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Originally Posted by Auburn Well, I'm still at my mum's in Spain, eating fairly reasonably, but drinking far too much. However, seeing as I've now signed up to Kimberly's BL challenge that'll have to stop!!!

wow! spain! have a great time...but yeah don't forget about the challenge!

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In terms of the booze, today has been managable. But tomorrow (Saturday) will be extremely difficult as it's my mum's 70th birthday and we're having a huge family meal in a posh restaurant. Perhaps I can gain some extra points on the exercise front during the day... or perhaps I can simply be strong-willed in the evening!

happy birthday to your mum! you could be strongwilled and gain extra points through excercise hehe....

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Sunday will also be tricky, not because of the alcohol, but because I'll be travelling back home. I'm going to try to prepare fruit and sandwiches, because otherwise it will be airport and service station food. Not good for this challenge!

yeh prepared food is always a good idea...i've been travelling quite abit since i decided to lose weight and it always gives me a chance to eat something i wouldn' normally just because i haven't prepared and taken something with me!

looks like you've had a great day so far! keep it up!

;-)

x

Just think about all of us here rooting for you to keep those temptations away! You can do it girl!

I thought you were going to be in Spain longer than that! I didn't realize you were coming home so fast..lol. It seems like you just arrived..lol I hope you have a good time at your mom's birthday party tomorrow.

I guess you have to make the decision of what's more important--drinking/eating what you want or risking elimination in the challenge. Just keep in mind that you can still have a good time with your family even if you watch what you eat/drink.

Nice job today!

Hi Auburn

Well done on managing to have a great first day of the challenge. As soon as I read the "no alcohol" aspect of the bonus I thought of you - it is so difficult when it is part of the culture where you live to eat your meals with alcohol. You can only try your very best.

I certainly wish you luck - even though I am on another team.

I hope that your mother has a great birthday. Parents always like to treat the multiples of 10 as special - so I am sure that she will be in a major celebratory mood.

I hope that the travelling goes well. I hope that the journey home goes a lot better than the journey out. At least you are all together at the start which should help things go smoothly. I often like to nibble on journeys and a plastic box or two of prepared fruit has been a diet saver for me on a number of trips up and down to Newcastle - so you are right to be planning on taking stuff. I am particularly partial to a box of washed and seperated grapes that I can eat like sweets.

Take care
Love
Margaret

Hi Auburn

Welcome home! I hope that your journey home has gone well.

Did you manage to get a pedometer?

Take care
Love
Margaret

Hi everyone! I'm home at last! Well, actually, I got home in the early hours of this morning - 5 o'clock to be precise - after (a) getting lost on the motorways between the airport and chez moi, and (b) having the car break down Awful, awful day, but we made it back in one piece, that's the main thing.

But now on to the more serious matters... the challenge! I couldn't weigh myself properly in Spain as my mum's scales don't match mine, so I guestimated 81.9kg on the Friday morning weigh-in, and was rather put out to find myself this morning at 82.2kg. Not good. My chances of elimination have risen, of course, but I still have a number of days ahead. I've got myself back under control today so I could still be in the running... but we'll have to wait and see.

You know, Kimberly, I did end up having something to drink at my mum's birthday on Saturday but I also did some exercise! I've avoided all junk food as well since the beginning of your challenge, so that has to count for something!

Yes, Angel, in an ideal world I would have been strong-willed and I would have exercised! But if I was strong-willed, I wouldn't be where I (unfortunately) am today!!!

BTW, Margaret, I got a pedometre, which is firmly strapped onto my leg so it will be interesting to see how that pans out in the next few weeks.

7 January: today's eating and exercising:
WEIGHT: 82.2 (let's call it water retention!)
Breakfast: slimfast drink, lowfat yoghurt
Lunch: mixed indian-style vegetables, lentils, a small potato, rice
Dinner: home-made vegetable pizza (with stacks and stacks of veggies)
Snacks: -
Drinks: 6 glasses of water, a cup of tea
Exercise: 30 minutes
Pedometre reading:

Hi Auburn

I am sorry about the nightmare journey home. You did well not to pour yourself a stiff drink on getting in.

