New years resolutions anyone?

That is a really good article MP, and I agree with most of it. I believe the diet industry is set up for us to fail, or else they would no longer make money off of us right? Dieting does make you gain more weight and more body fat in the long run. I agree that everbody has a genetic set point. I agree that there are many emotional reasons and other factors that cause people to overeat and if thats why one is over eating those things do need to be delt with.
I can eat all the garbage I want and never be over 20lbs overweight, that being said even though the 20 extra pounds won't kill me the garbage is not good for my body. Junk food is addiciting and habit forming and the food industry knows that. I think the best approach to taking care of ones self is to eat "clean" whole foods like in the video I posted above and execize not limiting calories or food groups (jelly beans aren't a food group), weather that results in a size 2 or a size 12 or what ever as long as you know you are eating healthy at least for the most part and exercizing than you have done right. Not to say you can never have a piece of chocolate or a naughty treat of some kind but if you are exercizing and eating foods that rev you matabolism that treat is not even going to faze you.
The only times in my life that I have gained those 15-20 extra lbs is when I was not eating enough, often enough and not the right foods and not exercizing. Well mostly during and after my shoulder surgerys, and when I was pregnant I put on a few extra but took it right off, but I didn't execize during pregnancy. I just wanted to lay around like a beached whale, weebles wobble but they don't fall down lol!

[quote="Rusti"]Ok, I watched that video and it was really helpful! Then I found this website to determine my metabolic type. Hubby and I both ended up with type 2 - protein. Here's what it says: [url]http://www.naturalhealthyellowpages.com…]

So they're saying we should be eating REAL butter (I bought the fake stuff, lowest fat I could find...guess that was a bad idea), whole milk (we only buy skim...), regular ol' cheese (I buy fat free cheddar...)??? Help! I really want to go talk to a nutrition specialist now lol. Also, I'm wondering why white meat chicken isn't on the list. 90% of the chicken we eat is white meat. And I love avocado...so glad they're on the list.[/quote]

I only buy skim too thats no biggy, just the [b]wrong[/b] kind of so called healthy "wheat bread" thing and the high frutose corn syrup, you know I went to grab some Worcestershire sauce and it has high fructose corn syrup in it, I was apauled geez!
I would still limit your cheese because that saturated fat. But a little is ok, I use a little parmesan on my salads and I love the laughing cow cheese, have you tried it ? yum! and we use a slice of real swiss on our chicken sandwiches, remember? The good fats are in olive oil and avacado nuts stuff like that, I made my own salad dressing today with olive oil, garlic, anchovie paste and lemon, yummy and I could pronounce all the ingredients. ;-) Anyways yeah for the bread I have been eating Ezekial bread for years, it's the sprouted grain bread they were talking about and it comes in three different flavors, you'll find it in the freezer section. White meat chicken is just fine, don't worrie about that. Also the limiting artificial sweeteners those things are terrible for you, like poison, that's why your liver has to work so hard when you eat that stuff. Get you sweet from whole fruits.

Oh lol I looked at your list again I would just swap the brains out for chicken.....unless you like brains, you certainly can play with that a bit, just the clean whole food idea is the most important part.

Here is a spelt bread recipe, be careful when looking for some spelt bread will say spelt bread but only had spelt in and also will have sugar and wheat.
http://www.rwood.com/Recipes/Spelt_Brea…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Here is the Ezekial bread I buy.
http://www.foodforlife.com/sprouted-gra…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I am putting in a big effort to only shop on the outside walls of the grocery store (ie- produce, meats an dairy). Basically, if my great, great grandmother wouldn't have heard of it, then I don't think I want to eat it. I have read a few research articles recently that found that a lot of the info out there about how fat is bad for is being found inaccurate. In fact, eating grains is more likely to cause you to have heart disease or gain weight based on the ratio of omega fats (this also correlates to grain-fed versus grass-fed beef). The fat ratio in spring/summer grasses signal your body to be active/up metabolism. The fat ratio in grains (fall plants) signal your body to pack on fats in anticipation of winter and starvation. Because of all this, I have been trying to limit my grain intake and eat more fresh fruit/veggies. I also plan on getting a chest freezer and filling it with grass fed steer, deer and wild caught fish from various friends.

