Did you win the battle against the honey shreddies yesterday? Keeping my fingers crossed for ya.

I also found that will interesting. Perhaps he thought the SIL would take the money and gamble with it or take it from his wife. Yah, it doesn't sound like he held the one son in too high esteem either. Leaving him a shilling is kind of like leaving someone a $ today, isn't it? A slap in the face to put it nicely.

Hi Margaret! The family will was very interesting! My own relatives left the UK around 1775 for Canada - and were shipwrecked in the process! One of my ancestors was Lucy Maude Montgomery, who wrote a famous series called Anne of Green Gables. But the really funny part is that on my mum's side we are related to Buffalo Bill, who was a famous American frontiersman! Among other things *ahem*. hee hee

Sorry your scale is not cooperating just now. I second your pal Kimberly in saying: PUT DOWN THE HONEY SHREDDIES! lol isn't it strange the things we crave sometimes. I wish that I would have wild cravings for vegetables, but in all of my 38 years this has never been the case. My best advice at the mo' is for you to toss the Shreddies out of the box into a rubbish bin until they no longer pose a threat! Er...then you can get a NEW box...

All for now, do take good care.
Janice

Thanks for visiting. I found all sorts of really great wills and things when I did an in depth study of my family history. Firstly - I used all the censuses to get a view of the family over the years prior to my knowledge - then parish records showed BMD information. Searching the county records office for key names around the time of their death provided any wills that had been applied. You never know quite what will turn up next. One of my direct ancestors hit the newspapers because she was a bigamist - but I view it as she kind of granted herself a divorce.

Dawn
I guess that there is bound to be records somewhere associated with the adoption - because I imagine that records would have existed at the time even if no-one wanted to talk about it. It is great that you have Cherokee Indian heritage too - as that gives a whole extra cultural history for you to explore.

Kimberly
I have now had two days when the only cereal that I have had is my weetabix. This is a huge achievement - and I have to say that I have been tempted a lot. Walking to Twickenham and back was a good move on Monday - and Tuesday is always my busy day. My weight hasnt come down yet. On the theory that there might be some form of water retention going on too (which I would have expected up until about now), or any toilet requirements I have increased my water consumption which would rectify both these issues. Taking a sample weight of 137 - this gives 68.5 fluid ounces which is the same as 2.02 litres. I was drinking 2.5 litres of water every day (which should be more than enough). Over the past two days I have increased this to 3 litres while I get this sorted out.

It can be truly fascinating to look through the old wills - getting an insight to the way that these ancestors thought of each other. If you had been spending more time in the UK I would have suggested that you visited one or two county record offices to see what you could dig up here. If you have the key names, parish where they lived and when they died - it is quite easy to look up what wills if any may exist. People were often not leaving a fortune - but may well have written a will just the same.

Janice
It is great that you have a shipwreck, a famous author and a famous frontiersman in your ancestry. It is reputed that we are related to Fletcher Christian - but I never found the connection. He most certainly had associations with a village where my family lived. Both names Fletcher and Christian are used as christian names in my family (local custom uses many surnames as christian names in later generations).

The annoying thing about cereal is that I transfer from one cereal to another. If we dont have any honey shreddies in the house I eat too much of whatever else there is. The thing is that Rod will not transfer his cereal wishes over towards weetabix (which is healthy and does not pose a threat as I can happily limit it to my standard serving every day). I cannot ban him from having any cereal in the house. Whatever other cereal is in the house is a threat to me. My solution in times of weakness is to eat the whole box so that it is not there to tempt me the next day. This is not a good move.

My best solution is to go out walking. Even I have never resorted to popping into a shop, buying a box of cereal - and walking along the road munching my way through the cereal. I cannot go out today as Rod has arranged for something to be delivered. This means that there is more danger than I would like today. I already know where I will be walking outdoors tomorrow. On Friday we will be travelling to Newcastle.

Take care
Love
Margaret

Ah, yes, the husband and parents do sometimes make losing weight difficult..lol. I currently have brownies, tons of ice cream and chocolate covered ice cream bars in the house among other temptations. I could easily consume 4,000 calories per day and gain tons of lbs if I were to give in. If I were you, I'd start practising eating small amounts of foods that you find hard to eat in moderation in getting ready for maintenance.

Anyway, with the will power you exhibited during our outings, I am sure you can muster up the strength to keep away from the cereal. Drinking more water is an excellent idea.

I am not sure about my lineage far enough back to track down anything in England yet. I think I'd have to go back as far as the 17th century, b/c I believe they came over ages ago.

That's one of my favorite series!!!
I have never actually read the books, just only seen the movies that were made for PBS.
Though I could watch 'em again and again!

Thanks for visiting.

I am so bad at portion control with certain foods that there is a severe danger that I will never get to maintenance (even though I am so close) if I allow myself too much leeway yet. I think that is something that I will have to practice for maintenance when I am in maintenance.

