What a timely thread! You know, I've been scaling back my time here on the forum because of my need to lose weight. I used to check in here at least 4 times a day, especially if working. Well, I was isnpired to try many of the recipes on here... some of them not so healthy. Now I check in about once every 3 days or so. It took a lot of self control! Sadly, I did have to curb my passion for baking in an effort to lose weight. I haven't made any sweet treats in about two months... I think... I can't even remember the last time I baked something. I've wanted to several times, but had to resist the temtation. My stand mixer is now growing a layer of dust... he gives me the evil eye every time I walk by, feeling neglected I'm sure. I've also been drinking only water at work and home (maybe an occasional glass of 1 percent milk, but nothing sweet). I've been forcing myself to exercise 3 times a week for 45 minutes (on the Gazelle glider or riding a bike that a co-worker gave me). I've gone from going to fast food restaurants while working 3 times a week to not at all. If I'm at work and didn't have time to pack a lunch, I'll run out to my car and get a granola bar (I keep a stash under the seat). I obviously need to do more because the scale isn't moving. The Jack Daniels sampler platter at TGI Fridays has been calling my name for a while now, but I've been good about resisting lately. I LOVE it, and like to get it once a month. Haven't had it for a month or so now. The last time I got it, I split it up into two meals and only ate half at at time. That's a tip I've learned on this forum and have been using it quite a bit lately. A couple days ago, I was cleaning out some closets and got hungry. I was tired from the physical work, and it was emotionally draining to see the memories of the past as I was cleaning. I wasn't really hungry, but I still wanted to eat. I drove to Long John Silvers to place a big order to take back home and feast on. While I was waiting in line to order, I realized that I was getting this food because I was upset or frustrated and not because I needed it! I scolded myself saying, "Bobby, you just spent 10 minutes sewing a button back on your pants that you've popped off with your gut, and you're in line at Long John Silvers! Something is wrong with that!" I got back in my car without ordering, went home and made a salad with some boneless skinless chicken pieces on top. OK... Most of my response hasn't been about cooking, so let me get on topic for a second! I did try a new thing in the kitchen that helped me with overeating. I deciced I wanted to try to make some homemade peanut sauce and fried tofu. I bought all the ingredients (incluidng peanut oil and rice vinegar which I'd never used before). Well, I don't love tofu so I will never over eat it! The peanut sauce was a little bland, so I added a lot of red pepper and made it really spicy. I'm not big on spicy foods, but I liked the sauce spicy! I just coudn't eat a lot of it. I've also read that spicy foods boots the metabolism, so double bonus. Can't handle a lot of it at a time, and it boost metabolism! It could be a good thing to start a support group here for people who want to lose weight... With the great collection of people here, I'm sure we'd encourage each other.

Got a really bad reaction to flu-shot taken on Dec. 19 .. started being dizzy & throw up & fever on Dec. 29. The few strains of virus in flu-shot inflamed my middle ear. Neighbor & nurse-daughter also complained about tingling of ears after flu-shot. Regarding the flu that I got from that blasted flu-shot: I went to the PA yesterday and he found my ears are VERY blocked. No one, including my 3 medical doctor siblings ever link vertigo to blocked Eustachian tubes. I learned that from the searching in Houzz, which a woman solved her vertigo problem by flushing her ear with hydrogen peroxide. I re-post what I posted in Health Forum today: "Bonide is the most popular vertigo medication, but there's side-effects. Best to treat the problem: blocked tubes which mess up equilibrium. I never have vertigo before, until I got my flu-shot from Sam's club Dec. 19 ... My right ear bled, then I got vertigo for one month. The right ear is the hardest to free from blockage: 3 flush with hydrogen peroxide to clean out the blood, and 3 flush of vinegar/alcohol to remove earwax. I used a glass dropper, filled with hydrogen peroxide and flush both ears. One ear popped, vertigo is completely gone on that side. The other ear is still jammed up, so I used 1/2 alcohol and 1/2 vinegar (alcohol to evaporates quickly and vinegar to dissolve solidified ear-wax, or dried blood). My husband has lots of wax build-up in his ears .. it got so bad that he got sick from it: lost his appetite, feeling tired & lethargic. He went to the doc. and the doc. flushed out the wax. After that my husband could hear better & regain his appetite & no more tiredness !! You can tell when your ears are blocked (WebMD): , Swelling from a cold, allergies, or a sinus infection can keep the eustachian tubes from opening. This leads to pressure changes. Fluid may collect in the middle ear. The pressure and fluid can cause pain. Ears that hurt and feel full, or feel watery. Ringing or popping noises in your ears. Hearing problems. Feeling dizzy. " WebMD has a fantastic exercise to clear-out the Eustachian tubes, I tried it, and it WORKED: " You may be able to open the blocked tubes with a simple exercise. Close your mouth, hold your nose, and gently blow as if you are blowing your nose. Yawning and chewing gum also may help. You may hear or feel a "pop" when the tubes open to make the pressure equal between the inside and outside of your ears."