It's an interesting article, although they are very careful to only mention research that can be used to support their ideas/beliefs. I DO like the part about parents forcing their kids to eat, because that part is very real. Making your kids finish all their food does more harm than good, in my opinion.

The part that I didn't like is how they're basically in on the fat acceptance movement. If you want to see what REALLY happens to places that have poor lifestyle, look at what happened to Kiribati! Despite the author's awareness of causation /= correlation, they did that with the lifespan of overweight people. We have AMAZING healthcare nowadays and we can make people life through some crazy stuff.

There was an article that pointed out how hunter-gatherer peoples actually had the same lifespan as we do in the US once you take into account healthcare and vaccinations. Overweight people have the same lifespan as non-overweight people because they're dropping loads of cash on healthcare and doctors.

So overall, interesting article, but kind of like the author found something they like and have now stuck their fingers in their ears and are shouting "Lalalalalal!"

The low down on the chubby? It's lifestyle and genetics and culture. If you have genes that predispose you to being hefty (not a bad thing! This is VERY good for back in the day before agriculture) or getting type II diabetes (also not a bad thing, I recall from physiology class that it's associated with starvation survival) it will be harder to maintain ideal body weight (actually, body fat percent since weight doesn't matter). (No more parentheses, I promise)

The way we live is full of quick meals, high stress, and eating even when we're not hungry. Quick, fast meals that aren't lovingly created by your hand results in a less satisfying meal, and that results in you eating more. Carbs are also pretty bad nowadays because we don't need them. Sure, they're great as a cheap source of energy, but they offer little after that. Cheap, easy energy? Yeah, we're going to abuse that. Besides, grains were invented for making beer and stuff, not bread. We had to selectively breed wheat to have the characteristics to make the bread of today. Low carb diets are the best for overall nutrient to calorie ratio. Don't forget your bread is fortified. Because it isn't naturally very high in a lot of nutrients.

A quick aside on the whole fat conundrum: without fat in your diet, you cannot absorb fat-soluable vitamins, like A, D, E, and K. If you don't get enough fat you won't get enough of these, no matter how many vitamin pills you scarf down or how much fat-free milk to guzzle. If you don't get enough vitamin D, you can't absorb calcium. And then you get osteoporosis, ladies! We had an entire lecture about this in college. If you are at risk for osteoporosis do NOT try to lose weight on a low-fat diet. /aside

The foods we culturally eat are not so great. French fries, sandwiches, huge bowls of pasta, fast food, restaurants, microwave meals, fast fast fast! And because of our lifestyle, we don't have time to make something nice because we have that damn TPS report to get done. We have to sit in rush hour traffic, almost late for work, and then stand in line at the bank, realizing we'll only have an hour to spend with our kids before bed. There're bills, taxes, doctors' appointments, the basement leaking, the gas bill being too high, electricity going out and the alarm clock not going off, Fido escaping and terrorizing the neighbors, little Betsy is failing English, and so on. Yeah, can you really blame people for getting fed up and running to McDonalds? Again?

Food companies want to make money. End of the story. They manufacture foods they thing that people won't be able to stop eating because it makes them money. There is no getting around that. They have SAID that's what they do. On top of that, we know NOTHING about human nutrition. We barely know anything about animal nutrition and we've been doing double-blind research studies on them.

The yo-yo part of dieting? Being misled on what you can and can't eat mixed with a stressful life and lack of support from friends.

Anyway, this has gotten way too long and I apologize. I work in a research facility that has a lot of studies about nutrition going on right now. You'd be shocked at how it's all politics. Pretty sickening. Check who the researcher is friends with and check who funds your research projects guys... just a warning.

Well said, Third Peppermint. Although I don't agree with the whole low carb idea, but right carbs yes.
MP your are really lucky to have the fresh, not store bought meats like that, my husband wouldn't shoot a deer to save his life, and I mentioned going in on a steer with someone, but that ain't happening either. He said he would become attached to it.

