Thanks for replying! It's been a while and in that time I bought a new scale after the guys did the scale podcast. The digital scale is great, but too honest. It seems all of us here weigh 10lbs more than the old scale read. We were a very unhappy family that weekend.

So, I'm 184, with the 4 courtesy of Christmas cookies. It's down a pound from the 25th since pushing away anything with sugar. That, and I'm on Sparkpeople, keeping the calories between 1500 and 1620. Tomorrow, when I do the yearly goals, I'm running the numbers for calories and training.

I'm looking forward to seeing how you progress on your extra calories. How very cool to find out you're not eating enough. With the running, is your body fat dropping like your weight? I think you're doing awesome!

I have to laugh at the "Do these pants make my butt look fat?" question. Every time I ask myself that question, I think, "No, your fat makes you look fat." Asking my husband would be a no win, he's sweet, but honest.

My tip comes from Timer, the character in the PSAs featured on an earlier podcast. His song concerning breakfast saying "Since six o'clock at night, you haven't eaten a bite," really resonates with me. Not a bite since six? I had a habit of eating a day's worth of calories between six pm and six am. I'm really bad to let the scale scare me into skipping food until seven or eight at night. The tip I'm taking away from this is eat what I'm supposed to during the day to keep the raging hungries from appearing after dinner.

Fruit juice slushes are popular around my house during the summer. I'll fill the blender with ice cubes, then fill again with a lite version of whatever fruit juice we're wanting. Blend, and enjoy. I dislike drinking my calories, so I get the most unrefined fruit juice available. Usually the store brands are the least processed, which is great.

We'll do fresh brewed coffee the same way, and add just enough 2% milk to give it that coffee house look.

Laura

Hi Laura!

Nice name, by the way. 5K does sound like a punishment, or it did to me, until I trained for it. I'm like you, yoga and weight bearing-ly gifted. While training for 5K takes most people 8-10 weeks, it took me more like 4-6 months. I could walk miles, but jog them? No way!

I used the Podrunner 5K interval training, with obvious repeats of the more horrendous weeks. As I progressed, I thought, "This is horrible, I'm never getting better at running and it's always gruelling. I hate this!" That is, until I had to use an earlier week's shorter podcast due to that day's time constraints. What seemed difficult during week 4 was easy in week 6. Progress!

I've not lost an ounce in the past year of running, but have run 4 5K races so far. My next one is October 4th. It'll be tough, since I'm letting my Achilles tendons heal a little and not training as much, but fun. I love always pushing to be even a second faster than the prior race. I'd never thought I'd ever want or be able to call myself a runner, but there you go!

Laura

Oh my goodness! Talk about motivating!

Ok, I've run the numbers and for a 44 year old female who wants to go from 170lbs and 35% body fat to 120lbs, I'd need to make sure I eat 1735 calories a day. I'm always training for my next 5K by running 2-3 times a week, 3-4 miles a time, injuries permitting.

I know, from entering in my foods at sparkpeople.com, that I don't lose weight until my calories are reduced to 900-1100 a day. If I do lose, I'm lucky if it's 2 lbs a week, usually, it's 1. Sometimes, I gain. Lovely, huh?

The idea of hitting a 1700 calorie mark consistently is very scary. What I'd like to know is, has anyone gone from fat to fit actually eating more? My family and I eat out once a week, rarely two, so I have tons of control over the food around here. I shop the perimeter of the store, so there's lots of good calories around here.

Hi! I'm Laura and love the Fat2Fit radio, of course. It's great to listen to health information that hasn't been financed and thus biased.