In retrospect, this is my experience too. I had been doing WW for several months but I was food obsessed...just waiting for my next meal or snack, or counting the last one, always thinking how many points for this or that. Always thinking about food. And then when ProPoints came in, and I could snack on fruit...although it felt very freeing, I felt I was eating all day long. And really, I was. My habits fro WW are still around, in my choice of foods, although I am not counting points anymore. I eat healthy anyway but its hard to hoe into a half or whole avocado any more- I will more likely have a 1/4 on my salad. But I am no longer food obsessed, and I enjoy my meals much more because I am eating a good amount- whatever I feel to eat- and also its much easier to just eat what everyone esle is eating. Whether I lose weight or not, I dont know..I dont really need to any more but I did lose 1/2 kg on the first week of No S- but I can see why people need to keep going on diets- as soon as you go off it, of course you will put weight back on, especialyl if you snack. I need to maintain now (although if I lose some more I wont complain) and I am so glad I found No S at the right time.

No top sheet most of teh time- sometimes when the weather is realyl hot we will have one. We have a fitted sheet and a doona/comforter, which has a washable cover.

Yes, it may be a myth that Atkins died obese, and I am sorry if that is the case (although I did recently read a lengthy article about it). However I stand by the notion that a plant based diet is a far safer way to go than one that is so high in meat and protein. Most traditional cultures did not (and do not) eat a diet high in meat- meat was an extra, and plants were the mainstay. If carbs are so bad for us, why on earth aren't the Chinese and Indians, whose diet revolves around rice- and white rice at that, why on earth don't they have high cholesterol, heart disease etc? I totally agree that the whole cholesterol thing is not as clear as the authorities have made out. And that sugar and refined carbs as we in the west eat them, are not healthy. And that eggs, whole fats, including saturated fats, are healthy- in moderation. We do need cholesterol. It is essential. I have read all that stuff too. What I don't agree with is the whole carbs are bad thing. We in the west have taken our carb obsession to an extreme because we eat so much refined sugar and refined white flour products. Then we go and demonise all carbs, when in fact, just cutting out the refined ones would bring most people back into healthy balance. Some peope don't do well with any grains, (which may be a result of their bodies rebelling after a refined grain diet) but potatoes are carbs too. Also, we are obsessed with low fat food- that is a form of refining our food that tricks our bodies. Real food is the answer. Not cutting out major food groups. With a real food diet, you get your healthy cholesterol, you get all your fats, you get your fibre, your anti oxidants etc, and your brain isnt tricked with chemicals, overly refined foods, foods with fats taken out. It is also sustainable- you cant sustain a diet with major food groups removed, whether its fats, proteins or carbs. Also, we are obsessed with nutrition and we lose touch with the bigger picture. Food is food, and we are meant to relate to it in a certain, wholesome way, including socially...not analyse it to death and think of it in terms of this or that nutrient, and make ourselves unable to eat sociably. Not to the extreme we are doing, anyway. You get healthy cholesterol levels by eating real food, a plant based diet, some meat and whole dairy if you like but that shouldn't be central. Refined oils are not so good- butter, olive and coconut oils are traditional oils used. All the modern diets that have names on them- such as Atkins- make people money, and are experiements- I love to experiement but I wouldn't base my life or health on it long term. JMHO and where I am at on my own journey as a life long health obsessed, healthy diet obsessed, widely read food nut. Finally...something my husband, also a trained naturopath, always used to say when he was in practice- its not what you eat, usually, that is the issue- it is what you DON'T eat. As in, cut out the bad offenders...he frequently had people get well just from cutting daily Coke out of their diet, or sugar. Its often simple.