Well said, Peppermint. I agree with everything you wrote. I tend to play the devil's advocate a lot so I try to find the research for and against just about everything so I can make as an informed decision as I can. One of my own reasonings to avoid grains is that I do have allergy issues. Unfortunately, I also have a meager budget and it is a lot cheaper to buy grain than meat (especially since I buy the bulk stuff and cook things myself) so I haven't been able to wean myself off it yet. The steer (could also get pork too) I would get from a farm that sells shares so I don't get attached. We used to raise pigs when I was little and I couldn't eat any of the meat. I am also trying to find sources of good poultry and rabbit, but again, my budget is less than what it needs to be to be able to afford this stuff. The deer I get from a friend who is a hunter. I pay for the tag and the dressing of the meat and she does the rest. The wild caught fish comes from a cousin's cousin who is an Alaska fisherman and sells it by the box. Rodeoratdogs, if you are interested in the fish, I can let you know the next time he will be in the area and can get you a box. It is sold by the box, which contains a lot of vacuum packed fish (I'll have to check with my mom on the pricing as she does the ordering for all the people we get it for).

Thanks for all the great info everyone. We have lots of deer in the freezer! I'm going to try to find the Ezekial bread and tortillas. There's a "whole foods" store (I think it's actually called Whole Foods lol) in the nearest big city where hubby works, and I'm going up there tomorrow. I will give them a call and might go on a shopping spree.

Regarding frozen meals - some of our favorite things is Lean Cuisines and Weight Watchers lunches and dinners. I always check the labels and get the ones that are lowest fat, carbs and sodium. Are these really that bad? Which reminds me of another subject we haven't covered - sodium. And salt. I bloat horribly after eating "regular" salt now that we've started working out and have to take a Diurex the next morning. It was so bad yesterday that I couldn't get my wedding band off. I resorted to icing my finger and then soaping it up, but neither worked and I had to just wait until it was ready. My mom has a rx for Vesicare (water pills) and I borrow a couple from her every Monday when I'm at her house. I'm thinking about asking my dr about getting a rx at my next checkup. I also have high blood pressure that I take meds for, and I take Ortho Tri-Cyclen (birth control). I wonder if either of those affect my water retention.

I just wanted to say that I'm back at my heaviest, I keep losing and gaining and such.
Pretty disappointed with myself. But the other day I joined weight watchers. Spent money so now I'm committed.
I will say, though, for any of you with Droid phones there is a free app that is the same thing as the 50 bucks I just spent but it was free. Kinda bummed I didn't see it sooner.
Its called WWDiary or something. It will calculate how many points you get a day and all of that.

Well I am no longer controlling my salt intake--my goal was to reset my taste buds, but I ended up resetting everything else instead. After about two weeks of a super-low-sodium diet supplemented by 1g salt daily in capsule form (which for me is roughly the amount I would usually dump on a bowl of plain pasta), I started becoming very salt-sensitive. I don't understand why, but I started having to drink much more water to counteract what salt I did ingest. Taking my salt pill would make me really, really thirsty, and any time I would have more salt than usual at dinner I would wake up the next morning completely parched and crusty. But my taste buds remained pretty much the same, so it was completely not worth it. Maybe I should have stuck with it longer, who knows, but I enjoy salt on my food so that's what I've gone back to. Now my body feels normal. Although the human body is designed to cope with a very wide range of daily salt intakes, salt does affect people differently and I count myself very lucky to be able to consume massive quantities of it while maintaining low blood pressure.

I did learn that if you season your food with acid, you can get away with using much less salt. I also learned that it's really hard to stick to a very low-sodium diet, as everything processed has a ton of it. Even supposedly 'low' or 'reduced'-sodium stuff. Even foods that aren't all that processed, like canned vegetables, can be heavily salted. A lot of 'unprocessed' foods are also surprisingly high in sodium, like milk.

I'm lucky that we have some great places to buy grass-fed meat and poultry (and great fish, too!) here in Columbus. The catch is that it closes a bit...early, so I rarely have time to get there after work. I studied poultry science in college and I remember reading studies comparing pastured (in the grass, eating bugs) chicken eggs to regular factory farmed / battery cage hens. You'd be surprised at the nutrition difference! The color is also amazingly bright.

I had to opportunity to grow up with farm animals in Yugoslavia. I THINK that that'd the reason why I don't get overly attached to them. We used to have pet piglets, chicks, and bunnies, but we'd eat them. It just seemed so normal! It's strange being here where everyone is so detached from their food. I miss having a huge garden with everything imaginable right in the back yard. People just didn't have these huge grassy lawns back then - you USED your land. I also miss the smokehouse, but it still smells good after all this time not being used.

