I got my first smartphone a couple days ago, so I've been exploring and checking out a lot of apps. I never understood why people were so attached to these phones, now I almost don't know how I managed without one! There are a lot of great things about this phone, but my favorite and easily the most useful so far is the My Fitness Pal app. I've never really liked these weight loss sites. I never remember to check in, and they didn't really give me any benefit, so any time I joined I didn't use it at all. So now (or up until yesterday) I just don't join them anymore.

But my phone is almost always with me, so the handy little app with the shortcut on my homescreen and the built-in calorie counter is also almost always with me. When I'm out at a restaurant, it is very easy to pull out my phone, hit a couple of buttons and find the listing in the database for exactly what I'm about to eat - or just to check out the calories of everything that interests me on the menu so I can decide what I want to eat. I like that it tells me how many calories I've eaten that day and how many are left, so I don't have to try and guess whether it's ok to eat that bacon cheeseburger.

I love calorie counting as a weight loss method. It's very simple: How many calories does it say are in the cheeseburger? Is it less than the number of calories I have left for the day? Does it leave room for the other snacks and meals I'll want during the day? Nope. Ok, no bacon cheeseburger today. And it doesn't have to feel like I'm depriving myself of anything, because it's not that I can never have it, I just can't have it today. If I want to eat it some day, I'll just have to plan for it and save my calories.

I've never done the calorie counting before, I've always followed plans that tell me what types of food I can eat or tell me that I have to eat exactly their particular formula for each meal and snack. Not something I've been able to keep up for more than a few months. I love that this has no rules or formulas. Obviously with my diabetes I'll have to be careful and watch the fat and carb intake, but I'm already doing that.

Does anyone else use this site, or another similar site? What do you like about it? What weight loss methods work well for you?

This community is pretty slow-moving. I don't personally mind that, but I would like to do all I can to make this community something that is helpful and interesting to all its members, not just my personal rant space. Please respond to the poll and/or leave comments letting me know what you would like to see in the future. Thank you!

I mentioned briefly in the Miracle Ball post a few days ago that I'd noticed something weird now that my posture is better. I looked in the mirror, and it suddenly seemed like my midsection was huge compared to my chest. My body's never been like that, I've always had a fairly even distribution so that even when I was very heavy it didn't feel like any one part of my body had a problem. I wondered if maybe it's always been this way, and my slouch just made my chest appear to come out farther.

Then on Saturday, I tried on a pair of pants that fit fine last time I tried them a couple weeks ago. I couldn't get them buttoned, in fact I could barely get them over my hips! And I know I haven't lost any weight, but I haven't gained any either, so what's going on here? Then I realized that my chest and my upper torso actually seem smaller and my bras don't fit right anymore, and maybe it's not that my midsection is huge but that the weight is moving. I tried on one of my skinny shirts today, one I got when I lost all the weight and was feeling so good about myself. It hasn't been able to fully close in quite awhile, and if it did the snaps would come undone again if I sat. Today it fit fine! Well, on the chest and stomach, anyway. My arms seem to have grown too.

So apparently, I'm shrinking up top and gaining on my hips! That seems really weird to me, I know I've never had it happen in all my previous weight loss attempts. Has anyone else ever had it happen? Any advice on how to target the hip area and get rid of the excess fat so I can wear my favorite pants again? Also, it seems weird that my arms have grown because I've been doing a lot of arm and chest work with the weights. Maybe I bulked up with muscle? :-/ I need to find exercises that get rid of the fat rather than leaving it and adding more bulk.

I've had horrible tension headaches almost every day since I was 11. In the past two years, they've gotten even worse. Now I have shoulder pains almost from the time I wake up till the time I go to sleep, and at least once a week I'll have this flare of pain in my left shoulder that nothing's been able to fix.

While I was at the store one day, I saw this massage bar by one of the people from The Biggest Loser but decided not to get it, then a week later decided I had to try something and went back for it. There were no more of them! But my mom saw this Miracle Ball thing and we decided to split the cost so we could both try it.

