Indeed, although the guys I hang out with can sure drain a Mike's pretty fast :D I think that's what I like about it -- it's one of the least gendered of drinks (at least in my group).

If you like Mike's, you might like apple-based drinks like Redd's Apple Ale or the Angry Orchard hard cider or similar. Those and Mike's are my go-to drinks when everyone around me is having a beer and I don't want to be the lush ordering a mixed drink or the snob ordering wine.

Stickers worked great for me when I was in K and they work great now. I have a list of 10 things I need for my 'didn't fail adulting' sticker and if I get 7/10 (C is passing!) I get a sticker :)

Yes, I would go, just so that you have ammunition if someone decides to report you for your kid being underweight. I hate to say it, but I would do so just as a CYA. And I would also take notes and nod. If you disagree with the advice (like someone I know was told to give her kid more soda to bring her weight up), I'd just quietly not implement it.

Since you keep harping on the eat-one-meal-a-day thing ... Ya, I am not at all intrinsically opposed to it. But she is only 12. 12 year olds are not at all mature and it is very common that they decide that if a little of something is good, a lot must be better. Heck, even adults do this sometimes. So they cut calories a bit and see results. But they want more results so they cut calories some more. And some more. And then some more. Or they cut meals a bit (like, cut out one) and see results. So they cut out a second. And then they do their best to cut out or minimize intake at a third. Or they start puking up the third. Or they start genuinely binge eating at the third, to where they'll eat far beyond the point of hunger and then try fasting the next day to make it up and then binge eat again. And all the while they're seeing positive feedback from everyone. Yay! I'm not fat anymore! I'm the second fattest! No! I'm actually average! And the positive feedback continues and they keep cutting out more and more, and frequently when a child has a history of obesity nobody worries until they are at the low end of healthy or even lower, instead of getting worried when they've dropped 20 lbs in a month. There are so many eating disorders that have begun this way and a 12 year old with a history of obesity is already at a high risk of developing them. This is not something she should do without very close medical supervision and quite possibly counseling as well. Her weight is not skyrocketing right now. There is time to wait.

This is something again where I really think a hormone check may help. If you tend to have excess male hormones, you tend to put on fat like a man, which means that you have skinny arms and legs and a potbelly. I do not think you should try to lose weight. As a matter of fact, I really think you should actively avoid it. I do think that exercise may help if you are not doing it already. Whole-body exercise, it doesn't have to be high intensity, you could do yoga, or a bodyweight strength program if you don't like classes, but I think whole body is important and not just running/walking. This is also a great thing to do for your overall health as you get older. And, quite honestly, you may just be built like that and need to resign yourself to not having a waistline as slim as others. It is unfortunate but it is what it is. Some people have naturally thick waistlines and 32 inches is not at all bad for your height. But I'd try hormone check and adding exercise before resigning myself.

It was always a juggle for me because I wanted to take all of the classes. If she has already had and learned AP calc she will be bored witless in college algebra. It would be a complete waste of her time. I would either enroll in calculus or take the AP credit. If she was shaky or struggled dropping back to a simpler class might be a good idea. I think that given as she has already had almost all the classes it ought to be ok, but she should mark the drop deadline on the calendar and 3-4 days in advance calculate how she's doing in every class. A single W from an overeager freshman is totally reasonable.

Yeah, I am sooooo bad about doing anything other than a very brief bodyweight training set at home. Seriously, about five exercises is the max. I see people talk about doing yoga with videos but I always get distracted by kitten videos when I try that.

Ha, yeah. I always wanted to hit six feet, never made it, but almost. I've been the same height since I was 12, got my period right about then. It really stank being a very tall overdeveloped chubby preteen. But I grew maybe one inch since I started.

She can easily do her freshman year as a science education major while leaving the option open to switch to math by taking calculus as a freshman. This will allow her to find out more about the job market and also about what college-level classes in those areas are like. One thing that really trips up a lot of people who want to do math education is the proof-based classes (which are required for a math ed degree in nearly every state). I refer especially to analysis/advanced calculus and modern/abstract algebra. Students who are considering math education (or any math major) should try to take introduction to proofs (schools call this different things) as early in their career as they feasibly can, because if they loathe this class with every innermost fiber of their being, that would indicate they should switch majors. A high school student who is thinking of math ought to try to get some exposure to proofs if their program doesn't have a lot of it.