I think the biggest problem with frozen meals is the other mysterious things that tag along that aren't as obvious. I'm sure there are many way worse brands of frozen meals out there, though! I will admit that Lean Cuisines can be yummy. The biggest problem might be that it's instant food instead of something you had to work for and therefore not as satisfying to your brain. I'm trying to find out how to make my own frozen dinners, so if I learn anything good I can pass it along.

Low carb for me is easier to get the nutrients I need without getting 3000 calories. Well, I might be exaggerating a lot... My trainer is having me get 120+ grams of protein a day and I'm not a huge advocate of "fake" foods so it can get difficult getting that much if I'm eating bread. I also might not be too attached to grains since cereal and toast make me really nauseous if I eat it, especially in the morning. It is nice and affordable though! I've been able to do no grains and pretty much no dairy (with the exception of coffee cream) for breakfast and lunch. I'm not as worried about the dairy since I didn't have any for a month and added it back in to no ill effect AND I have the genes for the adult ability to digest lactose. Unfortunately, my fiance doesn't seem to be able to eat anything EXCEPT bread and he's mostly vegetarian, so it makes cooking dinner complicated.

I don't know too much about salt, other than if you have 0 sodium in your diet you lose the ability to taste, and if you have too much you become accustomed to it to the point where you need it to taste food until you wean back. Also, it's not good to just flat out eat salt because it upsets your tummy. :)

Hi all I was gone all day. Rusti the lean cuisins are not the best choice because they are still processed, what I do if I want somthing quick like that is I chop up some romane lettuce and keep it in the fridge, you can make you own salad dressing out of olive oil, lemon garlic, stuff like that and keep that in the fridge too. Then I keep fresh whole chicken breasts in the fridge and season them up with spices I like and cut that up grill (we have a george forman grill for inside) and throw it on my salad, it is so good and completely satisfying. Another thing that is good to have around for a snack is sweet potatos, you can microwave those real quick. My hubby works at Costco, so I always know what they have in there. Right now they have these organic microwavable brown rice bowls and they a gooooood. Or make up a pot of stew and freeze that in serving sizes, have you tried that sweet potato stew recipe? soooo good. Hard boiled eggs in the fridge is another good idea. So you have healthier whole food choices that are still quick, you just have to do some looking around and try different things. You will love the Ezekial bread it has a really nice aroma and a somewhat nutty taste, very good bread. I like mine with just a bit of butter and organic honey. The Ezekial bread will not spike your insulin I know because my sister gets it for her husband and he's a diabetic.
As far as your retaining water, are you drinking enough water? I think if you drink enough water you should not retain water, enough water is half your body weight in oz. a day.

MP yes, let me know when you will be in the area, what kind of fish?

My mom usually gets salmon, but another friend just asked me to check about getting other Alaskan fish if they have it. I'll let you know when I get more details.

Ok MP thanks.

ThirdPeppermint, I don't think [b]no[/b] grains is healthy or realistic for the long term at all. Any diet that eliminates a whole food group is a "fad" diet and unrealistic and you will never stick to it long term.

[quote="nerd"]Well I am no longer controlling my salt intake--my goal was to reset my taste buds, but I ended up resetting everything else instead. After about two weeks of a super-low-sodium diet supplemented by 1g salt daily in capsule form (which for me is roughly the amount I would usually dump on a bowl of plain pasta), I started becoming very salt-sensitive. I don't understand why, but I started having to drink much more water to counteract what salt I did ingest. Taking my salt pill would make me really, really thirsty, and any time I would have more salt than usual at dinner I would wake up the next morning completely parched and crusty. But my taste buds remained pretty much the same, so it was completely not worth it. Maybe I should have stuck with it longer, who knows, but I enjoy salt on my food so that's what I've gone back to. Now my body feels normal. Although the human body is designed to cope with a very wide range of daily salt intakes, salt does affect people differently and I count myself very lucky to be able to consume massive quantities of it while maintaining low blood pressure.

