Tuesday QOTD: What is one thing you can commit to do today (or tomorrow if you're reading this late) that will help you in your weight loss journey?
I will cook today, no matter how much I don't feel like it!
Wednesday QOTD: What is your favorite meal to fix for your family that's healthy enough for you to eat it without making any special adjustments for your diet?
I do a lot of stir-fry with chicken breast or lean beef and tons of veggies. Some of my sauces are healthier than others, but none are really bad in the quantity included in a serving.
We have Special K fish! DH found the recipe on the Special K website and then I changed it to make it healthier and we all like the healthy version.
crunch up some special K in a dish add some orange rind, and other spices (I change it everytime I do it, so far, I like garlic and parsley the best).
Dip the whitefish into orange juice or lemon juice to get it wet, and then into the special K mix. If the special K mix doesn't want to stick, I just sprinkly some on top and dribble a bit more juice on it. Then put into oven safe pan and bake at 350 for about 15min.
Original recipe called for putting the fish in melted butter and then into the special K mix, but I didn't like the buttery taste, so reduced the fat and went with juice.
I love that idea! I'll have to try it next time I'm breading fish. I've tried butter and think the taste tends to overpower the fish, but egg makes for a heavier breading than I like. OJ sounds like a good alternative!
Tracey- I think the wii fit goal weight is low too. It puts your bmi at 22. The top of ww scale is a bmi of 25, and for me that would be 155 pounds, which I would be thrilled with. My first big goal is just to be overweight, not obese.

You're doing awesome!! 10 pounds is fabulous in 5 weeks!!
I agree about the Wii goal - it set my goal weight at less than I weighed in high school, when I was swimming competitively and training hard 6 days/week! I'm just not built for a BMI of 22; I have broad shoulders and what would most tactfully be described as an athletic body type (as a teen, I'd have said "boy with ****s"

). At my very lightest, my BMI was 23 and those "best weight" charts in the teen magazines were the bane of my existence because they said I should lose 10 more lbs!
My long term goal is 159lbs. I'd actually be fine at 165, because that puts me in a size 11 and looks good on me, but 159 is the very top of the normal BMI range so that's where I set my sights.
QOTD Thursday: If you were at WDW right now and were committed to staying OP for your vacation, what would you eat today?
OP and on vacation don't go well together for me. We do the deluxe dining plan at Disney, which means lots of great food, most of it not so great for me! If I were trying to be good, my day would probably look like this:
Breakfast - Iced tea & a fruit cup or yogurt parfait.
Lunch - Colony salad and sorbet at Liberty Tree Tavern
Snack - Dole Whip
Dinner - Tomatoes & mozzarella, grilled swordfish, and mango sorbet at Narcoosees.
I do share everything with DD8, who is starting to get bored with kids' menus, and with DD1, which helps a little with portion control.
Question of the Day - Friday 10/22
How do you handle life's little unexpected curve balls? What do you do when "life" gets in the way of your plans?
Unfortunately, I usually order out.

That's one of my big diet challenges - it isn't even that I want the junk food. There's no good takeout in our town to speak of. But when I'm busy or stressed, the first thing to give is my motivation in getting things done around the house. So when we've got a lot going on, I forget to take something out of the freezer or don't feel like cooking or cleaning up, and we order take-out. It is something I really need to work on, because the crap we can get here just isn't worth the calories - McDs, bad pizza, so-so Chinese, but no really good food.
Question of the Weekend 10/24 & 10/25
What song(s) get you motivated or inspired? Is there a song that everytime you hear it, it just makes you say "that is just how I feel"
Lose Yourself by Eminem. It so isn't my usual style, I'm more a country/rock girl, but I love the lyrics.
You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime
Well--no one has ever spoken to me like Trent Reznor (NIN)--Closer, Heresy, Head Like Hole etc.-- I feel those songs with every fiber of my being. Also I'm afraid of Amercans--Bowie and Reznor.
I feel the same way about NIN & Reznor. I have the entire Pretty Hate Machine album on my mp3 player, along with a couple tracks from a bootleg of a live NIN/Bowie show I went to many years ago.
I also like kind of obnoxious, angry music when I'm running
Me too. I've got a lot harder/angrier music on my run/walk playlist than I listen to when I'm relaxing. Nine Inch Nails, 'One Step Closer' by Linkin Park, 'Never Again' by Nickleback, some Slipknot, older Metallica, etc.
Question of the day - Tuesday 10/27
What simple swaps have you made to make your favorite meal more healthy?
Most of my cooking tends to be pretty healthy. I'm weird about meat, can't stand it if it is too fatty or has bones/skin, so we eat a lot of chicken, lean beef, and center cut pork. I stir-fry a LOT; my wok gets far more use than any other small kitchen appliance. So the changes I've made have been minor - organic ketchup & BBQ sauce to cut out the high fructose corn syrup, switching to 2% cheese for my Mexican cooking (been using part skim mozzarella & ricotta for a long time), things like that. And adding more veggies to make for a better meat-to-veggie ratio, because I know I tend to plan too large servings of meat & starch and not enough veggies.
TMI question for everyone. Do you usually gain, lose, or stay the same durning TOM? It takes me a few months of trying to lose to figure out when that is for me. Seems kinda strange but I have the Mirena IUD and I don't get TOM but I get the symptoms that go with it. Is it a week before. after or durning that you notice this gain/loss?
I gain, from a few days before until it is over, sometimes as much as 3-4lbs. I didn't realize it until we got the Wii because I wasn't weighing myself often enough to make the connection, but I can look at the graph of my weight over time and see exactly when TOM was. So now I'm not so bummed when a show an inexplicable gain for that week.
Question of the Day - Wednesday 10/28/09
What weight loss, fitness, health related websites do you read? Do you subscribe to any diet, fitness health related e-newsletters?
I don't. I signed up with SparkPeople but haven't been active there, and I'm registered with Running Ahead to map/track my walking/running, but that's it.
Question of the Day - Thursday 10/29
Halloween is just a few days away...What is your strategy to stay out of the candy bowl?
I'm not a fan of candy, so it isn't much of a challenge.
I have never been interested in sweets!
My food issue is too many meals in the day. I graze and keep on grazing (like my cubby horse)
But never sweets. DSis loves chocolate and cookies -they are always around but I'm just not tempted. So......

