Hi to you all. Come and join us on this final month of 2024. We are friendly but forthright, caring but cajoling, but always here for you. Lets have a final run up to the days before Christmas and do as much as we can to start the joyous season with a head start on our weight loss.

Everyone is welcome, oldies and newbies so jump into the conversation.

Don’t forget, we all care for each other.

Sunshine-girl, Wendleg and Sunny B.

Hello everyone & hopefully for me a more decisive December! Thank you S-G & I also watched Strictly last night & the standard seems so high & enjoyable to watch. I forgot to post that I weighed yesterday & lost 0.25lbs very little but at least I didn’t gain weight last week. I must admit losing any weight in December with all the eating out occasions we have lined up is going to be very challenging which is starting today with visiting our youngest son in his new flat & going out to lunch in a local Italian restaurant. I will try to stick to salad, protein & vegetables but will have some wine. Walking will be involved because we will catch a bus to the restaurant & weirdly I have been managing 5000 steps each day or rather limping 😂
However we must all keep taking care of our own well being as much as possible & enjoying social times with friends & family. Unfortunately for my husband & I this will include attending the funeral of a friend we were on holiday with on our Seine cruise earlier this year who shockingly was found dead at the bottom of her stairs. She had balance problems & must have fallen down her stairs & lived alone being found by her son when she hadn’t answered her phone. Very sad & unbelievable really that she is no longer with us but a lesson that as we age we must take care🤔🙁.
On a lighter note I am really looking forward to today & will be taking a book for my son called How to Hygge Your Home which is the Scandinavian word for creating & enjoying a well being feeling around us👍
I hope that everyone will have a safe & well being feeling December 🤞🤞🍀🍀
Margaret xx

Hello Margaret, sorry to hear about your friend, we should indeed take care of ourselves.

My sil is Danish so we know all about Hygge – except how to say it 🙂

Serves me right but I gained half a kilo after having 3 drinks last night. Cant say I enjoyed them and I feel pretty rough this morning. I never ever suffered from hangovers and would be dancing around the house while everyone else was holding their poor heads. Age has caught up with me, or maybe I have just got out of the habit and rarely drink now. I never understood how someone could have just one glass of wine (my husband does), I would always want another. Now I think one drink is enough just to be sociable. I also said not drinking for a month didn’t help with weight loss. Well maybe not, but drinking certainly adds the weight on.

We were going to go to the village Christmas fete this afternoon but the local hunt have partially blocked the lane while they flush out the wild boar and then they shoot them – or should I say cull them. They are a big nuisance around here and besides ruining the corps they can take lumps out of vehicles if they feel threatened. Hopefully we will get a big bag of meat in a couple of days. Anyway, we have been told to stay in.

Country life.

So sorry to hear about your friend, Margaret.
It really brings home how careful we all need to be. I have been trying to persuade a friend who lives alone to have one of the carried alarms that can be pressed in an emergency. However, like us all, there is a reluctance to admit that age is taking its toll! 🥴

I am determined to have a decisive December! Losing the last 2 pounds to get to my target 10.5 stones. I still feel it is unreal that I have lost so much in 6 months! (If you see me post a celebratory 🍾🎉🥳 don’t let it go to my head!!!)Then keeping my weight there without relapsing into the diabetic range!

I have never seen an episode of Strictly! 🤔🫣
Here’s to December!!

Well my weight is up by another half a kilo, so one in total. Hoping it is just a carb reaction and it will just drop off.

Pootle, I went for a field of vision test this morning and when she handed me my results the first think that caught my eye at the top of the page was AGE 71. Never, when did that happen.

Looks like I still have glaucoma i.e. it wasn’t a mistake. Next Monday I am having a brain MRI to make sure it isn’t a brain problem, especially after my surgery 2 years ago which affected blood flow to the brain. Then in the afternoon I am having a consultation with my lung doctor. Then the next day I am at the opthamologists for her to look at all my results and give a real diagnosis. There is a gap of about 2 hours between tests so we will be having lunch in Bergerac town centre. So I am still sticking to the diet and doing the best I can.

Have a good week.

Sorry to hear your news Margaret. Sounds like you have a difficult week coming up with the funeral.

How fantastic to be so near your target Pootle. Congratulations! Such an achievement.

