phyllser

Good Morning and Happy New Year!! Yes, I am definitely using the scooter less. I used to ride it ride to the side of the pool for water aerobics every morning. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to start parking it in the locker room. Everyone was shocked and my DH thought someone stole it!! LOL I am making a conscious effort to walk more and leave it parked. And I'm hoping to get the left knee fixed when we go back home in the spring and that will help a lot, I'm sure. My DH is looking forward to the day when we can get a light weight fold up scooter. I'm hoping I won't need it at all eventually!

Mango Mama, No, you're not the only one online on New Years Rockin' Eve!! I'm sitting her by myself on the computer, listening to my DH snoring in the back. He barely made it to 10pm. We watched the ball fall on the east coast feed on DirecTV and I guess he felt he'd stayed up late enough. Happy New Year! Guess we're too old to celebrate! I did get your Christmas email... cute!! So, it's your fault I was on the computer for hours that night playing on the elf site!! I made lots of elf videos and then I did a paste/cut of every photo of Lucky#7s that I could find to make a video of all of us as skinny elfs! I got the pictures and then ran out of steam! Never made the video! Happy New Year all my Lucky#7 Bandster friends!! :cheer2: :banana :Banane52: :Banane41: :mad: :scared: :Banane42: :Banane40::cheer2::Banane09: :cocktail: :drum: :violin:

We are partial to Winnebago products. Ours is a 32ft Brave. They now have one called the View that comes in a mercedes diesel engine. It's 24 ft. There are 3 floor plans, 2 with a slide out. We get 7-8 mpg in the Brave, but once we get down here to CA, we stay put for 4 months. Might take a trip back east this summer, but usually just the one big trip each year. So, not too bad. Probably about $150 in gas each travel day.

Oh, MY!! You HAVE had a busy week!! Don't get discouraged. Tomorrow is a NEW DAY and a NEW YEAR and it's going to be an awesome one for us!! You've done great already and you'll be back on track when all this holiday stuff is over!! We really enjoyed learning how to play Mexican Train the other night and looking forward to more opportunities to play. They have Pinochele, Bingo, Cribbage, etc. groups here... Maybe we can get a Mexican Train night on the schedule! It's fun! Ah, yes, the Packers! I'm happy that the Seahawks are in the playoffs, but I watched that Redskins game yesterday and they were impressive!! I'm not sure the Seahawks can beat them if they play that well next weekend!! Patriots game was pretty exciting! Didn't look too good for them for a while!! But they certainly pulled it off!! Just had to add some excitement by getting 12 points behind!! It was great! My DIL must have really enjoyed it! She's a BIG fan of the Patriots even though she lives in a SEAHAWKS house! Son & GS put up with her! And she supports their Seahawks habit.

:welcome::welcome::welcomeB::welcome::welcome: I can relate to so much of what you shared! I've been struggling with weight issues since about age 10. I've been to WW, OA, TOPS member for over 15 years w/o success, yoyo dieting for many, many years. My highest weight this year was about 328 and I am only 5 ft tall. I had my surgery in July and I am down almost 60 lb and it's NOT coming back this time! I've already had to give away a ton of clothes and now I'm at a point of getting rid of another bunch of things that are getting too baggy. I recently bought a new bathing suit three sizes smaller than I wore last winter. We are at an RV resort for the winter and I am doing Water aerobics 4X a week to help my weight loss. I also have sleep apnea, high BP, pre-Diabetes and I have fairly severe knee problems and use a handicap scooter. Recently, I have been using the scooter less and less and walking more. I used to ride the scooter to the side of the pool every morning. Now I park it in the locker room and walk. It gets easier and less painful to walk with every pound that I lose. We'll all be keeping you in our prayers as you embark on this journey. You will not regret your decision.