Paperwork: I have spent years refining a system that works for me. I have a desk with a computer, and a tray on it. I call the tray my inbox but its physical, not virtual :) When papers come into the house, they are generally sorted immediately into what goes straight in the trash, and what makes it to my office and desk. I have a pin board for bills next to my desk. A 2 drawer filing cabinet next to my desk with an alphabetical system in it. And my tray- where everything goes that needs sorting or dealing with, but I dont want to do it right now. Thursdays is Desk Day (a Flylady thing) and thats when I go through the papers in the tray, pay bills and catch up on paperwork things. I also have a large squared calendar next to my desk, for appointments, and a day to a page desk diary on my desk, which is where I write my To Do lists, my notes, phone messages, shopping lists etc. That saves me having lots of scraps of paper around the place. Toys- not my area anymore. I never did such a good job with toys but we had containers to keep them in which helped somewhat. Less toys is best. Organising chores- I use the Flylady system (on and off, and I am back on at the moment). I have daily morning and evening routines for doing chores (written on a chart), weekly zones, a habit of regular decluttering, a daily theme (such as shopping day, anti procrastination day, car clean day). For my kids, they just do their chores each morning, and it is my chore to make sure they do them.

I think the thing with minimalism is that its not about having those clear, magazine like homes with no clutter. It's not about image. It's about a mindset that is the opposite of hoarding and collecting "just in case". It's the opposite of a poverty mentality- even if you do have minimal means. It is an abundance mentality. Letting go of "holding on" so tight to possessions. I think people take it to mean its about having a clean and tidy house with beautiful, expensive possessions, bare walls etc but I think that is really only a superficial aspect of it- a good one for those who can afford it, but it's not where minimalism is really, in its heart, coming from. It's about letting go of materialism, altogether, really. Realising we just dont need so much stuff to live good lives. It's about freeing up our time and energy from dealing with "stuff" so we can spend more time with people, with doing things that matter, with our deepest values. Of course we are all going to have to work that out for ourselves and we are all at different places on the continuum between hoarding materialism and 50 personal possessions or a carry on luggage bag only. The stuff itself, however, is not really the issue- it's our attitude. Its teh letting go, the detachment from deriving personal worth and value through possessions. So for me, I like to keep a list of what I want to replace. If I had a curtain I wanted to replace, I would write it down and then look out for one- a 2nd hand one. I enjoy that though. I found 2nd hand cast iron saucepans to replace my stainless steel ones- but dh woudlnt let go of the stainless steel ones so I kept one in the saucepan cupbaord and the rest are in a top cupboard, out of the way. I feel its more about creating a flow in my life. I let go of outdated clothes- Flylady calls it "blessing others" with them- just pass them on. I sold some more books on the weekend at teh markets- made $80. I buy new 2nd hand clothes whenever i need something. ANd I let more go. I have a lot of health books...I am agonising over trimming them back more now. What if I go into practice? What if I need any of them? Never mind I havent cracked most of them since the time I first read them years ago. I just think if you know why you are doing it...(for yourself- your perception might be different from mine) - it might be easier to discern how to proceed. I have homeschool books I am not ready to let go of- TWTM, and all 4 SOTWs and Activity guides. Really. I hav efinished homescholing my 2. I want to homeschool my grandkids (never mind what my kids want :) ) I am having issues here, but I am not ready to let them go :) Just do it gently as you are ready, and replace things as it becomes possible.

You are not the only one, Laurie. I was inspired by the same post and I LOVE the No S diet too. I had never heard about it before (I love these boards for that). I have just cancelled my online WW subscription (which I hadn't really used since Christmas). I have been doing the No S since whenever it was I read about that it in that post and I have lost weight and it is completely effortless and feels like I could live like this forever- which is th point. Probably easier for me than some, since I already didn't eat sweets much. WW now seems so...food obsessive. It was good for me in that I recognised I was eating too much. It helped me rein in my eating. However...its a full time job..to count points, record them, plan meals, record them...and think about food all the time. There's a stage when that is useful, but I was over it. The No S diet is so much more practical and less food obsessive. And I love my meals so much more!

Whoa, I have just been checking out the flood videos and photos. Incredible. I dotn watch TV or get the newspapers so although I knew it was happening, I didnt have the visual impact. http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2011/01/11/3110493.htm

No, not normal. We have 2 systems here- TAFE (Technical and Further Education) and then the University system. She is going to TAFE to do a 1 year diploma in Mass Communications- in her equivalent of y12 here. That course feeds into 2nd year university though. We are just lucky as homeschoolers to have found it, and she got in (they like homeschoolers). Schooled kids just wouldn't know they could also do it. She is ready to move into the world and the class is small and all paid students (not govt assisted) so they want to be there. She's very excited.