I’m starting my third week now. Bit of a blip at the weekend – out shopping with my daughter on Saturday and I tore straight through my 50g carbs in one meal. Overall calories for the day came in at 1100, which I wasn’t so worried about as I’m actually finding it difficult to keep the calories up to 800 most days. Never mind, I’m not going to stress about it, days like that are important to me and don’t happen all that often, so I’m going to have to work round them.

Back on it since. Just had a nice tuna and cucumber salad for lunch, and chuffed with myself to have had a real mix of leaves to pad it out – lambs lettuce, red chard, pea shoots and spinach – rather than reaching for the toast as I would normally have done. I’ve always had a restricted diet which has been part of my problem with food (I’m a bit of a child when it comes to most stuff) and white carbs have always been the easy option for me. Trying to gently widen what I can eat is part of my hope for making this change too. Still hoping the scales get the message too though!

Margaret sorry to hear about your friend. Yes it’s so important to be mindful as we age. I’m sure that lots of the problems happen because we aren’t concentrating on doing one thing at a time. We are all guilty.

Thanks for setting this thread up s-g and hello everyone. My week has been topsy turvy. After putting on weight every day this week this morning I dropped it all apart from 0.4lb! I have no idea what’s going on but have to look on the bright side. Although I didn’t meet my goal of 1lb a week for November I did lose 2lbs! Not much but better than a gain. Note to self: must do better this month!

Just had an appointment with my dermatology consultant. I have a rare auto immune disease and he said I shouldn’t eat foods with sulphites, red wine for example! Or foods that ‘open up my blood vessels’ so I shouldn’t have cheese, chocolate, spicy food or alcohol, amongst other things! I will listen to him BUT can’t imagine life without spice, dark chocolate and wine! Think I may just have to take a little more care with my diet but at my age life’s pleasures are few enough! Anyway, apart from that I’m ’under control’.

Hope December is a decisive month for all of us. I just want to end the year at a lower weight than I started and so far I’m on track.

Hi everyone! I was here a few years ago and had great luck but over the pandemic my routine slowly fell apart—I’m sure a not unfamiliar story to many of us! I also started getting perimenopause symptoms in the last year that have thrown me for a loop and truly messed up my body’s metabolism in a new and awful way. So I’m back and excited to make progress again with this lovely group of people.

Hi Everyone
New to this forum but looking to join people who believe that this works. I’ve just weighed in and I have lost 14.8lbs in 4 weeks and feeling great and still motivated. Energy levels have increased and after first week no headaches. I am hoping to do it for the full 12 weeks as I’ve put on a bit of weight during perimenopause. Does everyone just have 2 meals in 800 cals?

Hello,

I do mostly 2 meals and stick to an 8 hour eating window each day starting just before midday. The only exception to the two meals is to have an occasional snack, but still within the 8 hours. I’m sometimes struggling to get up to the 800 cals, so if I’m a way off after dinner I sometimes weigh a slice of cheese to nibble on. Keeps me within my cals without pushing up my carbs, and stops me from thinking about toast and crisps!

Amazing progress LC! And Sleekly I’m sure you’ll soon be where you want to be 🙂

Hi everyone, I would like to welcome Sleeky, LC75, and Casey who I have seen on another thread. Everyone can join us here we are a good mix of oldies and newbies and some returners so don’t worry, you will get all the help you need here. Let us know if you have any special requirements, medical conditions, and hi to the perimenopausal.

My weight has dropped back down – carb fluid retention – but not quite back down to the 70.8, hopefully I will be back there in a couple of days. I will definitely be fasting (TRE) tonight as nurse is coming first thing in the morning to do my 3 month bloods.

Got the chiropodist this afternoon and it is an appointment I hate – she is lovely but we have 25 to 30 mins of silence as she speaks no English. I do try to have a conversation with her but after about 8 years I have run out of things to talk about. She asks about my blood results, my holidays, my family etc but it is the same thing every month. So, looking forward to an awkward silence, I will let her take the lead.

Hopefully, I will be back tomorrow with some great results.

Ooooh big excitement. Just looked out of the window and someone has left a big bin with a yellow lid at the gate. We are getting a new black bin as well. As new system and no-one is happy about it – but thats another story.

Just gone to drag it into the garden and a smaller black bin is inside it. The things that give us joy in the countryside 🙂

Russian doll wheelie bins Sunshine-girl! I could get excited over that!

Have faced the scales – Down 1kg in just over 2 weeks. Will not be disheartened… I repeat…

Jeans are baggier so will hang on to that!