The first part of the season we were getting all the Seahawks games. I think we're not getting them now because they already have the western division title. I see they lost today. Boo Hoo!! I LOVE football, too, and my DH isn't that interested. Our grandson has a Fantasy Football league. Last year we both had teams in his league but DH paid no attention to his so I had to manage two teams. So this year only I have a team.... "Gram's Gremlins"!! I was in 6th place out of 9 teams for most of the season. Then two weeks ago I had a really good day and moved up to 5th. That lasted for one week. Now I'm in 6th again and the way my guys have played today I may even get knocked down another peg! I have two quarterbacks... Jon Kitna and Jay Cutler. I switch back and forth between the two of them and never seem to get it right. I wasn't paying close enough attention this week and I had at least two players in there that didn't even play today-- Terrell Owens and Ernest Graham. I usually check on Saturdays or Sunday morning to see if it looks like anyone is not going to play but I didn't do it this weekend! Oh, well! I guess we're off topic!!! :focus:

Good Afternoon!! Hope your are feeling better soon, Janet. Do you have to work tomorrow?? Last day of the year... be nice if you had that one extra day to recover. Karri... I'm so frustrated... no Seahawks games aired down here the past several weeks. Have to wait for the half time report on other games. Catching up on the Bills... my hometown team, too. Yesterday we went to see a movie... National Treasure... and I could sit in the seat with BOTH arm rests down with room to spare!! Wow!! Also, pants I'm wearing today are loose, and getting longer....I'm almost walking on them. They have one of those dreaded drawstrings at the waist, though. I usually rip them out and throw them away if I buy pants like that. Didn't do that with this pair so now I can tighten them up so they won't fall down! Hee hee! I'm not going to make the exercise challenge, but I will make the other one!

Makes sense to me, BlooEyez. I imagine the cold air could do that. Where in So CA are you?? Janet probably asked you that before and I forgot! She is in Indio and I am in Desert Hot Springs.

:welcome2: :welcomeB: :welcome2: You're doing great! If your doctor says you're in starvation mode, you probably need to up your calories. It works! I experienced that when I was on a pre-op diet and I was restricting myself to 500 caolories a day. Your body wants to store everything when it thinks you're starving it. Some people use the induction phase of Adkins to jump start their weight loss when they get stalled and they say that works well. If you like hanging out here with us, just use the "Quick Links" above and choose "subscribe to this thread". Then you should get email updates whenever someone posts.

Very quiet here today! I've been lurking around. Didn't do much today after water aerobics this morning. No plans here for New Years Eve either. We've talked about a couple of things... "dance" at our other park down the road... don't know very many people there, though. Chapel has a "watch party" in the evening... snacks and watch the NYC celebration on big projection TV. But, so far, not much motivation to do anything or go anywhere. We learned how to play "Mexican Train" last night. Maybe we can find someone to play again before we forget the rules!!

There are 4 different fabrics. I'm going for the poly-lycra. POLY is intended for warmth. Our original fabric is a comfy polyolefin-lycra blend with four-way stretch. It provides adequate warmth for most environments. Poly has the same comfortable feel and effect as wearing a sweater It was sooooo cold this morning! I think I will order it! Thanks for your input !

Grrrrr... just hit a wrong key and lost my whole post AGAIN!! So, I'll start over!! My scale has me at the same weight as the first day of our Christmas challenge, BUT, my official TOPS weigh in yesterday had me up 1.4 lb for the last week. So I upped my ticker for the first time! I WILL be DOWN next Wed! We missed Water aerobics last Friday because of the wind and then Christmas day, so we are short on exercise this past week. We came close to skipping this morning because it was only 45 degrees and very windy AGAIN this morning. But we toughed it out anyway, and it felt good. We made it through the hour and then scampered to the hottest spa... that some of us call the "lobster pot". I simmered in there for almost 45 minutes! My doctor would probably disapprove (BP), but it felt good. Trying to talk DH in to letting me buy a "waterwarmups" top online to help keep me warm on these cold windy mornings! He thinks it's too much money to spend when my weight is going down. I think it'd be worth it to keep me warm even if it only fits for the next three months while we're down here in the desert. Everyone seems to have weathered Christmas quite well. Not too many temptations around here. We went to potluck brunch at the chapel here Christmas morning... I stuck to the egg casseroles and avoided the coffee cakes, etc. Went out to dinner that night and had turkey dinner. Probably the potatoes, gravy and dressing I ate accounted for my 1.4 lb gain the next morning! I didn't eat the rolls and took two big slices of the turkey home with me.. but I DID enjoy the potatoes, gravy & dressing!! I guess that was my Christmas treat!