Love all that Aussie bleeping. I would be bleeping too, though. Thats incredible.

My 16 and 15 yos both have to be off all electronics by 10pm- its summer holidays here- but we are not stipulating a bedtime for them. They often stay up later. They both like staying up late. I am an early bird. Once they are at school/college I will return them both to a 9pm off electronics and 10pm lights out. I cant really control the lights out...but I can control the electronics.

When I made milk kefir, I would make smoothies for everyone from it. I prefer not to have dairy at the moment but I did recently dig my milk kefir grains out from the back of the fridge after a full year of not using them (they were jsut sitting in milk for the whole time), and made a batch- took 2 days, and worked perfectly. I have water kefir grains too and I am enjoying water kefir at the moment.

My kids do, and they absolutely love them. I wouldnt stop them but I can understand parents not allowing them. I dont really like them at all...here or when they go elsewhere...because they never get enough sleep and come home grumpy and not their best. It can sometimes take a few days to get over it too. But worst are Scout camps where they are physically workng hard then hardly getting any sleep. They come home wrecked and I used to lose a couple of days school sometimes.

I dont iiron in winter, but in summer some of my tops and dresses wrinkle too much to get away with not ironing them. Once every few weeks is about it, though.

Actor: Johnny Depp Acress: Cate Blanchett

Yeah, I'm safe. Just jolly hot over here, and apparently a looming bushfire, but that's all normal for January. The floods in the east are the worst in decades but really, not so unusual in the bigger picture. It's just that the whole east coast has been in drought for a decade...so that ended with a big bang. But Australia is a country of extreme weather conditions (well, lots of heat, bushfires, sometimes floods- hardly ever any snow although they did get some a couple of months ago which was unusual)..I think the media might make a bigger deal of its significance nowadays with the whole planetary warming story. The QLD floods are now in northern NSW too. Difficult for the people whose homes are being flooded, or whose family members drowned in the flash flooding- there are dozens missing apparently.

Potatoes, onoins and garlic at room temp. Generally all fruit is at room temp, except sometimes some summer fruit, to slow down spoilage rate. All other vegetables are kept in the fridge.

A plant based diet. Cut meat and dairy right down. Vegans have low cholesterol. I dont agree with Atkins (he died morbidly obese btw). I don't think it's healthy long term, even if it changes your statistics. Losing a whole food group, demonising carbs, is not healthy- and it's unsustainable in the long term. Doesn't mean you shouldn't eat some fat, even saturated fat. But supplements really should be secondary to a healthy plant based diet.

I love my ipad but the truth is, the novelty has worn off and i don't use it a lot. I intend to get either a Mac BOok Pro or an IMac, and if I ge the Mac BOok Pro I am considering selling my ipad to help pay for it. Truth is...I dont use any apps except for IPeriod and Amazon Kindle, and ibooks...I do like it for downloading books and for that alone I may well keep it...very useful. I did intend to use it for homeschooling and for being able to be online while I waited for kids at classes. Turns out I dont do either anymore, which means I only use it at home- where I always have my own computer anyway. Something in me really wanted to get one though so if I didnt have it I wouldprobably still want it. Knowing what i know now I think I might have got a Kindle instead, but they werent out in Australia at the time.

Cleaning grout in the bathroom. But overall I don't really hate any of them.

Getting married wasnt a big deal...we had been living together and had 2 kids before we decided to officially tie the knot. So out of those 2 choices, having kids was more stressful. But its not relaly the having of th ekids either..that doesnt seem stressful. Its the situations around it...2nd kid we were living too isolated....normal increased marriage stress after both births....stuff like that. Not really the actual having of kids.