In spite of no sweet tooth I'm still very overweight
Its St Paddy's Day not Halloween thats my big holiday
I'm the same way with St Paddys Day! Halloween is an easy holiday for me, but if we're talking corned beef & potatoes, soda bread, Dubliner cheese, and Guiness? That's when I'm falling off the wagon in a BIG way, probably worse than even Christmas and Thanksgiving!
Todays QOTD:
What kind of support system do you have (outside of the DIS) to help keep you on track with your healthy lifestyle? Maybe you are attending WW meetings or keeping in touch with people on sparkpeople, or exercising with a friend. If you DON'T have a support system, what could you do to help build one?
This question really hits home with me. I DON'T have any close personal friends. My DH is not at all supportive of my healthier lifestyle. Not that he intentionally sabotages me or anything like that, but he is a very unhealthy eater and doesn't exercise at all and that is very hard for ME to be around. I have to continue to be surrounded by ice cream and popcorn and potato chips and beer and cookies. He constantly wants to order pizza and I have to either put on a brave face and eat salad while the family eats pizza, or put my foot down and insist that we eat a healthier, home-cooked meal. I LOVE him... he is a wonderful man, a great provider, and a great Dad, but I worry about his weight/health and I get frustrated that I don't get the support I could use.
DD (14) tries to be supportive, but as a typical teen, she is very wrapped up in her own life (and a very busy life at that).
I wish I could find a way to make some really good IRL friends (other than you all....

) that I could chat with and such... but I've never been very good at that. Guess I should work on that... not sure how, but now I've got myself thinking about it at least!
I'm in the same boat. DH doesn't intentionally sabotage me, but he's not interested in keeping the chips and other junk out of the house for my sake either, and he doesn't exercise. In his defense, he doesn't have to - his work is physical enough that he's in good shape without making any effort and in spite of a soda habit that would put me in a diabetic coma.

He isn't so bad about wanting to order out like your DH, but his "solution" to me being tired, sick, or just plain crabby is to order out so that I don't have to mess with getting dinner ready. It is a nice thought, but not exactly the most healthful solution. He's gotten better, though; Subway has made it onto his list of places to go, even though it is a little further and takes a little longer than pizza or burgers, and he knows to order a salad with the pizza these days. And I'm an introvert/homebody so I don't make friends easily. My two best friends now have been my best friends since elementary school, but neither of them struggle with their weight so they're not a great support just because they've never been there, you know?
It's funny.... we also have an "out of sight, out of mind" thing with the holiday candy. My rule has had to be that we throw it away when the same holiday comes up again!! Last year's Halloween candy will go out today (if there is any left)... same with Easter, Christmas, etc. They will eat it like crazy for a few days and then I put it up in my cookbook cupboard and they forget about it. (Although I will pull it out when we go to the movies and let them pick a handful to bring along so that I can skip buying the overpriced movie candy!!)
We do too. I'll put the candy away in the pantry, and though we all know it is there and everyone but the baby can reach it to help themselves, I'll end up tossing a fair bit around Easter. I won't keep it a full year - the Halloween candy (and Christmas, if we have any, but Christmas isn't a big candy holiday in our family) gets tossed in preparation for Easter, and the Easter candy gets tossed before Halloween.
Today's QOTD:
What can you do THIS WEEKEND to help prepare you for the week ahead (food and exercise wise, of course)? Could you do some cooking ahead? Cut up some fresh veggies to have on hand for snacking? Plan some crockpot meals so that you don't end up at the drive-thru after a busy day?? Schedule a walk with a friend or a workout with a trainer??
My schedule tends to go just the opposite. As a SAHM with 2 of my 3 kids in school, I prep things on weekdays to get through our busy weekends! Today, I have 7 kids in my living room, all hopped up on Halloween candy and playing the Wii; tomorrow I'll have 8 hours of relative peace and quiet. So I do my recovery from this weekend and prep for the week's meals when they're in school. I'll sit down tomorrow and plan the week's menus, do the shopping, and cut up some quick snacks for the kids.