Thank you for the welcome. Yes I’m eating over an 8hr window and likewise find it hard to get to 800. I need to stock up on the chocolate pennies yum

Hi everyone, hung on to make a comment as I had bloods taken this morning and I was waiting for the results. Then we had to go out so I have only just seen them. Yeah!!!! HbA1c 6.0 down from 6.3. Total cholesterol 2.1 and triglycerides down to 0.90. So I guess not drinking for a month does do some good even if my weight didn’t benefit – or maybe it did with that drop a few days ago.

Casey, you will be as excited as I am that tonight we went to the local Mayors to listen to a talk about what to do with our new bins. I think even the French left scratching their heads. Didn’t help improve my French as we couldn’t hear half of what was said. Oh well, at least we know the first date so everything will follow from there.

Have a good evening.

Hi all, was going to report the person who has put a gaming app on our thread but it doesn’t seem to be here now. Maybe admin got to it first.

Well, my good news continues and I am back down to just under 71kgs JUST 70.9. So the diet continues for as long as I have and not going to eat at a restaurant on Monday after my brain MRI. Will have time to go home, have lunch then go straight back into Bergerac for my other medical appt. Tuesday I have the doctor and he will be pleased with all my blood results so I hope my weight will also be well down. Think I was 72.4kgs at my last visit.

Our local supermarket have a Christmas special on. Saturday if you spend €80 you get four vouchers to spend in store for€20 each. So you spend 80 and get 80 as a gift. They have to then be spent over the following 4 weeks or you lose them. We are away for one of the weeks but will gain €60s worth of vouchers. Will just have to get up early as it will be packed.

Good morning S-G & I also noticed the gaming ap message that looked weird & out of place on here. Congratulations you are doing brilliantly with your weight loss 👏👏
I fasted on Tuesday which I haven’t done for awhile & it was fine. We were out to our first Christmas social meal & I ate prawn cocktail then a salty fish pie which had too many potatoes bulking it up & a salad followed by a very small portion of Christmas Pudding with some very thin custard. However I also had a large mulled wine. Not ideal but not too appalling for me plus a vodka & orange.
I’ve just seen my GP with some minor progress in that he is writing a letter to MSK attaching my surgeons letter asking them to expedite my own self referral🤔. It is now only possible to get referrals to orthopaedic surgery through MSK services. I am therefore still in limbo since we can’t really afford to pay £18000 for private surgery.
Lunch is going to be scotch egg & lots of salad & supper a beef stew with lots of vegetables.
Keep on going everyone the BSD is the most healthy way to eat! 🍀🍀
Margaret xx

Just quickly, the new Tim Spectre book The Food For Life Cookbook was discussed on Jeremy Whine (joke) this morning and I looked it up on Amazon and it has been reduced from £28 to 14.

Great news on your numbers SunshineGirl!
Alas I have never experienced a bin meeting… in a language I understand or otherwise!

I’ve had a bit of a bleh day. Dizzy this morning, but improved after lunch. I grabbed an early snack too so my eating window will be more than 8 hours today.
Coincidentally, maybe?, I have dropped 0.4kg since yesterday. Which is great but I don’t like the dizziness. I’ve kept my fluid intake up so I don’t think I’m dehydrated. Anyway, will see what tomorrow brings.

I once read something by Tim Spectre. It kind of left me irritated at the time, with references to allowing his favourite’s – manchego and Rioja -purely it seemed because they were his favourites.
Not having a problem with manchego or Rioja, but struggling to overcome the pull of a packet of hula-hoops winking at me I felt a bit out-classed and decided to be annoyed by him instead! I guess I entirely missed the point he was making but still 🙂

Margaret – I’m shamelessly nicking your scotch egg idea. That’ll make a nice change next week sometime. Thank you!

Hello. Just popping in to say sorry I’m not really posting at the moment.

Welcome to all our new members. Best of luck on your journeys. We all take a different path so always lots of helpful tips if you need them.

Margaret hope you get a date soon. Don’t know which part of the country you’re in but in the North, Wrightington in Wigan, or the Orthopedic hospital in Oswestry charge maybe two thirds for private surgery. Still a lot but maybe a thought? But don’t forget you can also opt for any hospital on the NHS so you don’t have to rely on local services.

So far this week I’m repeating my pattern of last week …… up a few ounces, up a few ounces, up a few ounces. Hopefully tomorrow it will be down a few!!!