I am presuming its the group thing. However for some it may be couples- not here though. I am not ready for that, but I guess it will happen one day...and we will accomodate it when the time comes- not yet, and not encouraging it until its going to happen anyway. My cousin had very liberal parents and she had a boyfriend allowed to stay over from when she was about 15-. She once told me she wishes her parents hadn't allowed it- she was too young and it was emotionally too difficult at that age to deal with. She is still very liberal but what she said has stuck in my mind.

A system like YNAB allows you to put aside a certain amount each month "virtually"- as in, you can manage your whole budget online and put aside money in different catagories each week or month- using the income that you plug in there. I use the envelope system for what I use cash for: shopping money, gas/petrol, kids classes, my personal spending, gifts, and miscellaneous. I have a wallet called savvy-cents with different laelled sections in it so that when I do the grocery shopping I am only using the money in the grocery section, not the gas section. It works really well fo rme. But before I got the wallet I just used literal envelopes and carried them around in my handbag. For the bills we pay onine, I spent some time organising them, working out exactly how much we needed to save monthly to pay them etc. Then I let that go because we stopped using the credit card for personal stuff and jsut used it for bills, and then paid it off (OK, not 100% but dh isnt totally on board and its better than it was.). The only reason I dont use YNAB - which I bought and love- is because we have a cash income and it didnt work well for that, for me, because not everything goes through the bank.

Yes- our situation varies and sometimes I can afford organic produce, sometimes I can't. Also, dh is not so supportive of spending much money on organics, so I budget really hard to buy what I can while still staying within a certain budget. My first priority is always to buy fresh, alive food, rather than frozen or packaged food. I think the most important thing is fresh food, and as much fruit and veg as possible. So whether I get it at the supermarket, the organic stores, or the farmer's markets....that is my aim. I will tend to only buy what is in season and if its on special at the supermaket (as cherries were last week) I will buy it there rather than spend twice or triple that to get it organic or go without cherries altogether. It's a constant juggle here. I am learning to meal plan more, to waste less food, to use the farmer's markets more and more...which means more planning and more buying what is in season....so that I can buy higher quality food within our budget. One intheresting thing that came up in the book I jsut read- Food Rules- is that we in the west tend to spend a much smaller proportion of our income on food, than other cultures. He recommends buying the highest quality of food you can afford. I have trouble convincing my dh of that (he is jsut into bargains and whatever is on special, doesnt read labels etc) but if I budget well I can usually manage it. When there isnt enough money, there isnt enough money. I just do my best.

Yes, we have them and my kids go to them. No, they don't have sex, believe it or not. And no, I am not really naive. They only sleep with others in a shared situation- all sprawled out on several mattresses places together in the loungeroom, parents nearby and able to walk in at any moment- or they sleep boys in one room, girls in another- which is what they do at my place because I have a son and a daughter close in age with their own bedroom each, so its easy to do it that way. Quite often there are half a dozen or more kids involved. We have a unique situation of my kids being very close to another homeschooling family of 2 girls the same ages as my 2, whose parents are very liberal- even more so than us in this way. These 4 kids are in the same Venturer group (previously Scouts) and also the same teen gymnastic group, as well as being homeschoolers- they have a very tight but large group of friends, both male and female. They all watch each other, they are all good friends, and yes, some are bf/gf at different times, and sometimes groups of them have sleepovers. Summer hols here right now- its fairly frequent. There is no actual harm being done. No sex is being had. And they are having a warm, loving and open teenagerhood where physical contact, hugging, and even co-sleeping (in groups, parents around) is normal. I wish I had had a childhood like that. It might well have prevented me from being promiscuous and desperate for male affection in my teens.

It is a hive "in joke " because sometimes ..well, people like to not attract the search engines to the boards, as well as just preferring to use less explicit language. A while back (quite a while now) someone wrote a post talking about their making love issues- probably asking for advice- by using the term making tea instead. It was absolutely hilarious and the term has stuck ever since. The same as the booKs, for boobs, (and bookshelves for bras)which I can't remember if it was orginially a typo or not, but that stuck too. Someone should save those original posts when they happen. I can never remember the details even though I remember when they happened. I guess we never know how much they will "take" when they happen.