sunny day and I feel blessed to be a healthy grammy in a size 12/14! Wasabubble - run to your doc - that much port pain not a normal situation! Check it out! Didn't get to the gym today - had a rough night of "heartburn" - not usual for me, but the past few days have had more than usual - think it's related to all the problems I've had the past few weeks - taking meds for now and see if that will help - I've got a dr's appt for a refill a week from Monday and so if it isn't better will get help. Off to play Mah Jongg with my girlie friends today - will plan on walking to the movies this eve - a great hour & 1/2 rt walk.

Look what I found on another thread! From Physicology Today Article from the author of Passing for Thin Size and Sensibility Losing half her body weight was no picnic. But living thin—and expanding her sense of self—nearly made Frances Kuffle’s world blow up I had been summoned to The Show, the Holy Grail for authors and the fulfillment of all my mother’s dreams. In a harried day of phone calls from Chicago, at the tail end of a snowstorm, the producers of Oprah decided, with 90 minutes to catch the last shuttle out of LaGuardia, that they might want me. You’d think, on the eve of what could catapult my book to national attention, that I would be too nervous to eat. I am never too nervous to eat. As I grazed the basket of goodies in my expensive suite, I had two questions. First: Would Harpo Productions’ bean counters go over my hotel tab and ask, “Isn’t that the woman who lost all that weight? What are these charges for chocolate-covered almonds and honey peanuts doing here?” Second: Why am I eating all this stuff? I might be on TV tomorrow! What with Oprah replaying 24/7, everyone in America could count the bread crumbs on my velvet dress. So much for the can-do kid, who, after 42 years of obesity and missed opportunities, had lost 188 pounds and written a book about it. Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight And Finding My Self is an account of how I used my radical change in weight to turn a small, private worlds of eating and surviving into one as big as my former size 32 dresses. I climbed mountains! I swaddled myself in cashmere and had lovers; I went to Italy. I floated out of the gym after lifting weights, I sat in restaurant booths, wore bracelets, and crossed my legs and took the middle seat in airplanes. Then I used my weight loss to do the next impossible thing: I became and author. Being thin opened the doors to experience and intimacy. National exposure, however, was an intrusion I hadn’t considered. I am not a pundit or a role model. You’re going to be pilloried, Frances, I thought with the vehemence of a Sicilian curse. And yet, there I was gobbling Oprah’s $12 Cookies. I put on my pajamas and pulled back the comforter on the king-size bed. It was littered with wrappers. My cheeks were burning with shame and calories. Tomorrow, I promised myself solemnly. And when tomorrow came, I smiled and joked, and I was gracious when I wasn’t, after all, needed for the show. I ached not from disappointment but with the hangover of sugar in my muscles, the sour gas in my gut and the heartbreak of being a liar. After a failed romance and a change of jobs, I drifted into relapse in March 2003, a year before Oprah, I had time on my hands—and time, in my case, is the enemy. I filled it by studying where and how I went wrong, at the office, in the bedroom. Intellectually, I knew that the boyfriend was emotionally frozen and that my former employer was abusive and infantilizing, but I couldn’t shake my ingrained conviction that I was responsible for everything that went wrong. I stopped going to the gym: I started eating peanuts or rice cakes between meals. A little of this, a little of that, and one morning I announced to a friend that I saw no reason why I couldn’t eat blackberry pie and ice cream, get the craving out of my system and return to my abstinence by noon. I wasn’t talking about a slice of pie a la mode. I was talking about a whole pie and a pint of ice cream. A whole pie? That summer I was reminded at every turn that I needed to be thin to promote my book. “You don’t want those cookies, honey”, my mom said as I carried off a stack I’d grabbed from the cooling rack. “Remember: You’re going to be in Oprah’s Magazine.” She was wrong. I did want those cookies, and I didn’t need reminding about Oprah. I sighed and took two more. When I asked myself what I needed, I was met with an unconsoling barrage of hungers. I needed to know I was not disposable. I needed a resting place. I needed to know I had enough stuff to carry off the rest of my life—enough talent, discipline, and intelligence—and enough sufficiency to protect myself from more heartbreak. I needed enough hope to find the friends and man I mourned the lack of. From August 1999 to August 2003, I’d gambled that losing weight would get me closer to all that, and I was told what to eat in those years. Now, after three years of maintaining my weight loss, I needed to be told what to feel when everyone but me has an opinion of who I am. I knew I—not just my body but my very self—was in trouble when I brushed aside a fleeting thought about how fat I looked with the answer “Never mind. You’ll like yourself when you get thin.” How does one live with self acceptance as a future and an always-conditional state of mind? More pragmatically, in lieu of my size 8 clothes, my career depended on self assurance. When asked, I admitted that I’d gained weight, adding that I never presented myself as the poster girl of thin. I said this with poise, which is not the same thing as confidence. Poise is teachable; confidence is one of the elements missing from the periodic table, three parts self respect to two parts experience. To get to confidence, I was going to have to listen to my self-accusations and sit with the rejections. Maybe shame had something to teach me. My next recovery period from food addiction would be based on therapy, heretofore more a matter of coaching than peeling back the layers of self. My psychiatrist’s and therapist’s offices became the places I could air my feelings about myself and the hopes I could change my self-perception. “There’s no point in getting depressed just because I’m depressed” I told my psychiatrist, who increased my morning meds anyway. That October, on a blue-and-gold afternoon, I had Indian food with Lanie, a friend visiting from my hometown, Missoula, Montana. I described how depressed I was by my weight gain until she preempted me. “You’ve been very fat, Frances, and you’ve been very thin. Welcome to where the rest of us live.” I twiddled my fork in my plate of saag panir. I think of Lanie as being very tall and very thin, but a few months earlier I’d helped her pick out a dress. Her dress size was similar to what I was wearing that day. The event we shopped for had been a gathering of Montana writers, many of them old friends, all middle-aged. One had a rounder face than I remembered; another wore layers of a truly terrible print in the style that catalogs and store clerks describe as “flattering”. Someone else was still very thin but looked drawn and brittle as age caught up with her bone structure. These were woman I’d long envied for their pretty thinness, and yet I’d been less like them when I was a size 8 than I was now. At size 8, I had to admit, I was so self-conscious (and secretly, overweening proud of it) that often that was all I was. I could have programmed my answering machine to announce, “Hi, you’ve reached a size 8. Please leave a message and either the size 8 or Frances will get back to you.” None of the women at that party, or Lanie savoring her lamb jurma across from me, claimed their identities from their weights that night. They wanted to gossip, compare stories of their kids and discuss what they were writing, tell old jokes more cleverly than thy had at the last party, and sample the Desserts weighing down the potluck buffet. I was not unlike them. Smaller by a size than Lanie, larger by a size than Laura, a little fresher looking than Diane. Of the Americans who lose weight, 95 percent gain it back within five years. I had gained a third of it back. Not all of it. To some extent, I had beaten the odds. I was stronger than the echoes of the boyfriend and boss allowed me to hear. I was determined not to repeat the mistake of being, rather than having, a thin body. I’d lived through my size all of my life, so acutely aware and ashamed of my obesity that the likable things about me—my sense of humor, my intelligence, talent, friendliness, kindness—were as illusory to me as a magician’s stacked card deck. As long as I defined myself by my body size, I would not experience those qualities for myself. As fall turned to a snowy winter, I picked through the spiral of relationships that had unglued me the year before. I didn’t blame the boyfriend or my boss for my relapse. I had been half of the problem; healthier self esteem would not have collapsed under their judgments of me. In obesity, I had clamped my arms to my sides to keep from swinging as I walked. I craned my body over armrests in theaters and airplanes, stood in the back of group photos to minimize the space I took up. I got thin and continued to hide. Whatever reasons the boyfriend had come up with for not seeing me, I met with amicability and sympathy. Had I reacted honestly, even to myself, I might have ended the relationship. Instead I’d gambled all my sweetness only to find out I was disposable. Likewise, I had not pressed my boss for an agenda of responsibilities from the start, nor had I clarified with her that her work and recreation styles frustrated and frightened me. Slowly I began to find toeholds in the avalanche of food and doubt. I worried about how fat I looked to potential readers and what I could possible wear to flatter or disguise the 40 pounds I’d gained. At the same time, however, I had become the canvas of makeup artists, stylists, photographers and publicists. They weren’t looking at my stomach. “Give me a hundred-watt smile,” commanded a photographer whose censure I thought I’d seen when I walked in. I licked my teeth and flashed a grin only somewhat longer than her camera flare. “Wow.” She straightened up at the tripod. “That really is a hundred watts. These are gonna be great.”