I did manage to keep off all cereal other than my 3 weetabix on Wednesday. Had a good day foodwise.

Drank 3 litres of water again Wednesday. I am looking forward to reducing that to 2.5 litres when my weight settles.

Interestingly - my weight had got under the weight where I calculated that 2 litres should be sufficient and I did reduce to 2 litres. I was having other liquids too though. Thinking things through this was not wise as I knew that I was retaining water at the time - but it is easy to be wise in retrospect. My weight shot up by 1.8 pounds the next day! The penny didnt drop and I had 2 litres of water the following day too - and then another gain! Then I put things back to 2.5 litres as I realised with the gain it was no longer quite enough water.

What you need are some rare Christian names. There have been many times that I have blessed the Alphas and Omegas and the fact that we use surnames as Christian names. Names like Barwise Little do stand out from the crowd. It really does make the task so much easier. Genes reunited is a great website for finding other people's trees which give lots of ideas - and people can send you evidence that really helps put the tree together. If you get seriously into it - "Ancestry" is great - but can be quite expensive. I was lucky in that the Cumberland list on rootsweb used to let each other know whenever Ancestry did a free three day promotion. I made good use of those and got a whole heap of records without paying anything for them. I have done comparitively little in the way of family history research since starting to lose weight - although I do still get contacted by distant cousins - who are told by relatives "speak to Margaret". It is actually quite nice as some second cousins got in touch that we had totally lost track of (this happens in big families).

Hey,
I've been gone for a few days, just wanted to say hi. Hope things are going well for you.

Thanks for visiting. I hope that you enjoyed your time away and that things are going well for you.

You are so close Margaret, you can practically smell it! And after your surgery you will be tiny!!! I know there is still a long time of waiting in front of you, but still, keep that thoughtm because all that skin is bound to weigh a lot!

I bought myself (in an impulsive and rather stupid way) some cheese sticks and now I can't stop eating them, they are so yummy (kind of like your shreddies!). So memo to self: don't buy food that will stand in your way! If it's not there you don;t really miss it that badly.

Have a great end of the week, Camy

Congrats on staying away from the cereal!

We don't have any unusual christian names in the family other than Hiram..lol. Actually, I don't think I even need to visit those sites, as I'm nearly positive a distant relative has all of it done already. I just need to link up with her line--I think her gggf and mine are the same. I've just been too lazy to bother to do it.

Treadmill--GREAT!

Royalty? Cool!

I have never been to the British Isles save for Heathrow en route to France. I have gone to The Kingdom of Tonga in Nuku'alofa, the last monarchy of the South Pacific, and I stuck my head through the bars to get a better glimpse of the palace. I think I have a picture around here somewhere but the weather was crappy, here's one I didn't take: http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=9802&rendTypeId=4

Thank you for the kind words, yes we're both close to our goals, yay!!!

I dunno how I did it but I manage to stop eating my touble food before binging. I don't know how long it will last [it being my ability to not binge-eat]. I'm crossing my fingers!

HUGS!

Honestly, I'm finding it easier to do without entirely, even in maintenance. I can have ice cream in the house without being tempted by it. I cannot have *my* ice cream (anything I buy specifically for myself, rather than specifically for others) in the house, or the package becomes a single serving at some point. Easier to pass up the temptation at the store than to face it constantly in the house.

The saving grace is that over a few days, the calories do even out. Even the day that I had an extra 1,200 ice cream calories, by the end of the week my total calories were right at maintenance levels, because I didn't feel like eating much the next few days. Having that happen a couple of times (thankfully not to the same extent) has given me some confidence for not controlling my food quite so tightly. When I was losing, I had a very tight calorie range, but I seem to do better in maintenance with more leeway.

Is that a new low I saw today?

Must... get... to maintenance!!! ice cream.... myyy ice creaaaamm!!!

Hi!

That is awesome that you are staying away from your shreddiesI typically drink abt 3 -4 liters of water a day. Typically a bad day is abt 2 liters...I think alot of time it has been my saving grace ya know.Bacause I drink the water it constantly flushes out my system...and with working nights I usually drink a cpl liters at work as well.

Your doing so well lately...great in fact!

I dont usually buy junk food as when it is in the house we all eat it. Plus my little one loves food and loves to eat and has to eat whatever we are eating.

Thanks for visiting. I have hardly got to the forum for a few days. On Thursday I had a busy day and had to do the packing. On Friday we travelled to Newcastle. We are always fairly busy when in Newcastle - spending time with family and friends. Saturday was my birthday too. The day went well from a diet and exercise perspective - and was enjoyable too. No cake or naughty cereal. Just my normal "good" food. I got some good walking in too with my pedometer over 11 miles by the end of the day. Birthday weight was down to 9st6.4 which is just a fifth of a pound higher than my low weight - from 8th July. I will reply to your individual messages when I get back from walking - but thought that I should post something in case people were wondering where I had got to.