You are doing great. Lots of people seem to have succumbed to temptation once - although I havent checked out which teams they are in. All that you can do now is make sure that you do not do so again and try to get your 5 hours of exercise in. I have done mine and I know that you can do yours.

You are not the only one who's weight is currently up. My weight is a pound up (I am retaining water). All we can do is eat healthily and exercise and hope that the weight comes back down. It often does very quickly - so we can just hope that it does that.

TACTICS: We can probably make our weight be seen in the best light by
a/ weigh both Thursday and Friday and choose the best weight for challenge purposes (Kimberly has confirmed that we can use either day's weight and we do not have to be consistent).
b/ make sure Wednesday and Thursday we drink a full 2 litres of cold water. I think that this will be a little more than you have been having unless you are using very large glasses.
c/ try and avoid anything too salty or spicy. They can make you hold water.
d/ consider when to weigh. The lightest that I can ever get weighed is when I weigh on absolute empty. I normally pee, walk 6 miles, pee again then weigh. Obviously - if you can poo too - all the better. All very, very basic stuff - but it might just save your skin in the challenge.....

Take care
Love
Margaret

glad you're back home! 0.3kg isn't too much to be worried about. it will go soon enough! i love journeys like that which justdon't go to plan but then again i better do considering the amounts of times its happened to me. its a mini adventure i think lol!
talking about strong willed...you didn't have any junk food away from home. i lost bonus points for 1 day for eating 'bad' calories! i don't think you'll be eliminated though. just excercise like a machine the next 3 days. hehe.

;-)

x

Hi Auburn!
I'm visiting the diaries of those who are in the nys-vday challenge with me.

It's great to see someone else usings kgs! I always get confused with lbs.

It sounds you had fun at your mum's birthday. I love spain, I've been there 4 times and always had a good time.

Good luck with the challenge(s)!

Hello Margaret and thanks for all your very strategic advice! I like the idea of making sure that I'm really on "empty" - I can see that I'll be weighing myself several times on both Thursday and Friday!
In fact, I didn't succumb to the stiff drink on the motorway-journey-from-hell, but I ended up buying some M&Ms at a service station. What with the tiredness and the moral at rock bottom, I needed a little something to keep me going. So, in terms of the challenge, I've retained my bonus points for Friday and Monday, but lost them for Saturday (booze) and Sunday (chocolate). I'm going to work hard on the exercise to try to catch up. I'm lucky that junk food is rarely part of my downfall, and I find it fairly easy to avoid sweets. My problem has always been centred on fatty foods, lack of exercise, and the demon drink!

You also mentioned about drinking water and avoiding spicy food. I tend to drink 5 or 6 largish glasses of water a day (about 1.5 litres) so I'll have to up that. But tell me, does the water drinking really work? Unfortunately I love fairly spicy food. Nothing too hot: you'd never get me eating a vindaloo, but I often add a bit of paprika, cumin seeds, ground corriander or curry powder into my dishes. Are these spices really dangerous for weight-loss?

Hi Angel, I didn't see that you'd lost points for "bad" calories. Well, it seems that a lot of the people in the challenge are finding it tough-going. I guess if we could easily avoid junk food, sweets, alcohol and if we could exercise our backsides off for several hours a day, we wouldn't be part of this forum!!! But you seem to have done fine in the past couple of days. Did you read Margaret's tips to me in an earlier post? Both you and I could do with learning them off by heart, I think!

