I'm chunky and need to shed some poundage. I've been to ww online and it looked so inviting, but I'm questioning WHY NOT JUST COUNT CALORIES? Isn't this much more complicated? What's the "pay off" for making it more complicated? What's the advantage of this? You have to look up and plug in 4 factors per item ingested (calories, fat, fiber and protein).......so isn't this 4x the work? If you're going to TRACK something, why not just simplify it and merely count calories? Besides, the fat/carbs/protein are just different forms of energy (calories). Can someone please explain this?

The whole default "talking point" of you're not leaving sounds strange and cult-ish. And, honestly, what came to mind is that your family must contribute a handsome tithe and that perhaps that's part of the don't leave mantra. (don't have to reply to my surmises, but just being honest what came to mind FWIW). For my other thoughts, I'll PM ya. In the meantime......:grouphug:to you.

Can you elaborate on the last bit "for short bits"? Does this mean that for longer bits, they don't play well?

I have a son who's just turned 7 in April. I have a son who just turned 1 in April. Exactly (6 years and 6 days apart). My spouse didn't want but one child and finally after 4 years of prayer and asking, he agreed to another, thus my second born. My parents had a car accident when my son was 1 and my surviving parent (dad) was left paralyzed and came to live with us so I was exhausted with caring for both as dad was in a diaper and was very dependent all care. Dad passed away when my son was 4, and my husband, once things got "back to normal", was open to another child and thus 1.5 years later, our second son was born. My 13 month old, as you can imagine, makes homeschooling somewhat challenging at times, but thankfully we're in the easy stages with my firstborn. Now, we're in the talking stages of having a 3rd child. We're both 38 years old. I'm just curious about this question in the next paragraph, but please KNOW that this issue has N O T H I N G to do with our decision to have a 3rd child. We are fairly sure that we'd be done after #3 due to our age(38 ...would be 39). We're hoping to try to conceive soon (next month) and if we have a 3rd child then, hopefully, #2 and #3 will be about 22 - 27 months apart ish (guessing of course). AFTER this 3rd child gets 18+ months(more play-able), will I likely have two underfoot or will #2 and #3 HELP the homeschooling issue in that they can play/be together? Will having a 3rd make hs'ing the eldest more of a challenge (i know it will in the early months of #3's life, but I mean in the long-haul) or less of challenge in the long haul? Any crystal balls out there? Just looking for guess-timations based on similar experiences or observations of such in your homes.