The first couple days were sketchy. I could tell it was helping my muscles to relax and stretch, but the exercises that had one of the balls under my left shoulder hurt. Any time I moved (as the guide book tells you to do), I would have this horrible stabbing pain there. When I did an elbow-on-the-ball exercise that rotates the shoulder until your hand is on the floor (lying on your back, with the arm bent at the elbow 90 degrees), it took me 10 minutes for my shoulder to relax enough for my hand to touch the ground.

We got them on Sunday. I've used them every day, and today when I tried it, there was no pain from the exercises. When I did the elbow exercise again, it took more like 10 seconds. And while I did have pain throughout the day, it is less intense than usual, and with that much improvement in the shoulder I'm pretty confident it will keep getting better. And when I got up from the exercises today, I could tell that my posture had actually corrected itself, something I've never been able to do. (As a side effect, looking in the mirror with the posture corrected helped me put the pieces together and figure out something about my progress with the weight loss, but that's for another post.)

I haven't had them for long, and I'm obviously not a doctor or anything to say that these work. But they're working for me, and if you have pain like I have and haven't found anything to make it better, this might be worth a shot.

One of my mission while being healthy is to spend less money on food. It seemed almost impossible when I fist started but now is getting to be really easy. The way I am doing this is through soup. I need to eat veggies but hate salad so I was making a lot of stir fries and cabbage soup. The problem was it seemed like I had a lot of  waste at the end of the week from little bits of veggies that I did not use. I had carrot tops and the leafy part of celery and little bits of spinich and cabbage not to mention a lot of other  random veggie so I made veggie broth and soup. Its easy really take water and throw in carrot tops and leafy parts of celery plus any other veggie I Iike an onion quartered skin and all and for some a couple cloves of garlic are good. Boil this to no end about an hour or two, Strain off the veggies and save the liquid and you have broth. Disguard the veggies used to make the broth and take what ever you want to throw in to make soup and make soup as usual. The one I made this week had Napa cabbage, carrots, spinich, celery, peas, and a few peaces of leftover chicken.

Ok to understand this post I have to give a little back round info on myself for those who do not know me. I am a married mother of 2 wonderful boys, one who is three and a high functioning autistic and the other who is a normal 9 mo old. I work part time and my husband work full time but with odd hours. He is also currently music director of a local play. This all makes me in effect a single mother most days of the week and leaving no time to work out unless it is before 5 am or after 10pm. I am working on fixing this by carving out time during the day when I may have some help.
The problem is it  looks like my husband will be moving 3 hrs away for a new job and I will be staying here until school is over so my oldest son keeps getting the special care through the school that is helping him. The thing is with all this going on I am stressing out that I may have to be completely on my own plan for moving and getting a new life set up in a new city and finding help for my son down there all on my own. When I get stressed I eat bad I mean really bad candy, shakes, ice cream, pizza ect. just about every meal and snack. I was wondering if any one had any ideas for helping me not eat like this and deal with the stress in a more productive manor?

So, I've been using the gym and eating healthy for a few weeks now. I've lost no weight at all, and looking at some of the clothes I bought a couple years ago when I first found out I had diabetes and lost 40 pounds reminds me that yes, I have actually gained all that weight back. :(

I haven't been posting here in awhile, because I've been really depressed and frustrated about my lack of progress in this area. When I first found out about the diabetes, I got serious about changing how I ate. I threw out every carbohydrate in the house (I wasn't a big veggie eater at the time, and all my carbs were in the form of pasta and bread) and went shopping for veggies, hummous, and other healthy foods. I ate just enough to get through the day without being dizzy and light-headed, and I wouldn't touch sweets or breads. And like I said, I lost a huge amount of weight (about 25 lbs at that time). I felt incredible and beautiful.

Then I went back to the doctor, and learned how my mom deals with her diabetes (which she's had for most of my life). I was told by my mom that I went too far, and she gave me some books on cooking for diabetes that recommended adding some good carbs and even breads to your diet. It's not good to go too far in the other direction either, because then you can have low blood sugar. On the other hand, when I saw the idiot doctor, he basically insulted me and told me I had to stop eating carbs, not believing me when I told him I had. I told him how much weight I'd lost and how I had cut out breads. He told me that I was only losing weight because the diabetes caused weight loss, and he completely dismissed all the changes I'd made, implying that I was obviously lying because fat people have no self-control. (Needless to say, I'm not seeing this doctor anymore. The problem is that I also currently have no health insurance so I'm not seeing any doctor.)