I did learn that if you season your food with acid, you can get away with using much less salt. I also learned that it's really hard to stick to a very low-sodium diet, as everything processed has a ton of it. Even supposedly 'low' or 'reduced'-sodium stuff. Even foods that aren't all that processed, like canned vegetables, can be heavily salted. A lot of 'unprocessed' foods are also surprisingly high in sodium, like milk.[/quote]

I never really thought the salt was issue, esspecially if you eliminate processed foods that are loaded with salt that would be good enough I'd say, and use sea salt to season your food. I also have always loved salt and always had low blood pressure.

..........just like to ad that any diet where you have to eat pre-packaged food, use a point system, count calories, or emliminate a food group, this is what you have to ask yourself "can I maintain this the rest of my life"? If the answer is no then as you may succeed in loosing weight, you will not keep it off and more than likely gain more weight and fat than you originally started with. I have been into fitness since 1983 and I have lived it, seen people around me loose hundreds of pounds on weight watchers, Jenny Craig and the Atkins diet, only to blow up to much larger size after they went back to eating normally because they used somthing that was unrealistic for long term goals, instead of educating themselves to eat healthy unprocessed tasty satisfying foods and exercizing regularly. I hate to discourage any kind of weight loss effort, but I know what works and what doesn't and I honestly hate to see people fail at being fit and healthy.

A lot of people have some very strong feelings about grains. Not so sure why (wait, maybe pasta, pizza, and panninis?), but if I don't like them and can get my nutrients from other sources I don't really see the problem. :D

What I do have a problem with is how the food pyramid was originally made by a cookbook author and is promoted by the USDA. Department of Agriculture... Why isn't the health department telling us what we should eat? The ag industry scares me since I went to school with them AND that whole fiasco with the dean of the Iowa (grains anyone?) agriculture school saying that she "didn't have an opinion" on the statement that cows "eat grass." Even a well-respected agriculture sustainable professor was dropped from the running for a job because he openly said that cows ate grass. Uh, suspicious?

I also don't like how the fruit and vegetable serving suggestion was decided by the American Cancer Society and some large produce corporations. Also not who I want to decide what I should eat. And now that the study came out that covered thousands of people over many years and showed that increased veggies and fruits don't prevent cancer... That being said those things have lots of good things in them, I'm sure! it just doesn't do what one might think. On top of all of that, there really isn't any regulation of the nutrient content of our nation's produce. The calcium in broccoli has decreased 50+% than around 50 years ago. Don't worry though! They add lots of nutrients to your bread to prevent malnutrition since people eat so much of it.

I was learning about gladiators from ancient Rome recently. They were almost completely vegetarian and ate a high barley diet. The reason was that this gave them a thick layer of fat - fat bleeds more and can help protect you from slashes during "battle." The end result is a very flashy looking fight that leaves living people behind to fight another day.

On top of all of that, rice cereal has recently been linked to insulin-resistance in children and appears to acclimate them to high carb diets.

That being said I don't like eating them because I don't like the flavor and I'm uneasy about the whole industry. Everyone else should feel free to eat away, but try to stick with whole grains (including brown rice cereal.) :)

Lol, I definitely don't have strong feelings about grains, and the grains I'm talking about are not processed breakfast cereals or pizza dough. Did you even watch the video I posted?
If you really don't like grains and they make you sick feeling then listen to you body, but for people in general there are many healthy unprocessed options for grains like quinoa, brown rice, brown rice pasta, atrichoke pasta sprouted grains and sprouted grain breads and for cereal, oatmeal, spelt, millet.
I don't blame you for not trusting the food industry, but the same can be said for the meat industry, I hate that they shoot up beef with hormones. That's why I think that it's so great that so many of you have the option of venison and grass fed beef that you have raised yourself.

Sorry, I didn't mean that you had super strong feelings about grain, I have just run across people that get MAD when you say anything negative about them. My jab at the pizza is more a jab at the people who do eat bright white Wonder Bread, snack cakes, and Pizza Hut all the time and then freak when you tell them they're overdoing it. I honestly don't believe you need bread products with ever meal, but I won't turn down tortilla soup... or caldo tlalpeno... or a good beer. :D

I am partial to quinoa (although my botonist friend would beat me with some kind of dangerous plant if I didn't mention that they're pseudograins like amarant and book wheat. The moral of my story is that if I'd have anything to suggest to people about the topic is: don't overdo it! Moderation and variety is the spice of life!