Last night I steamed cauliflower and celeriac and whizzed the two together and I have to say I ended up with a really silky smooth purée. So tonight a ‘no cook’ meal of cauli/celeriac mash, tuna /salmon fish cakes (home made so know what’s in them) and petite pois. Maybe not the lowest carb meal but still pretty good.

Have a good evening and as good week.

It’s an interesting first week back. I started tracking everything on Monday. I haven’t made the calorie goal quite or the macros quite but I’m on the right track and have lost already. I’ve kept the cals below 1000 and the grams of carbs below 50. I seem to remember we used to do weekly weigh-ins if people wanted to share? On a certain day? Or was this post an example of that, ha.

I’ve had headaches and been sluggish but I seem to remember that at the beginning from doing it before. Today, the fourth day, I started to feel better midday. I remember this wonderful clarity of thinking from last time. I was tested for ADHD last week. My son was diagnosed and it opened the door for me. I find out at the end of the month. My son is medicated now and has special therapy and it’s helped him so much. I have some hopes for that for myself.

I enjoy reading about everyone’s lives and experiences.

Hi everyone,

Casey – you obviously haven’t lived – bins forever yeah :). The dizziness should pass once you are back in the swing of things. If you need a small yoghurt or something just to bring up your blood sugars and count in your allowances. I dont think you are diabetic so it shouldn’t be a problem. I think he adds … cheese within your allowance i.e. not too much. I would be more worried about a scotch egg but then it depends on the breadcrumb coating and if it is deep fried. You can make your own without a coating a cook in the oven. We cant get decent sausage meat here – it is all very fatty and gristley – is that a word? I suppose I could tear apart the sausages I buy from Ireland but they are so precious and expensive.

Margaret, sorry you are still having to wait. I cant comment on the NHS except to say you would have had the operation within weeks here in France – ask Wendleg about that.

Sleeky, you have to start on a path that you can manage and then see how or where you can cut back if you want to be within 800 cals. I can never really get below 50g carbs without upping the calories. You are right, we did used to do a weekly weigh in but that was when this thread was weekly. It became a bit of a chore setting up a new thread every week so we moved to monthly. Many of us still have a specific day we weigh in. For me it was always Tuesday and our weekly thread ran from Tues to Tues. I think historically when Verano and I first started and opened up threads we (or at least I did) at the start prepared over the weekend, writing menus, clearing out cupboards etc and then I did a fresh shop on a Monday as all my fresh food was a few days old. So it was always Tuesday and that is still my day. Although, I also get weighed daily to keep an eye on my BG and insulin doses and also sometimes mention weight on any day if I have good or bad news. Do whatever you want. We are all here to cheer you on or cheer you up 🙂

Weekend is approaching so hope it is a good one. On Saturday our local supermarket is having a spend €80 get €80 in vouchers, so 100% refund, so we are going to get up early and be there when it opens at 8.30am. The vouchers are pre-dated and can only be spent each week one at a time. As we are going away we will lose out on one €20 but can gift it to our housesitters, we will still earn €60. Then in the afternoon we are going to a chateau near Bergerac for a Christmas Fete – hope I don’t get tempted by food or mulled wine.

Thank you everyone for your good wishes & I saw my GP who did examine my knees & because I have already self referred will write a letter attaching my surgeons letter to expedite my appointment with MSK.
I’ve just weighed & more or less stayed the same weight except for 0.2lb? gain is that a quarter of a quarter pound?
Today I’m hosting a neighbourly lunch so drinks with all the Christmas type nibbles from M&S of filo prawns, duck & vegetable spring rolls, Indian nibbles then for lunch loads of different salad leaves tomatoes, red peppers, with accompanying salad pesto pasta, potato salad, nutty couscous, coleslaw with various quiches plus for hot a vegan MM Keto black bean & mushroom chilli with wholewheat couscous & creamed spinach. Puddings are tropical fruit salad & a traditional Scottish sherry trifle, no jelly! with mixed berries in the base. Then various cheeses on offer & grapes. I haven’t done this for years but it was always my family tradition to have an open house buffet on Boxing Day with a large bowl of punch & bubbly on offer. So an early Christmas happening.
One neighbour is bringing some Prosecco😀& prawn nibbles.
I probably won’t eat much as hostess because I’m too busy seeing everyone else is ok but afterwards tend to hoover up some leftovers but will try to have lots of salad avoiding the carby stuff 🤞🤞
I hope you all have a good weekend & are keeping safe from the high winds & rain today!!
Margaret xx