Between the encouragement from my mom to add some starches and the total disrespect the doctor had for what I'd accomplished, I slowly destroyed my healthy diet. At first they were small, healthy changes, and the weight did continue to come off - 15 more pounds! But as school got more stressful and I maybe got a little cocky and carried away with the success, I started loosening up the rules even more, until I was eating almost as badly as I was before I found out I had diabetes. I'm trying to do better now, but it's like I have this block in my mind and I can't remember how to eat the way I was when I was healthy. The changes I'm making aren't enough, and I don't feel very optimistic about my chances of getting thin and healthy again, which just makes it even harder to stay motivated.

Has anyone else experienced this? What do you do to get yourself past these blocks and make the right changes? Any suggestions for how I can motivate myself to do better? Also, when you're living with other people who always want fatty and carby foods for meals, how do you deal with that and still make the meal something you can adapt to be healthier?

Also, since it seems no one else has been posting here much in the past week, either, how are you doing? Feel free to just comment and say hi or whatever too, I think sometimes it helps just to have a community and realize we're not alone with the health struggles.

I found a surprising (to me) way of being active. My fiance's birthday was yesterday, and he set up Rock Band so people could play when they came over. I'd never tried it before, but found out it's a lot of fun. I'm terrible with the instruments, but I like to sing. And when I sing, I bounce. A lot. So after playing for awhile, I noticed I was starting to feel about the same as I would after being on one of the less intense workout machines, like maybe the exercise bike. I'm sure it's not the best workout, but it's a fun and easy way to get active during the day.

I noticed something similar when my mom had a Wii last summer (it was borrowed, I think, I haven't seen it lately). I did the sports games and I was the only one actually getting a workout out of it, because everyone else realizes that you don't actually have to do that much to get the little remote to work, so they just wind up sitting down and waving it around. But where's the fun in that? If I'm going to pretend to play tennis, I'm going to run and jump around like it's actually happening. Otherwise it's a pretty boring game. And I like to move. So whenever I play any game that's a little active like that, I'm up and jumping or dancing around. I never really thought of video games as exercise before, but it's a nice option to have on days when I don't feel like doing much more than that. And it's something my fiance likes, so there's the added benefit of doing something together.

Also, making the little avatars for the game and choosing a band name is really really fun. And so is making game-money so I can get them better clothes. Whee! It's like paper dolls for grown-ups!

I never realized how expensive it would be to join a gym. I am looking at two in this small town I live in and and am finding that the joining fee cost an arm and a leg. I find this to stupid. I know that gyms are there to make money but is it necessary to charge a $100 fee to pay $37 dollars a month to workout with times that work with my schedule. I am just mad about the whole situation. I am trying to be healthy but am finding parts to be really hard to afford all the cost.
Right now I am walking (a bad knee keeps me from jogging, I want to though) but I want to get back to weight lifting I lost a lot of weight this way when I was younger and I loved it. I am really wondering if any one has any ideas on ways to join a gym or get some different sort of exercise in when you have a family and weird hours to work out? Or should I take part of my Tax return and pay a year in advance and join the gym?

I joined a gym a few weeks ago, and I've been loving it. I started only using one machine, and have been slowly branching out so that I've tried most of the running-type machines and finally on Friday tried out some of the weight-lifting machines. I've mostly worked out a routine to give me some variety throughout the week, and I feel like I'm getting healthier and more confident.

But this week I am visiting my fiance. The company has gyms in many cities, but this is not one of them. I knew when I signed up that this would be an issue, but mostly I was thinking that would be far down the line after the wedding (September) and didn't think about these little week-long visits I do sometimes. The last visit, I didn't think about it much at all, and when I came back to the gym I was out of shape again and had to slow down for about a day from the routine I'd built. This time I at least brought a resistance band and figured I'd do some push-ups, sit-ups, and simple yoga. So I hope that will help. But I'm wondering if other people have found other solutions and there might be something simple I'm missing.

What do you do when you're away from the gym (or your normal workout routine, wherever/however you approach that)?