Oh, yay, I joined the Doper Sparkteam. Fun.
I’d love to link to pictures, but my family has never gotten into the photo sharing sites, and I still have a bit of squeamishness about sharing my picture with the internet. Just imagine someone who looks very, very happy and proud of herself.
I also joined SparkPeople and the Sparkteam. I am texasannie76 over there. I haven’t done amything much to my Spark Page, but it exists.
I couldn’t find SDMB using the search either. I tried “straight dope” and the top result was the Bisexual Losers Club! I thought about joining, but soldiered on to find the Dopers instead.
Jali started the SDMB SP Team, but she asked me to be the leader. If anyone hasn’t joined yet, please come on over!
A weird question just occurred to me in the shower. When we retain water weight, where do we retain it? Is it distributed all over our bodies or does more end up in one place than another?
The people who are supportive of my efforts are those who are either normal weight or who have about the same to lose as I do (15 or so pounds). My other, more overweight friends will roll their eyes or even kind of mock me (We’re out to dinner and one friend opens a menu. “So, let’s see, lorene is going to have the salad with grilled chicken, right?”). I know it sounds very much like, with friends like that, who needs enemies, but I understand it comes from a place of deep sadness and insecurity. Both of the friends I am thinking of of gastric bypasses, lost weight, then gained it all back. 
We need an icon! It looks very sad with the “no Image” square.
Personally speaking, at times that I have been overweight, if I sit down to eat something that I know is not particularly good for me, it helps soothe the feelings of guilt if I see someone else eating a lot also. I mean, I’d never go so far as to mock what someone else was eating, but I can understand that feeling of, “Ugh, she’s eating a salad and I ordered rolls, a steak, and dessert. I feel like a glutton.” Not that that excuses them mocking what you ordered, though.
I am right there with you! I would like to lose exactly seven pounds, as well! Why are those last 5-7 so flipping hard! And people drive me nuts. What is it that causes people to have no problem with commenting on my healthy choices/small portion sizes, when people wouldn’t dream of commenting on how unhealthy/large someone’s meal is? It’s just as rude!
I’m quite surprised to see that SparkPeople appears to have just about everything that Weight Watcher has.
And for free!
I don’t think we can upload the SDMB logo due to copyright issues. I was thinking of finding a :smack: (fighting ignorance-type smiley) online. If anyone has any ideas, e-mail me the link and I’ll upload the image.
I am going to explore over there a little more before I decide whether to give up on WW. I’ve finally got my husband on-board (as of this morning he’s down 15.5 pounds, he took off for the Christmas break) and I’d like to make sure he’s got all of the materials he needs.
I just wish their server didn’t crash 18 times a day. I was able to login briefly this morning, but that only lasted about five minutes.
It doesn’t normally crash…I wonder if it’s January people? It’s normally very fast-loading, and you can upload pictures, so figure how busy and big their servers must be.
SDMB SparkTeam comes up now when you search “SDMB.”
I sincerely just want to sleep and hibernate today.
I hate winter.
Sad no more, thanks to Mr. Zotti!
Finally some good news. Down to 207.6 after a dismal weigh-in of 212 last week. Yes, that’s a lot, but I was down to this weight a couple of months ago. I’m working on what I regained over the last several weeks of being lazy.
I’ve been playing around on Spark People and tracking my food and cardio. I haven’t been fully adhering to all of the calorie recommendations - yesterday I stopped when I’d eaten all my WW Points, and SP would have preferred I’d eaten about 250 more calories. I’m not sure yet if I’ll completely switch over, but I really like having the visible calorie-fat-protein-carbs breakdown on what I eat. For now, I’m using both websites. The community stuff on SP appears to be easier to use than that on the WW website.
I did go out and buy a scale that day and weighed myself. I was 182. I was going to start karate on wednesday but I had my period and all I wanted to do was sit on the couch with a heat pad. I did some walking on the treadmill, drank all my water and ate proper meals (both food and proportion).
I just weighed myself on Friday, January 9 and I’m 175. So I lost 7 pounds. I must admit I’m pretty pleased with myself. Even though I know that you always lose big the first week it is still nice to see some success.
Good luck everyone. 
This have been slow going lately but I’m down to **266.5 **as of this morning. That’s just about 25 pounds gone since mid-October and I really credit SparkPeople for my success. It’s so easy to track food on there and I’m part of a “Biggest Loser” team competition that’s really help motivate me.
If anyone wants to friend me on Spark, my username is the same as here.
Could we* make a list of everyone’s SDMB and SP names?
*someone else.
There must be good karma floating around the thread today. I weighed this morning and have lost 2 pounds this week, and the week isn’t even officially over yet. (I re-started all this on Sunday, having taken a break over the holidays.) This totally makes up for a crap day at the gym last night. It was just one of those days where I felt like I had lead weights strapped to my limbs while trying to move around. Blegh.
So, about 4-7 pounds to go. Almost there.