. When I saw myself in the magazine, my smile was, in fact, the focal point. When I began dating, at the age of 45, my smile was an attribute men commented on, but I hadn’t really seen it until it was emblazoned on glossy paper. It was bigger, it seemed, than my face itself. I’d been a size 8 in my author photo, taken as my food plan was wobbling but not yet in smithereens, in June 2003. I was surprised to see I still looked like….myself, apparently. The power of my smile fueled me through more publicity, giving me a sense of authentic attractiveness that allowed me to enjoy the process. When I had a couple of days in Santa Monica between readings, I had a chance to assess and absorb at my own pace. Walking along the Palisades, I admired the sea-twisted pines and pearly mist funneling out of Malibu Canyon. I felt as lucky as I had once felt by being hired, by being loved, and I felt worthy of my luck because I appreciated the prettiness of the place, the serendipity that brought me there and my particular grateful awareness that knitted the moment together. I’d tried to rob myself of that by punishing myself for the boss and the boyfriend. You should not have treated me that way, I thought. The emphasis was on “me”, and just then I knew who that was. I looked around carefully. There was a family reunion going on, or so I assumed until I got closer and realized it was cookout hosted for the park’s lost and unfound citizens. I smiled to myself. How…California. No gritty, iron-shuttered Salvation Army outposts here, no Soup and Jell-O punishment for being a bum. No siree Bob. In California, the homeless are just one more variant on the Beach Boys. I laughed out load. I’m here, I gloated. I like my own company. I was tired of the games—with food, with hiding what I looked like under big clothes and my big smile, with waiting until I was a size 8 again to like myself. I recommitted to chipping at my food addiction, but I let go of some of the rigidity I’d had in the first years of losing and maintaining my weight loss. “I want to be praised when I do things right, and I want to be forgiven when I mess up.” I told people closest to me. “And I want milk in my coffee.” It was a small list, but significant because it allowed me to fumble as I gained my momentum of eating sanely. Esteem, kindness, patience, forgiveness: By cloaking myself in these qualities, I could build a self that was not afraid of authority figures and charming men who have one eye on the door. Maybe these attributes will curb the millions of things that make me want to eat, starting with seeing my parents or returning to Montana. I turn into the kid whose mother had to make her school uniform, whose big tummy stretched the plaid into an Etcher cartoon; I became the sad, joking fat college student who was reading The Fairy Queene while her girlfriends were soaking up the half-naked wonder of being 20 years old. I think of my parents’ kitchens, and my mouth waters for gingerbread and well-buttered toast. I regress when I let people like Lanie, whose struggle is different, comment or take chare of what I eat. “That’s two Entrees, Francis,” Lanie pointed out when I said I wanted goat cheese salad and roast chicken for our first lunch together in Paris. “Oh, Well, then, I’ll have the salad I guess,” I settled, grumpily. That’s the way I eat, that’s how I lost 188 pounds; vegetables and Protein. I was allowing her to limit me to a smidgen of cheese, or insufficient vegetables, and allowing her supervision is how I got so mad--the fatal elixir of anger and crazed desire—that I bought all the chocolate in Charles De Gaulle for my untasting delectation. I am the kid who, when told not to put Beans up her nose, heads directly to the pantry. “I have got to learn to tell people to stay out of my food,” I reported to my therapist back in new York. Then again, perhaps this is an evolutionary process rather than a one-time miracle cure. In 2003, I denned up for two months in Montana and ate. In 2004, I struggled again in Montana but I also did a lot of hiking, alone with my dog and with my niece. My slow pace didn’t frustrate either of them. I went horseback riding and got a terrific tan while swimming every afternoon. My thighs did not chafe in the August heat along the Seine, and I was thrilled to cross the Appalachian Trail later that autumn. I had spells of disappointment and fear from the way I ate, but I was living in my body, on my body’s terms. It’s a small world I’ve pulled from the wrappers, boxes and crumbs in the past two years, but a very human one. I’ve seen my family, close friends and therapists hold on to the stubborn believe that I would come through this. They loved me enough to countenance my mistakes and let me start over. Each day, I venture a little farther from the safety of food, and my courage comes from understanding that I am a lot like a lot of people—a family member, a friend, a dog owner, a recidivist, a middle aged woman, a writer who got a good rhythm going and forgot to brush her hair. There is safety in numbers. Depression and relapse would have to wait for a different excuse than my size. I am ready to hope again. Frances Kuffel is the author of Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight And Finding My Self (Broadway books, 2004). Her website is • Frances Kuffel • author of Passing For Thin - Home

