Yep, all true on the diet thing! I did a lot of reading on it years ago. I forgot to mention anothere interesting thing. I shared some of the info with my mom and at first the ONLY change she made was to switch from margarine to butter... still ate pretty badly. That change alone dropped her cholesterol by about 20 points in a year.
About Atkins - yep, I did that for years, also. I don't completely go off of it ever, but I'd say I'm closer to the Protein Power type diet now (not that they're all that different, in the long run). I have lost a total of 80 lbs or so over the last 5 years. Another 20-25 to go... the bomb diet may just get me there. Fortunately the most gain I have ever had was about 15 lbs when I was in bed with my broken leg and pretty much let my eating go to heck plus had no exercise. I am hoping that since it was relatively slow loss it will stick. It was mostly in large chunks followed by long plateaus.
I find it funny that if you describe WHAT you eat most people and pretty much every doc out there will go "Oh yes that's very healthy!" But if you say "I'm doing Atkins" you get anything from "that's healthy" to "OMG you're going to drop dead tomorrow!" Kind of funny how that works.
Totally agree it has to be a life change. You can have treats here and there, but you really need to stick with it (or whatever diet works for you) long term. Congrats on the 80 lbs and the 46 now!
The pumpkin was a lot of fun - brought it inside before it ended up all over the street (the kids like to do that here for ones left out overnight). So I'm enjoying it again today.
I need to post pics of it later on. Jak - would love to see the one your son did also! I don't even think mine's that extravagent (I have done much fancier ones before) - but it turned out cute. I think the critical thing was that I cut a hole in the bottom and put in a "pumpkin light" (basically a battery operated light that strobes and looks like a flickering candle). So there's no "lid" cut out of the top, which looks really different.
On the ML... yeah, definitely will not do anything when I don't want to or I'm not comfortable with it. I am probably being overly paranoid about this infection, just bad timing on that. Although H is such a bad liar that I do believe him maybe 95% that there's no PA. Even with all of the practice lately he is still a horrible liar. Guess I can count that as a good thing though huh? I do think if/when we sep it needs to be off the table as an option this time - I hadn't looked at it that way until someone (OT I think?) pointed out that it can be pretty darn unattractive to be basically throwing yourself at someone who has said they don't want you. Yeah it's fun at the time but the message it sends is not so great in that situation.
Me 35, H 38; Together 13.5 yrs, M 7 Bomb 1 10/07/06 Sep'd 1/14/07 - 4/15 Piecing: 4/07 - 9/07 Bomb 3 10/11/07: Never loved you, let's separate 2/08 slowly improving 7/08 Piecing (7/25/08 rings back on!!) Current thread