I'd be really, really iffy about enrolling a 7th grader in college composition regardless of what their placement said. The material can be awfully adult, and a lot of times the placement tests check grammar more than actual writing skills. Honestly I'd also be inclined to get a read on what the advanced reading class covers, because they may be having him read some pretty graphic material and you usually can't get an alternative assignment. The math class would probably work but I see in your schedule for this year that he's just finished pre-algebra. It would probably save you money to take algebra 1 and 2 at home and then move into college algebra (usually the first class that counts for credit towards a degree) after that. At the college, college algebra will follow beginning/elementary algebra and intermediate algebra (algebra 1 and 2, same class) but those classes usually do not count for credit towards a degree. This also gives you an out -- college classes move FAST. I would also remind you that college math classes (especially remedial classes) are usually filled with students who struggle with math and hate math and this may not be the best environment for an accelerated child. If they tell you their placement test puts him in college algebra, um, there's something wrong with the placement test. I have taught college algebra and there is no way someone who's finished algebra 1/2 is prepared. (If he's gone further, ignore that part of the advice). I would look into enrolling him in classes in his broad area of interest (art? if you say graphic design) if possible, to get his feet wet.

One of the nice things about pursuing physical science is that generally the degree requires enough math that you can get a math endorsement without a huge number of extra classes. At our college it gets you halfway there. You can frequently add an endorsement after you graduate and it does increase marketability to be able to be the physics/chemistry instructor who also has a class of algebra 1, because it increases flexibility for the school. It's a sort of hybrid degree that prepares one to teach high school physics, chemistry, and physical science.

It is so much easier to eat something that you have raised knowing that it will go to be butchered than to eat a pet. You do not take the meat animals out to play with them. You do not give them names like 'Mr. Fluffles' but rather names like 'Lamb Chop'. I'd still investigate local butchers. For meat that my family sells, we go to a local Amish-run place that does a beautiful job and will do anything legal that you bring in (for example, don't bring in a dog).

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who is frequently motivated by "I paid for this, I better use it!"

Yes, this. I would honestly be quite reluctant to try any kind of diet which cut entire categories of foods out without an actual diagnosis in a child of this age. It looks like the OP's DD's weight has stopped increasing and is holding steady. So this isn't a matter of urgent necessity -- there's time to continue doing what they're doing now and visit medical professionals. The other thing I'd encourage, OP, is if you are not writing down food logs, that you do so for a while so that you have something to show the doctors. I also think that your dd may feel a lot better mentally if she feels that there's a medical problem and we're going to get to the bottom of this rather than that her body is just failing to respond or, worse yet, that she is somehow failing to try.

For chickens, we made awesome moveable pens with scrap lumber and plastic chicken wire. Each panel is about 3x8, made of a square with diagonal cross-braces, and covered in the chicken wire. This leaves one half-covered spot at the top which is covered with rain-retardant cloth so they have a shelter and a sun shelter. The panels are zip-tied together so in winter they can be stacked and stored, and it is light enough that two people can easily move it. The chickens have access to fresh bugs daily and love it.

Ooh. The one caution I want to give is ... don't jump into too many projects at once. This is a great way to get yourself burned out. I strongly recommend no more than one new type of animal per year or possibly two if closely related and can be penned together (e.g. sheep/goats, ducks/geese). I also recommend keeping an eye on the number of projects you're committing to per year. For livestock, I think starting with poultry is best, because the rewards are more immediate and the upfront investment is lower. Even if you're familiar with them, it can still be a bit of a shock. That being said, reading material! There's a book called In One Barn by (I think) Lee Pelley which we found very useful for planning multi-species housing rather than a poultry shed, a cow shed, a goat shed, etc. I'll post some more later when I can check my bookshelf.

+1 for complete workup, preferably by childhood obesity specialist. 40 lbs in a year is a LOT. I really wish my mother had pushed for a complete workup when I started exhibiting symptoms of PCOS rather than just letting the doctor tell me "Oh, shave your neck if it bothers you". While you're waiting on this, I would also work on emphasizing healthy lifestyle over weight loss as other posters suggested. When she's down about not losing, emphasize the positive effects that you have seen from this, like the acne clearing up. Edit: I also think it's worth emphasizing to her that while the doctors are looking for a reason, she has at least been able to stop *gaining*. Yeah, she's not losing much, but stopping a rapid gain in its tracks is still a very commendable victory.

