I feel your pain! I've decided that weight watchers isn't in my budget either. I almost cried when I realised that I'm overweight now...After baby #1 came 5 months ago. I see a lot of women on base who have babies the same age and don't even look like they've even thought about having a baby, much less have had one. Another disappointment with my plan...I can't take my baby to the gym, so that's out. I think my only option is walking. But I need accountability. Me & working out aren't the greatest combination. Let me know if you come up with something that will fit into a mom's routine! I need the help too!!! My poor hubby...We were looking at pictures from when we first got married and he was like "look how thin your face is". That's when I realised this HAS to go!

If you're lifting weights 3 times a week, you're most likely building tons of muscle and burning fat. The scale is not an accurate measure because, as we all know, muscle weighs more than fat because it's more dense. Does your gym offer a fitness assessment? Get a body composition test that measures your % body fat. If you keep going to the gym and eating well, I guarantee you that if you go for a retest in a month or two, you'll see results...and good ones. Another good way to measure your progress at home is to record your measurements. Your waist, hips, ribcage (just under breasts), thighs, and upper arms are all good places to track progress (I track all of them in a small notebook). If you think food is your problem (eating too much or even too little, eating the wrong things) I'd strongly recommend tracking your caloric intake (carb, fiber, and fat intake are all good things to track too) in a notebook. Measure your serving sizes out so you know what you're putting in your mouth. Find an interactive website to track your food and exercise (SparkPeople.com is my absolute favorite). I know how frustrating the scale can be. Sometimes it just doesn't move, or it moves 5 pounds either way in a week, or even in a day. The comforting part is that the scale is not the best way to measure your progress. Factors as seemingly unimportant as time of day, how much water you've drank (you actually need MORE to NOT retain water), how much sugar is sitting around your muscles, organs, and tissues, and other finicky details actually can make the scale go up. My advice? Step off of it (at least for a week or two at a time), and pick a better way to track your successes!! Best of luck to you! Here is a link that might be useful: Spark People

Merry Christmas !! I had just ordered Smart-pot in 10 gallon, only $9.97 from Amazon (free shipping). I'll buy 3 blueberry bushes this spring (Walmart sells them), put 2 in SmartPot, and 1 in the ground. Didn't know that I need 2 or more blueberry bushes to pollinate each other. Info. from About.com: " Fertilizing blueberries - Blueberries don’t like too much fertilizer. Twice a year in the early spring works well. For organic fertilizer try blood or cottonseed meal, or a fertilizer designed for acid loving plants. Blueberries need friends – To get your blueberries to fruit, you will need at least two blueberry plants for pollination, three plants is even better and they need to be placed relatively close together. Also it’s a good idea to grow a couple of different varieties of blueberries, because they will produce fruit at different times and extending your blueberry season. Protect your blueberries – While growing blueberries you’ll have few pests to worry about other than birds. To protect your fruit from feathered poachers, you can cover your bushes with a light sheet or netting, a few weeks before the berries are ripe." Sam: Do you protect your blueberries from birds? If I put Smart-pot right next to the patio, hopefully there's less pests. I re-post the info. that Bluegirl wrote on pine-fines to buy from Lowe's. I would need 1/4 pine fines with 3/4 potting soil to create the acidic soil for blueberries. Bluegirl in Texas wrote: "I think Amazon has the sulfate of potash for ~ $11 still. See if your Lowes carries the mix ours does. It's "HapiGro Landscape Mix", sold in a big clear bag for about four dollars. Almost pure pine fines to look at it. Here are some photos, the bag is kind of faded, it's a mostly clear bag with white on front. dry stuff inside--looks to be mostly fine pine bark with a nugget or two of perlite. THis is some moist stuff from inside a bucket--finger for size. Pictures & info. above are from Bluegirl in Texas. THANK YOU, Bluegirl, for allowing me to post your info.

I think at some point I will perhaps get into this "kefir-ing" but not right yet. I am just super busy. Don't know if I will be any more successful than I was at "sourdough-ing" which I tried at the beginning of the pandemic. The problem with that was, we just don't eat enough baked goods to make it worthwhile expending the time and energy maintaining a starter. Even the lowest maintenance options. We just don't eat a lot of baked goods. I'd love to eat more, but it just can't happen for a whole lot of reasons. On the flip side, kefir sounds like something we would consume on a daily basis, either water or milk. I can get good dairy kefir with live cultures at my local grocery, but it is something like 4-5 dollars a pint so I don't normally buy it. But I will take you all up on the offers of help at some point if I can. Kefir water sounds great because I actually don't like plain water. Practically have to force it down. For whatever reason plain water does not sit well with me. I often drink flavored soda water but that's not the cheapest way to stay hydrated. Am slowly recovering the use of my digestive tract. Ironically, I don't eat many of the fodmap foods anyway, not a fan of onions and garlic, although I do eat them in small amounts, and I rarely eat fresh pears or apples. Hubs eats and apple a day, but not me. That's because of the aforementioned dislike of drinking water, so I often dilute water with fruit juice, and that's how I have tended to consume my fruit calories a lot of the time. I drink a lot of cider and apple juice, don't know if that contributes to digestive issues, I think not but I can certainly cut down on the apple juice . . . the other fodmap no-no that I eat regularly though, is beans. But I've been eating beans my whole adult vegetarian life. I think with them the issue is being well-soaked ahead of time, and cooked, and the skins broken down or sieved out. Also the time of day you eat them, earlier is much better since stuff moves through your digestive tract (when it is functioning properly) faster during the day when you are up and moving. I have been limiting my bean intake and also pureeing the beans, which takes some of the digestive issues off the table . . .