Hi aztcqn: Agree that corn-fed, zero-sun, and hormone & antibiotics injections mess up milk. Same with soy: we eat tons of soy in Vietnam: soy milk, tofu everyday, and the skinny Buddhist monks there eat soy daily since they are vegetarians. No one ever have a thyroid problem in Vietnam, and the soy back then WAS NOT GENETICALLY MODIFIED, nor doused with pesticides like the soy in America. I did a thread on the problem with soy in Organic Rose, where I dug up research on carrageenan additive in soy which irritate the body, that's the same stuff they add in ice-cream & coffee creamer. Carrageenan is inflammatory to the thyroid. Also the aluminum equipment they use to press soy in making tofu. raise the aluminum levels to brain-damaging level. I stopped eating tofu after I posted that in Organic Rose. My Mom's tofu in Vietnam tasted yummier, because she used Organic, non-genetically modified soy, plus she used stones to press tofu, rather than aluminum. I use soy products for my entire life, but stopped for a few years 2013, 2014, & most of 2015 when genetically-modified soy-milk with added carrageenan upset my stomach greatly. I came back to soy late 2015, after they take out carrageenan, and the SILK Organic soy is certified 100% non-genetically modified. I get my thyroid tested yearly for decades: zero problems. My kid's friend who drinks 3 glasses of cow-milk per day is tested hypo-thyroid, and is on thyroid medication. My kid had the WORST time ever on cow-milk. She was a happy kid, being fed with soy-milk after 3-year-old (I breast-fed her before then). When she reached puberty (11 year) .. that's when we took her off soy, and put her on cow-milk, plus plenty of ice-cream. Her hormones went out of whack with the many hormones added to cow-milk. She got depressed, she grew body hair & acne, her period was heavy, diarrhea & stinky gas, horrible mood-swings with crying, her blood test showed high-testosterone. We put her back on soy-milk late in 2015: big improvement, body hair & acne reduced, less mood-swings & crying. She's happy & energetic, her grades shot up. we use non-genetically modified, no carrageenan ORGANIC silk soy. Her thyroid is always normal. What I like about soy-milk is IT'S CLEAN, I can rinse the glass off, and it's not stinky like cow-milk. Soy milk doesn't have added hormones, antibiotics, or pain-killers nor contaminated with feces and pus (from mastitis, UP with Monsanto hormone). With cow milk, I have to wash with serious-soap twice to get rid of the stinky smell, very much like chicken or eggs. Cow-milk is allowed by the FDA to contain added hormones, plus a % of feces and pus. The safest milk is coconut milk ... my kid used it before with zero harm on her hormones, but coconut milk has no protein to fill her up for breakfast like soy milk. We need protein & fat in our cold zone 5a, when it gets down below zero in the morning. Sometimes I mix 1/2 coconut milk and 1/2 soy milk, to get both fat and protein. Some cow-milk also contain antibiotics, see excerpt from Time Magazine, March 2015: http://time.com/3738069/fda-dairy-farmers-antibiotics-milk/ "Milk intended for commercial sale is tested for six commonly used antibiotics, NPR reports, and any shipment that tests positive for drug residue is barred from ever making it to the supermarket. Because of that, farmers only use antibiotics on the dairy cows when the cows’ health requires it, and they put those cows’ milk production on hold. The FDA has learned, however, that some farmers use antibiotics that aren’t even intended for cows because the drugs go undetected by these tests. The agency studied milk from close to 2,000 dairy farms, roughly half of which were under suspicion, and half of which were random samples. More than 1% of the under-suspicion group, and .4% of the other samples, tested positive for six antibiotics not FDA-approved for use on dairy cows."

The talk about snacks and recipes reminds me that the big takeaway for me from Noom, which has made it sustainable for me, is the concept of calorie density, which Noom takes from the Volumetrics and Dr. Barbara Rolls, which I think I mentioned in my original post above. This article is a good explanation of Volumetrics, https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/advice/2021/01/05/volumetrics-is-the-best-diet-youve-never-heard-of-and-you-can-eat-cake.html (If that link doesn’t work for you, try this, https://archive.ph/7MN9u ) A few excerpts from the article: So, what are some low-calorie density foods? Anything that has a lot of water—soup, fresh green vegetables, berries and other fresh fruits and sugar-free yogurt. Rolls says these can be considered “free foods” and you can eat pretty much all you want of them. … “I think one of the worst messages that we have out there is ‘just eat less’,” says Rolls. “When people have a half-empty plate, they look at it and, before they even start eating, they compute and think, ‘I’m going to be hungry’. “The thing about Volumetrics is that it shows you how to have satisfying amounts of food while still managing your caloric intake,” she adds. Rolls says that diets based around deprivation fail (at least in the long-term), because we like to feel full. Low-calorie density foods can make us feel full, both while we eat it and after. Studies have shown that we don’t feel hungry an hour later, as some critics have suggested. The next category up on the pyramid includes starchy vegetables, lean fish and meat, rice, beans and pasta — the latter being food you can’t eat on practically any faddish diet these days. Granted, on Volumetrics, you’re not supposed to eat as much pasta as you would, say, kale. Jeha says, if you’re still thinking about it in terms of how it would look on a plate, the pasta might take up roughly a quarter of the space. “One thing I like about Volumetrics is that it’s not telling you to eliminate anything completely,” [Toronto registered dietician Laura] Jeha says. “Inevitably, you’re going to be in a situation where you have a piece of cake — and that’s okay. I tell people to think more in terms of an average over weeks or months and that, if you’re getting fruits and vegetables and eating well most of the time, that’s more important than one day when you had some fast food or something.” I bought a copy of “The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet” Rolls for more in-depth info on the method and also more recipes in keeping with the low calorie density approach.