I lift. It's not my favorite but I don't hate it and I really like the results. Sometimes "I'm too tired" gets to me. So I tell myself that I'm only going to do my arch-nemesis exercise (whichever one I'm struggling with the most) and then if I'm still tired I can quit. Usually when I make it through that I feel that I can continue. If not, well, at least I made it through whichever one needed the most work.

For specifically magnesium, have you considered epsom salt baths? You said warm baths but I'm not sure what was in it. For me, really paying attention to dietary potassium helped with the horrible leg cramps I used to get.

In some cases, completion of the AA/AS will grant completion of all lower-division gen eds at state 4-year colleges regardless of how the classes transfer, other than program-specific ones. So if you didn't take psych 101 and your program requires it, you still have to take it, but if you took a class that transferred as something weird and didn't count for gen eds, you'd still have your gen eds done. I think the best way to hedge your bets would be to skip something like a health class or similar which is offered every summer. By the end of spring semester, your child will know (hopefully) where they're going or if they're taking a gap year, in which case they can decide then whether to take that summer class and apply for august graduation. My brother (started at CC) hedged his by skipping a specific required humanities class. It turned out he did not receive a benefit from the AA, so he did not take summer school, but when he went to his 4-year, he took their equivalent class and back-transferred it to get his AA. Frankly, he only did that because he felt the CC had been very good to him, and completing a degree will help their numbers because of the weird and stupid way that they track progress, but that is a rant for another thread.

The units, it will depend on the colleges they apply to, but many will. The AA/AS often requires application as a transfer student, but if the student wants to apply to one where this would do so, they could just not graduate. The issue would be changing their mind at the end, but hey, nothing is perfect.

Let us consider some statistics, fabricated so that I have easy numbers to work with. Let us say that disease X has a vaccine that is not super effective, and 20% of exposed, vaccinated people will get it. Meanwhile, 50% of exposed, non-vaccinated people will get it. Suppose that we have 80 vaccinated and 20 non-vaccinated people who are all exposed. The expected value is that 20% of the vaccinated (16) will become sick, while 50% of the non-vaccinated (10) will become sick. Now, it is easy to look at that and say "Well, 16 of the sick people were vaccinated and 10 weren't! We might as well not vaccinate if it's such a crapshoot!" But if it really were a crapshoot, we'd expect to see the same percentage of illness in the exposed vaccinated versus the exposed non-vaccinated. In reality, this hypothetical vaccine worked significantly better than not being vaccinated at all, and the apparent difference is solely because there were far more vaccinated than non-vaccinated. And that's all vaccination does. It is not, and not intended to be, 100% effective (though it is significantly more effective in most cases than the example I have concocted here because I don't feel like working with ugly numbers at this time of night). But it reduces the chances significantly.

Too true. "Yay, another pound down" is just so much more motivational than "Yay, another day when I was inside my goal weight range".

One thing that I try very hard to do is to think about whether it actually makes sense to try to save on a specific item. For example, whether I save 20 cents on something that I buy once every 3 months, it is not really worth bothering about. Something like frozen vegetables, on the other hand, where I eat large quantities of on a daily basis, I stock up every time that they are on sale. Saving 20 cents per pound doesn't sound like much but when you multiply that by at least 10 pounds per week, it starts to add up. So I'll make a special trip to the store (the flyers are all online here) if something specific like that is on sale (I do have a chest freezer). Learning how to do leftover magic is also very useful. For example, almost any leftover meat or vegetable can be chopped up and put into a soup, and homemade biscuits to go with the soup are quick and easy if you have a food processor (they are also quick without but take a little time to learn how to do quickly). Leftovers can also be chopped into an omelet or souffle, or chopped into a white sauce which can be served over pretty much any starch you like. Joy of Cooking (at least, my edition) has a fairly decent selection of "what do I do with leftover x?" Becoming vigilant about using your leftovers is also useful. If you tend to stick stuff in the fridge and forget about it, a whiteboard near the fridge is useful, so that you can have stuff like 'mashed potatoes, went in on day x' 'chicken carcass, went in on day y' to remind you what needs using up without just standing there staring into the fridge. If your kids will eat them, lentils or other legumes are filling and nutritious, and also super easy in a fix-it-and-let-it-cook way.