So yeah, cutting out something JUST for weight loss? Bad. Cutting something out because your body doesn't like it? Probably good. I totally agree with you that there are TONS of healthy options for people. I also 100% agree that if someone knows they won't be able to keep up with something for the rest of their life they shouldn't do it to keep weight off. I can't imagine what constant weight gain and loss could do to your body... I LOVE this part that you write: "healthy unprocessed tasty satisfying foods and exercizing regularly." That is definitely what people need to learn - not going on the Twinkie diet or what have you. I don't feel that "diets" work so much as adjusting your diet and way of living, if that makes sense?

Ugh, the meat industry is also pretty gnarly. My dream would be to open a farm that raised all heirloom/heritage plants and animals in a natural way. Anyone want to be a farm hand? :D

P.S. I just remembered. I like raw oats but NOT cooked oats. Does anyone else have this problem? The raw ones taste like oatmeal cookies...

No we don't eat bread products every meal, and I do think that people way over do it, and the bulk of processed food has flour or wheat in it, crackers bread all of that people need to learn they are better with out, but it makes up the bulk of most at least, american diets, I'm not sure about other cultures.
Now I have to take of bite of some raw oats, now you got me curious....wait....oh that was actually quite good, once you got past the dry part, I wonder if I could get my daughter to snack on that...lol, like it was a treat ;-) . She loves my organic brown rice, but she never liked white rice so every time I open one now we share it.
I agree with everything you are saying there now, and I think that the blood type book for O's is pretty right on and why O's lean towards more protein meat diets, the only 2 breads it says is good for us is Essene bread, which I haven't tried and the other is Ezekial bread which I have been eating since I bought the book several years ago. The bulk of my diet is probably protein, but I still enjoy fresh fruits, (love pineapple) veggies and some healthy grains. We don't drink any soda, just water and tea, and we do enjoy occasional good beer. We decided once we reach our goals we will go out once every month or 2 to our favorite brewery and have a pitcher of Hefeweizen and they have a great Ceasar there with blackened salmon :D
My husband and I both have been fit most of our lives, him being a competitive swimmer and me just being into execize and a equestrian for most of my life and we enjoy that level of fitness and the quality of life that comes with it.
It's kind of funny though because I'm a short stocky girl and he's very tall and his body looks the the Avatar body's from the movie , no lie, just like that.

I've lost 14 lbs from Jan 1 to Feb 1. Yay!
Not really dieting, just eating lower calories and healthier food but have treat every now and then.
Yay!

WOW! That's awesome!

So where I am living now, I am basically unable to do any working out outside except for when I can manage to train the pony during day light hours. I have been using my Wii Fit, but it just wasn't intense enough. I felt I had to work out for 1.5 hours at least to even feel like I had done much. So I saved up and bought myself the EA Active 2 for Wii. Holy crumb, I did a 29 minute work out and I am three times as exhausted as I would get with my Wii Fit program. And it is similar to the PX90 as you start in a lower level that adjusts and intensifies over a 9 week course. I may have finally found a fitness program I can do! Today was day 1...only 9 weeks to go.

That sounds great, you do want to challenge yourself with your work outs, make them count, but whatever the workout I think the key is to find ones that you like so you will continue. I have been doing the P90X with my husband a few days a week, and they are good workouts, but they are kind of boring to me so on my other days I have several other workouts I really enjoy, the Firm (circuit training kind of ) the Bar method I metioned before, Yoga, and one of my favorites is a Jazz Funk, Cardio funk free-style masters class taught by a friend of mine years ago, and we taped it.

Great work Andrea!

Oh dear, I am currently being tested for rheumatoid arthritis, I'm pretty much in pain all the time and can hardly walk, work is fun :(
So no excercising for me, and no diets either, doesn't help that my ex partner of 19 years died last month without anyone telling me he was even ill, leaving my son who has some sort of asperger's type disorder living on his own 350 miles from me, and I can't afford to visit often, plus my daughter who lives near him has stopped talking to me. Why do people go weird when someone dies? The stress is making me eat cakes and crap :/

Oh dear, sorry to hear about this Dogrose, maybe you could do some research on foods that are good for RA, you should try even more so now to take care of yourself. Hang in there.

