Weight Watchers update...

I've been on Weight Watchers for three weeks and have lost five pounds. This may be as well as I have ever done on a diet, except Phase 1 of South Beach. But South Beach leaves me light headed after a day or two. So I am avoiding it.


WW is not without it's challenges, though. Some points sneak up when I am not expecting them. (Mac & Cheese is 11 points? Really? Homemade chocolate chip cookies are only that high if I eat six.) I am often a little hungry. Quick fixes for hunger, like nuts or peanut butter, have points that start high and add up quickly. I should learn to eat carrot sticks when I am hungry. Today, unfortunately, I chose to eat a cupcake instead.

Regardless, I now weigh less than I did when I took my comps, a year ago. I would really like to lose another 15 or so pounds and get down to the weight I was before I started studying for the comps.

What I'd really like to do is get down to the weight that I was when we moved back to Arkansas after Miss O was born... But that is a goal that will likely take exercise and a lot of it.

Weight Watchers

At the point that my fat clothes were only kind of buttoning, I had to do something.

We had paid to subscribe Todd to Weight Watchers for a while. He has sleep apnea, and his doctor told him that if were to lose weight, he could also lose his bi-pap machine. This summer, though, he switched to a gluten-free diet. With the gluten-free diet and the subsequent elimination of all things made of flour, he was losing enough weight that he did not feel that he need to use Weight Watchers. I, however, forgot to cancel the automatic payment.

When January came around, and I decided to get serious about losing weight, I hopped onto his Weight Watchers account and changed everything but the name.

I started on January 18th, right after the "new" points system started. Unaware of the change, I logged in, typed in my vitals and how much I wanted to lose. Weight Watchers oh-so-generously gave me 29 points. (As nearly as I can tell, that puts me at about 1200 calories a day, plus weekly points.)

Then I saw that my Lean Cuisine lunch, three tiny "Thai-style" spring rolls were five points. I was still starving. I wanted to cry. A granola bar would be another five points. Anything from the vending machine would start from five and go up. So I starved.

I think I have it sorted out a bit better now, though. I figured out what the weekly points were and how they worked. And "free" (zero point) fruit is kind of a godsend. Unfortunately, I tend to hoard the points, and then splurge on the last day before they expire. And, the points expire the day before weigh in. I've done two full weeks and two weigh-ins. I have weighed more at weigh-in than on any other day in the week.

But, I weighed less at Monday's weigh in than I did the previous Monday. I guess as long as the overall trend is down, I'll be okay.

I'm not promising to be happy about it though.