I just had this horrific fight with my husband Alan - who is scared silly for me to have ps - he thinks I'm too old to take the chance of elective surgery. We didn't actually have a fight about ps (just sort of around it).......????? I'm about at the place where with all the hanging skin - and am starting to think I'll stay around her for goal - I don't want more hanging and am wearing a 12/14 from a 3x............and feel decent (I didn't say perfect - as you all well know from previous posts)...........I got yelled at for having a couple of drinks ("empty calories") last night.................he watches what I eat and it drives me crazy - I love him to pieces and we hardly ever argue - he's just afraid for me and thinks for health reasons I should weigh less (and I think he's still worried I will gain this back - like always before).......................so, as soon as I get on this puter, the first thread I read is that a 71 year old adorable lady (I'm 67) who has lost 200 + lbs is going to have ps to feel sexy again! ugh! I'm going out in the 85 deg plus weather to pull weeds and sweat!

<p>Julie, you did it again - pulled me back! This is why having this "sister bandits" support is like no other - pulled back into the positive. I've been in the dumpster for several weeks - I've been way too "tight", haven't been able to eat solids - got into mostly only liquids - then again tried solids and could not keep anything down.................went for an unfill and I can get solids down again..................I feel better physically and emotionally. A little frightening (everything goes down), but doable for a couple of weeks until I get back for a fill.</p> <p> </p> <p>Went to a 4th party at a friends house - they live on a beautiful lake - have a boat house where the party was held - down a million steep flights of stairs. Last year it took me about a half an hour to climb up....................I really felt like I'd have a heart attack.............this year I was winded, but put one foot in front of the other and made it up pretty fast (carrying things!). Got uuuu's and aaaaa's about how great I look.................................again, looking around the corner at my life today vs what it would have been without the help of my band and the effort of all those hours of good, clean, sweaty exercise - I've done good - come on "older age"..............I'm ready to tackle you!</p> <p> </p> <p>I'm going out to buy some spanx today! - I thought it would just push it out either on the top or bottom? Do they make it for "arm flappies"? We could feel like a mummy.</p>

How about Passing for Young and Sexy (along with Thin)? I'm not any of the 3! But I try.......................the Young and Sexy (not possible), but Old and Sexy why not? The Thin.............well, not sure that is possible either - I'm not exactly there yet, but don't know if in my head I'll ever feel thin? My husband and friends tell me I'm looking great for an "old fart grammy" and that I should be happy and just maintain! I'm not happy because in the "buff" I look like an old droopy, hangy -used to be fat lady! With approx 20 lbs to go to my "goal"............it will be just that more hangy! Darn, Boo...............is it time to face those inner feelings? I really don't want to - working up a sweat and stopping eating is much easier. Along with Boo and Julie and others who I hope will join us in this thread we have had wonderful support for each other - mainly on an exercise thread..................along with Boo I pledge to continue with at least 20 days of at least 45 minutes a day. I belong to a wonderful gym, do a class called NIA (a combination of dance, tai chi, martial arts) 3-5 times a week, with some core, strength training, walking thrown in a few more times a week. I just had all the Fluid removed from my band this morning - had really irritated myself last week and could not keep any solid food down - not fun (never had this happen before)....................had a fluro and all looked good. I'm going back for a refill in a couple of weeks. Isn't it amazing what 2.8 cc of fluid can do - I'm wide open now................have to be very careful for the next couple of weeks!

I'm on my way up to Olympia to get unfilled - having large size problems since last Wed eve...................Boo, Aug 5th sounds great..........we'll talk! I agree with you Boo and Julie about all the thoughts..........just don't have the time to enter into the discussion right now...........whatever you both decide will be great.................. Life has been hectic the past few days (weeks?).............. Will return tomorrow and get back to you all!

Life is a bit hectic at the moment dealing with grandkids............off my regular routine..........didn't get my walk in this morning......maybe later? Yesterday did not make it to NIA either!!! I'm falling off the wagon.....be back in a couple of days! After dropping one grandaughter at the airport on Thurs morning (she'll head back to Sacramento).........will take off with #1 grandaughter (15 - Natalie) who lives here for a car trip to Seattle - we'll do "damage" for a day, sleep over, then drive home on Friday - bonding time. Next week I'll get back to Alan and Betty's normal routine. I need normal. Boo and Julie we are almost triplets in our weight.........all just above 170.............(I go between 167 - 172 ish)..............mostly 172 ish! I have a feeling Julie that Boo is "stickish" tho at her height..............we're just too short - in my next life I want to be 5'10 or so.

Julie - I'm on "vitamin P" (prozac) and have been for several years.........tried to go off of them about 6 months ago - did not work - am back on and life is pretty good - sometimes I think I need a stronger dose - but I'm pretty good "usually".

Julie - can we help? Got my week-end of NIA classes in and yesterday afternoon walked to and from the movies...............not quite 5 hours like Boo, but about 3 after NIA and walking! Wish I could do as well with food! I'm about ready to give up and just maintain - which is what I've been doing for months now. Can't seem to muster up the "strenghth" of cutting back on the calories in order to lose more.

One grandkiddie hit the road (flew home) on Thurs, one grandkiddie hit the trail with her uncle, aunt and cuz's (motor home trip to the beach for a couple of days).............so, Alan and I are "a couple" again..........the grandaughter will be back for a few more days and then I'm getting rid of all the junk in the house.................I'm mostly keeping away - but "mostly" is not not always...................all the protein that you are swearing to do - Julie, Boo...............I need it too! Got a good long, fast walk in today and worked in the yard for hours...............going to NIA in the morning and Sunday..........all this maintaining is getting me down (: - (never said that before!). Can I join you all on the way down............but, I cannot train for a marathon...........but, I guess I can get back to my "marathon gym days".......OK........starting on Monday ("yes, Rhett tomorrow" - boy does that show my age).

Yes, Julie - you said it all! Now - we need to get "it" back! "It" was so great! I'm clawing my way with you!