Hi all, I'm still doing great actually, so many more of my pants fit now it's like having whole new wardrobe. I'll have to put up measurements later, my other Rat Terrier female is in first stage labor so I have been with her all day. I have never had 2 litter's together before, I am sooooo tired, oh my.......

Hope everything goes well and that you have healthy puppies!

I've checked off one of my new year's resolutions--I've now climbed 4 separate gym cracks without taking or falling (or just liebacking the whole thing), and 2 very short ones outside. I have to admit I gave up the no-tape thing about 2 weeks ago (inspired by bleeding all over the inside of one gym crack) and bought a pair of crack climbing gloves. It almost feels like cheating, since they take about 80% of the pain out of the equation, but they allow me to climb more than one crack a week seeing as the skin on the back of my hands is no longer completely mangled all the time. I've got the technique for vertical, perfect to wide hands pretty much acceptably under control, now I'll need to work overhangs, thin hands, and finger cracks. My feet are very much dreading the latter. :?

I've been a pretty steady 127-128lbs since I gave up the raw-food-no-salt thing (down from 134 at the new year), which is more than my be-a-stronger-climber goal of 120 but isn't surprising seeing as I'm not really trying. If last year is any indication, as I get back into running shape I'll probably put on another couple pounds :roll:

I'm getting aggravated with this stage of my workouts/weight loss. We're on week 7 and I have gained lots of muscle on my thighs, but it seems like I'm not losing any fat on them! I have gone down almost 2 inches on each thigh since day 1 but it has not changed the way my "too small" pants fit AT ALL. I can get them on, and then they fit great on hips and waist, but the thighs are so tight that they're unbearable and I get mad and take them back off :-/ Guess I will just wait a couple more weeks and try them again.

ETA - The past few days I have been considering doing my cardio DVD more than once a week, like adding it in the AM on days that I am scheduled for a weights workout (like legs & back; shoulders & chest; etc.) and upping it to 3 or 4 times a week. Anyone think this might help knock more fat off?

Thanks Nerd, I did loose 1 puppy despite my best efforts to bottle feed her :cry: , she acted like she really like the formula but then she lost interest in that as well, that's part of the reason I was so tired is because I was up every 2 hours trying to feed her and keep her hydrated inbetween welping 2 litters, I still feel punch drunk, but all the other puppies are doing great.
I was able to get some workouts in and now it's back to 6 days a week.

I went to my moms and weighed myself on her scale and I only have about 11 lbs to go to get to my goal weight, I'm pretty sure I have lost atleast 15 since the 1st. I am now....
37 bust
30 waist
36.5 hips
22 thighs my goal is 38 X 28X 35 and 21 thighs

Rusti, try not to get to fustrated, it can get fustrating at this stage of the game are body's try to plateau. You are blessed with that super small hour-glass waist but you carry weight in your thighs. I am the opposite, I have practically no fat on my legs and I gain practically all my weight in my stomach and lower back and I hate it, but that's what I have to work with so I make the best of it, That's why my goal for my waist is only 28, it just doesn't get smaller than that but at that size I still look super fit. That's why I try to put more muscle on my upper back to make my waist look smaller, not happening on my butt lol, my husband call's me noassatall...lol.
I know you didn't get the training block info that came with the p90x so here is what is says for weeks 5, 6, 7.
I really like the plyo, for p90x you can only tell that burns a crap load of calories, so I would stick with that one and maybe try a bit more of the arobics, and I like the legs and back.
week 5
day 1 chest, shoulders & triceps, ab ripper
day 2 plyometrics
day 3 back, biceps, ab ripper
day 4 yoga
day 5 legs & back, ab ripper
day 6 kenpo
day 7 rest or stretch

week 6
day 1 am cardio pm chest, shoulders, back, ab ripper
day 2 plyo
day 3 am cardio pm back & bipceps, ab ripper
day 4 yoga
day 5 am cardio pm legs & back, ab ripper
day 6 kenpp
day 7 rest or stretch

week 7
day 1 core synergistics
day 2 cardio
day 3 chest, shoulders & triceps, ab ripper
day 4 yoga
day 5 legs, back, ab ripper
day 6 kenpo
day 7 rest or stretch

hope that helps :)