I'm online and you're online. Thought I'd say hi!

Hello everybody! Just thought I would send a little note from abroad. My parents were great enough to send me to Europe for a few weeks after my program ended so that I would get a chance to visit my friends here and because I didnt get that same abroad experience. Last Thursday night I flew into Dublin, Ireland where my friend Emily is studying. We spent the weekend there, visiting castles and taking a tour of the famous Guinness Storehouse. Monday morning the two of us flew to Paris where our good friend Sarah is taking a semester. We were lucky enough to be gifted a free weekly metro pass from someone who was leaving the country. Weve spent the week so far visiting cafés and musées. I apoligize for the poor typing but Im using the cyber centre next to our hostel in Montrmartre and the keyboards weird. Today we went to the Centre Pompidou and took the tour to the top of the Notre Dame towers. Then we climbed some stairs to the beautiful view of the Sacré Coeur. Tomorrow we will be visiting the Louvre, the Champs-elysées, the Eiffel Tower and a fondue restaurant that supposedly serves wine out of baby bottles?! Friday, we (Em, Sarah and I) are flying to the Netherlands with some other friends for the weekend. And then next monday morning we will be leaving for Rome, Italy where two of my friends are studying and have an apartment and some friends from the states are meeting us. I'm extremely excited and have had an excellent time so far. I will be flying home on the 26th of March. I hope to see you all soon!!

So today and yesterday were absolutely lovely. Sunny and warm. It was nice but now I wish I were down in the heat of Florida. I'll be sad to leave the luke warm weather in NC for the frigid weather in NY, but happy to be home.

This morning I had a Resting Metabolic Rate Test, or RMR. I had to fast for 12 hours and then go over to the Duke Center for the Living where they did the test. They put me in a semi-dark room and put a hard plastic bubble around my head. I then waited, sat still and rested, but didn't fall asleep, for 30 minutes. The test measures your breathing and somehow they are able to calculate the amount of calories you would burn in a day if you just sat on your butt. My RMR was completely average. This information is helpful for planning out calories and exercise once I get home.

So today I was weighed hydrostatically. Basically what that means is that I weighed myself and my bathing suit outside of the water...to get my naked weight. And then I sat in a chair in an underwater scale and dunked me head underwater. They wait until you blow out all of your air. What this determines is the weight of you fat free mass: organs, muscle and bones. They use this figure to determine a healthy weight range. It was slightly intimidating, but generally helpful and I'm glad I did it.

We also now have an NFL player here...I didn't even know his team, but apparently they almost made it to the superbowl.:)

Feds Say the Darnedest Things
Bush's quasi-bold pronouncements on oil prompt criticism, backpedaling

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Bush declared that "America is addicted to oil" and that he would "make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past." Within 24 hours, fiasco ensued. Saudi Arabia's ambassador said he would ask Bush, ahem, "what he exactly meant by that." Oil industry lobbyists squealed; libertarians nigh fainted. Energy experts (read: the literate) pointed out that most of the R&D programs mentioned in the speech -- "clean coal," nuclear, wind, solar, etc. -- are designed to generate electricity and wouldn't have any effect on oil consumption. And to cap off the furor with appropriate absurdity, administration officials said Bush's declaration that the U.S. would cut its Middle East oil imports 75 percent by 2025 was not meant to be taken literally. It was meant to dramatize the issue in a way "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands." So ... lies lead to understanding. We're starting to get the whole WMD thing!

So I'm now in my fourth week...scary. I'm excited to be more than half done. I'm having a really good time here and am really happy with the program, but I know that in a few weeks I will definitely be ready to leave and to see the family.

The salmon tonight had a really great mango sauce I'm going to have to try and make once I get home. They sell their cookbook here so it'll be interesting to see if I'm able to make the food as gourmet as they serve it. The chocolate tofu is seriously to die for.

Exercising is becoming more and more of a habit, but because we do it for so long every day...I'm finding the need to jump from machine to machine to the pool in order to get as much time in as I want to.

We get checked in every Wednesday here and have an opportunity to meet with a Dr. At other points in the week we meet with our Behavioral Health and Nutrition specialists individually.

The check-in (and weigh-in) have been serious positive motivators. There's always a worry that you're not working hard enough or that for some reason the fat is gonna just refuse to come off. But I've been very satisfied so far. Some of my friends are finding it more difficult since the first week, and the loss of all our water weight, to keep losing, because of physical limitations when working out, or menopause...some things really slow down your metabolism.:) Being young and having a relatively high resting metabolic rate are helpful in this case.

So our third week at the DFC started off with a fun activity! We went out to a restaurant as a group tonight. Last Friday we met and went through a lecture on traditional restaurant foods and strategies for not overdoing it (removing the bread, etc.) We then chose a restaurant and looked through the menu, preselecting our dishes. It was fun because we got to plan in dessert and we don't really eat any dessert here.

We went out tonight and the food was great. I'm having a really good time with all of my new friends. Hopefully we'll be able to keep in touch after the program.

In other news...a true-blue celebrity showed up yesterday. Ask me in person because I feel awkward talking about it online (confidentiality.)

So things have really calmed down here. There's a lot less rushing to lectures and assessments and a lot more just fitting in the exercise we need to do. The day is still long and filled amazingly. For example, today I woke up at 7:30 in order to grab breakfast just before 8 and bring it to a class in the Back Dining Room or BDR. The class was about the importance of strength training while losing weight. It highlighted how it is impossible not to lose some muscle mass and impossible to gain muscle mass while losing weight so strength training is extra important in order to just maintain one's muscle as much as possible. whew.

Hello Everybody,

I hope you are all doing well. I have had a great time in my first week here at the DFC. Surprisingly enough, because it's no-sodium, but the food is pretty good and you are very well fed. The lack of salt is pretty noticable, as is the incredibly small portion sizes. It really just takes getting used to. I survive by scheduling myself to allow for peanut butter every now and then. I like that you get to plan your own meal.

The classes have been very good as well. The main focuses are Fitness, Nutrition, Medical and Behavioral Health. So the approach is really well rounded.