Halloween to Winter Holidays Challenge

[_Lilac_]

Hello everyone and welcome to the Halloween to Winter Holidays Challenge!! We'll tally up Dec 31 and start the New Year running! (or walking, or swimming, or biking, etc). There are many people who kinda disappear during holidays so I want to cover as much ground as we can while we can and be here over the next 8 weeks for these trying times!! 

We can post (daily/weekly) about our weight and non-scale successes, share helpful tips, support each other and talk about our ups and downs.  The following abbreviations can be helpful to use:

USW - Ultimate start weight

SW - starting weight for the challenge

CW - current weight 

PW - previous week's weight

GW - goal weight for the challenge

UGW- ultimate goal weight

To join, please simply post and you are in! Have a great time, let's get this going!

[jonesty]

Hello Everyone looking forward to success managing the holidays.

USW - 276.2 Ultimate start weight

SW - 254.2  starting weight for the challenge

CW - 254.2  current weight 

PW - ??? Restarting Dec 1 previous week's weight

GW - 249. 2  (- 5lbs) goal weight for the challenge

IGW - 229.2  (- 25 lbs for June 2018 Safari Trip) Intermediate Goal Weight

UGW - 160 lbs (June 2019 ultimate goal weight)

[dancefoxtrot]

hi all you nice peeps

Lost my Fitbit back in early Sept. but I finally ordered a new one today.  It will be here in 5 days so my steps will be counted again. I got a 25% discount because I lost it on the website customer service for my new charge 2. Last week the scale touched 148 and that scared me so today in says 145.6 or .8. 

Back at it again.  Haven't read any posts yet as I'm busy with darned paperwork today. 

See you soon.

Barbara G

[dancefoxtrot]

@yagirltildz

Could be water or muscle weight from all that cycling. 

Hope that your scale catches up soon.

Barbara G

[dancefoxtrot]

@Cele21

Hi

Glad to read that you are flushing the crap away and returning to mindfulness.  Hope the brain fuzz blows away with water and healthy food.

Best,

Barb

[dancefoxtrot]

@_Lilac_

Hello 

Hope that your hospital stay brings greater understanding of the cause of those darn seizures. Don't understand why the medicine doesn't control them for you, as it does for many others.

Happy exercising in the hospital. Are you going to have the electrodes attached all the time that you are there? 

All the best,

Barbara G

[March55]

Good luck with your hospital stay and hope they get to the bottom of everything, prayers for you.

[March55]

12/4/17 - I've been able to get my steps in everyday this week but my eating fell off track a little.  Each day is a new day to start over, so good morning all.  Stayed the same this weigh in so I'll concentrate a little harder on food choices.  Have a great week everyone.

USW - Ultimate start weight - (Previous challenge was 204)

SW - starting weight for the challenge (203)

CW - current weight  (201) - stayed the same

PW - previous week's weight (201)

GW - goal weight for the challenge (197)

UGW- ultimate goal weight (180)

[_Lilac_]

@dancefoxtrot Electrodes attached all week but i'll be unhooked for the weekend. Then i'll become a Borg again on monday. MRI, PET, other tests. Tech said 'inter-ictal' (spelling) but he's british, so I thought he said 'inter-rectal' and we had a big laugh about the misunderstanding. I just couldn't see why they'd need a rectal if they were testing my brain!!

And so, my laptop can't be used in here. The charger interferes with the telemetry equipment, and since the cat ate the charger and shorted out the battery, it requires the charger to be plugged in all the time. I live on my laptop!!  And the wifi is iffy here. Cuts off a lot. It's going to be a miserable two weeks. I'm spoiled, I know. Oh and I have three male roommates. No exercise today but i'm determined for tomorrow. 

[midatlanticC]

Hi everyone. Reporting back to say that I've reached my original challenge weight goal of losing 3 kg since starting on November 14th and have moved from the obese BMI category back to the overweight BMI category (yippee!) Setting a new goal for end of December to lose another 2 kg. 

[Dominique]

Reporting body fat %, not weight, using TrendWeight numbers:

USBF 2013 and before: no idea (didn’t have any device to estimate it), but probably around 25% or more.

SBF 30-Oct-17: 13.6%

PBF 6-Nov-17: 13.8%

PBF 13-Nov-17: 14.1% 

PBF 20-Nov-17: 14.1% 

PBF 27-Nov-17: 13.8% 

CBF 04-Dec-17: 13.6% 

GBF: 12.5%

UGBF: 11%

Another week of steady progress (I have now fully "recovered" from my trip to the US in late October!):

I probably won’t read my goal of 12.5% by the end of the year (especially since I plan to stop cutting and switch to maintenance in a couple of weeks), but I’d be happy to settle with 13%, which would be my all-time leanest (since I started using my Aria scale, 4.5 years ago).