Hello India and thanks for visiting my diary. I will pop in and visit yours later today (if you've got one, of course!). Yes, the kgs versus lbs is confusing unless you've been brought up in both systems. I'm originally from Britain so my first system of weights was stones and pounds (which those on the other side of the Atlantic don't usually get - but I'm not sure about those "down-under"). Here in France they use kgs so, seeing as my scales are in kgs and have been for the past 11 or so years, I've got quite used to those. However, most people on the forum tend to work in simple lbs, so to really keep track and compare, you need to "translate" your kgs into lbs. I usually post in all three systems (yeah, I'm tri-lingual!!!). Do you know how to convert? It's 1 kg = 2.2 lbs. You'll soon get the knack of it!

Hey, it's okay, Auburn! I think almost everyone has had a slip up or two. I haven't had any slip ups (which I find amazing because I loove sweets) but I'm having trouble getting off my butt and exercising.

Hi Auburn

As far as saltiness goes - that has definitely made my weight go up. The Friday before Christmas we had roast pork and for the first time in ages I had the tiniest bit of crackling to nibble while dishing up. I didnt put any on my plate but did nibble a bit the size of a fingernail. As you know - my food is very repetitive and the only real variable tends to be my evening meal. The next night I had pork and vegetables again cut from the same joint. It was basically identical except that I had no crackling. My weights for the 3 days
Fri 12st 5.8 lbs
Sat 12st 6.2 lbs
Sun 12st 5.0 lbs
I really do put the temporary gain down to the salt on the crackling. If it was the fat of the crackling it would have stayed longer.

Everyone knows that I swear by salmon. I also tend to get very good results when I eat other fish too. Baked mackerel tends to be good for me. Tesco does a mackerel in a spicy marinade which is enjoyable but instead of losing weight when I have it I tend to get a temporary slight gain. As with the salty example my weight is back to the previous days weight or lower a day later - but in the first instance it goes up. The most likely explanation that I can think of is that the spices do what the salt does. It is enough to make me steer clear of anything too spicy just before a challenge weighing.

I certainly think that the water drinking helps. I always try and get in my 2 litres every day. I notice that Avenue has just endorsed the concept of drinking water in Tabithas diary. I would definitely drink my water on the day before a challenge weighing.

Take care
Love
Margaret

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Originally Posted by Auburn Hi Angel, I didn't see that you'd lost points for "bad" calories. Well, it seems that a lot of the people in the challenge are finding it tough-going. I guess if we could easily avoid junk food, sweets, alcohol and if we could exercise our backsides off for several hours a day, we wouldn't be part of this forum!!! But you seem to have done fine in the past couple of days. Did you read Margaret's tips to me in an earlier post? Both you and I could do with learning them off by heart, I think!

i have for one day but the rest have been fine so far. thats true the hardest bit is giving up the bad foods especially after christmas and new year but i think everyone has done really well so far.

Margaret does have a lot of good advice. she has helped me come a long way.

hope you have/had a good day!

;-)

x

I give you kudos for doing as well as you did. Honestly, if I had lost a day's bonus pts from eating something of the forbidden, I'd probably have made the most of it and ate and drank the forbidden the whole rest of the day.

Sorry your trip home was also rotten. Having the kiddies with you probably makes it worse.

I like spicy food and have never had any negative effects from it on the scale. I make my stirfries spicy nearly everytime, (including vindaloo! ooh I love it!) and have had good success with them. I have heard that spicy food boosts your metabolism. The salt and lack of water, however, is not good. Margaret is spot on there. Sodium makes you retain water, and so does dehydration, surprisingly. When the body is dehydrated, it hangs onto whatever water it has, causing retention. When it's properly hydrated, it gets rid of the excess.

Good luck with the weigh in!!

Too much sodium can definately have an impact on the scale, it can stay in your system for 72 hours! I got some new equipment recently and I had to go out of state for training, and we learned that having too much salt really affects the body by not allowing the good things to get into the cells and the bad things to get out. That in turn causes your body to carry extra water to dilute the salt...or something like that! That is why you need to drink more water when you have too much salt, I guess it helps the body flush it out so you won't retain as bad. I am no scientist, this company was just trying to get the point across to us not to let our clients get too much sodium. A minimum of 500 mg and a maximum of 2300-2400 mg.