Wanted to add my two cents to the vitamin issue... I've started using Centrum Chewables... might be Centrum Silver Chewables... and find them not bad at all. I use the chewable Calcium from Costco... Viactin or something like that.. so I chew up the two of them at the same time and it's pretty okay. I had some liquid vitamins right after surgery and I somehow managed to gag that down until the bottle was empty! I'm stubborn... paid too much for them to dump the bottle down the drain! Now I"m having trouble getting my Vitamin B Complex down so I guess I'm going to go back to the liquid stuff from Target. Duh!! I was there today and forgot to get another bottle! Costco B-Complex goes down okay but then makes me really sick to my stomach. Karri... you could get some of that unflavored whey protein and add a tbsp or so to some of the things you can get down. It doesn't have a bad taste either and would give you a little boost in your protein intake. I don't believe it... after all that wind we had yesterday, sounds like its getting whipped up again out there. Yikes!! Not again!!

Wow!!! We are up to 500 pages!!! Just got back a little while ago from Christmas Eve candlelight service, then cruised around the park on my scooter taking a few pictures of the Christmas lights. Pictures are a little blurry.. no tripod, but our next door neighbor... professional photographer, was out, too, and she's going to share her photos with me. So now we're having a quiet Christmas Eve by ourselves. I'm enjoying reading the posts from this evening...and I'm recording "It's a Wonderful Life" to watch in a little while. BUT I wish I had just ONE Christmas cookie!! I LOVE the SMILEYs, Janet!! Our daughter might come down for spring break week in April, but definitely not before. GS moved back home and she doesn't want to leave him home alone. He's 19. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

God Bless you and hope you have a GREAT Christmas!! I can definitely relate to the emotions! Sunday was my day to boo hoo all day because that was the day our oldest daughter and her family were to arrive. Then they had to cancel their plans. I was so much looking forward to having family down here with us for Christmas!!

You look great, kiddo!! Impressive, Jackie!!We are all really getting in to these Smileys, aren't we???

My message went away!! As I was saying when I was so rudely interupted.... that was a great accomplishment, teacher girl, to LOSE all that weight while unfilled! Can you remind me why you had to get unfilled??? I'm old and I forgot!! There are too many pages to try to go back and find it! LOL

We'd rather sleep in our own bed in our RV, too. We put in a sleep number bed last summer, too!

We'd rather sleep in our own bed in our RV, too. We put in a sleep number bed last summer, too!

I'm so sorry, Kathy. That must have been very hard. Snuggle in with your DH & kids and enjoy your Christmas as best you can under the circumstances. God Bless! Keeping you in my prayers.

Janet, You did great with the cookies!! You're right... when I do taste something sweet, it seems really super sweet. Not that good. Lady at the Street Fair was giving out samples of "pastry chips" that she makes. I tried two... I could go for the raspberry ones, but knew it was not a good idea. DH bought a bag of raisins and they even tasted too sweet. And he thought they were way too juicy. He wants to dry them out some more! I did have one bad thing... one of those hebrew national hot dogs... didn't eat the roll, though. Eating it without the roll was kind of like peeling a banana.

HaHa..yes, typical male! And it wasn't his fault, right? In fact, it was probably yours.... you left the door open!! I think we got to the street fair around 10:30am. Wasn't as crowded as I thought it would be. Didn't find much. Bought a Mexican Train game. I've been wanting to learn how to play. I think we were there until about 1pm, then stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home. Yes, AGAIN!! WE forgot the Crystal Lite yesterday... Wally's brand. That was my fault because I was supposed to go pick my flavors. The Crystal Lite tastes too sweet.. I like the store brands. Albertson's is good, too. Good to hear from you, Chim!! We miss you! Don't stay away so long! You're not still working a bazillion jobs, right?? Merry Christmas! Hi, Brandy! Good report on your doctor appointment, too! I definitely seem to lose a little fluid between fills. My last one was Oct. 29, but I'm doing pretty good now so holding off for a while. May see Janet's doctor while I'm down here in the desert. Merry Christmas to all of you!

OH, I forgot to mention the gas. I didn't really have a problem with it. I was all stocked up on Gas-X and only used it once or twice. The shoulder pain was there, but not excruciating. I think it took about a month to completely go away, but it wasn't very intense.