[Dominique]

Sorry to hear about the loss of your Fitbit, @dancefoxtrot! I know the feeling when I lost my trusted & beloved One a couple of years ago (it was my very first Fitbit, so I had a special relationship with it, kind of colleage sweetheart sort of thing). On that day, I got an extra 12k steps by walking back the same route and looking down in the foolish hope I’d somehow spot it.

[Dominique]

Congrats for your achievement, @midatlanticC, way to go! 3 kg in 3 weeks is a very good start, your new goal of 2 kg in December sounds very reasonable and achievable,

[midatlanticC]

---

@Dominique wrote:

Congrats for your achievement, @midatlanticC, way to go! 3 kg in 3 weeks is a very good start, your new goal of 2 kg in December sounds very reasonable and achievable,

---

Thanks! Nice work on your steady progress as well 🙂

[_Lilac_]

I've been doing my Leslie Sansone -type walking and marching at my hospital bedside. I had over 9300 steps one day, 5600 yesterday. It is not easy to do. At least I can't overeat in here. I'm taking the best choices on the menu and they are small portions so I should be ok. I'm off my meds so I have had a horrible night of seizures, the reason i'm up after only 4 hrs after I got into bed. At least in a hospital you can get into bed whenever you want. I am looking forward to a weekend unhooked!

Not too much activity in here. I know it's a busy time of year. Make sure you get enough water, take care of yourself, laugh each day.

[freshcalendars]

Thank you for good thoughts... 

[_Lilac_]

Update: It is Friday evening and I'm unhooked from all my brain probes and free to shower and walk and do everything I would normally do. I went for a 10,000 step walk and it felt sooooo good to get out and move. In the morning, I'm going to go for a brisk walk around the 'Commons', which is a park-like area in the center of the city. There is also the old fort (Citadel Hill), which is a good hike at a decent incline. I might just go to the top and then head back in before the rain gets too bad. I have a four bed hospital room and two bathrooms to myself for the entire weekend. Yay! 

I hope everyone is doing great. 

[Dominique]

Reporting body fat %, not weight, using TrendWeight numbers:

USBF 2013 and before: no idea (didn’t have any device to estimate it), but probably around 25% or more.

SBF 30-Oct-17: 13.6%

PBF 6-Nov-17: 13.8%

PBF 13-Nov-17: 14.1% 

PBF 20-Nov-17: 14.1% 

PBF 27-Nov-17: 13.8% 

PBF 04-Dec-17: 13.6% 

CBF 11-Dec-17: 13.3% 

GBF: 12.5%

UGBF: 11%

Another week of steady progress.

[MagsOnTheBeach]

USW - 234

SW - 169.4

CW - 168.7

PW - 169.3

GW - 161

UGW- 155

I got down to 167 before the holiday and then have been working at getting back down to that weight.  I lost 4.2 over the past 2 weeks, but I'm still not back to 167.  I'll get there though!  I'm back on Dash diet's phase 2, (I did 2 weeks of phase 1 over the past 14 days).  This means I add back in fruit and a grain/starch - up to 2 a day each.  I'm sticking with starchy veggies as dinner starch and oats in the morning.  It's awesome to eat fruits again, I have a grapefruit for the afternoon and a manderines for morning snack.

[Dominique]

@MagsOnTheBeach: I’m not familiar with the phases of the DASH diet. Do phase 1 and 2 correspond to a certain caloric deficit, or is it more a qualitative thing (certains items allowed/forbidden)? 

[MagsOnTheBeach]

I use Marla Heller's book DASH Diet for Weight Loss.  She breaks down DASH according to the latest research - a kind of low carb 2 weeks phase that jumpstarts weight loss.  When I did it at my highest weight of 234, I lost over 15lbs in the first two weeks.  Then you go to a more balanced approach where for my appetite level I have 2-3 dairy servings (dairy has been shown to lower blood pressure), 1-3 servings of nuts and seeds, 6-8oz of lean protein, 2 -3 servings of fats, 2-3 servings of starches (whole grains, beans, starchy vegetables) and sweets  2-3 a week and the occasional treat once a month - like 2 slices of pizza for example. I try to stay at the low number but I don't sweat it if I have a hungry day and have the max. Now when I do the first phase, (I've done it 3 times this year), I lose much less but that is because I weigh a lot less I think.