WW update

[whispercricket]

I just barely met my goal of the week (reach -10 pounds) at Weight Watchers last night. The people running the meeting don't get very excited about less than 1 pound losses - neither do I, really - but as long as the number keeps going down, it's okay with me (plus I figure that with weight training, I'm hopefully adding muscle).

With these 10 pounds gone (wow), I'm 33% of the way to my personal goal and about 6 pounds from my first 10%. Yay! I've noticed a huge difference already - I can bounce and run up the stairs more easily, some clothing fits again, things like that. It feels a little odd that I can't remember exactly how I let it get this bad (I put all this weight and probably a little more on since sophomore year of college). I should have noticed something. Maybe I was just so down on myself and stressed that I didn't care anymore, or forced myself not to see, and also once I stopped playing softball, I wasn't getting much exercise.

I'm struggling a bit (okay, a lot) with the new points range that I'm in. For people who aren't familiar with WW, a slice of pizza is usually about 6 points. I get 18-23 points a day (not counting exercise - but now I get fewer exercise points than I did before for the same amount of time :( ). So if I'm hungry and have 2 slices of pizza for dinner, I've used up about 2/3rds of my points and I better hope I haven't had too much earlier in the day. This is not working that well. Evil fridge = hard to keep fresh veggies around.

I guess that's enough blathering, but getting myself into better shape is really important to me right now, for so many reasons.

Comments

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

So, what are these meetings like? I'm a lot leery of having someone else judging how well I'm losing weight. On the other hand I don't feel like it's something I have any idea of how to do on my own. I don't think I really know the last time that I was within a healthy weight range, but it was definitely sometime during childhood.

[whispercricket]

The meetings themselves are rather boring (depends on the leader, though, and you wouldn't be going to the Waltham ones). arawen and I went to 3-4 of them and then stopped going because we weren't getting anything out of them - we just go weigh in and then leave. It's probably a good idea to go to a few when you're starting. I think the weighing in every week (accountability) is the important part of the meetings anyway - I get better support and ideas by lurking on Dotti's Weightloss Zone. But if you doing the program alone, meetings might be more necessary - support is a really important part of being successful. I don't think I'd be doing so well if arawen weren't doing it with me. It's also harder in a group situation - when I started, I went through the house and got rid of food I didn't want to have around (wheat thins = carbohydrate crack for me) and marked point totals on every single food item that we had. I don't know if you'd be able to do that or not (you could just tell people to ignore the number). It's also much harder to order in food or go out to eat than before, because guessing points is tough.

Yeah, I don't like the idea of others judging how well I'm losing weight either. I try not to pay much attention to what the person who's writing down the results say. I'm paying them to do the program (basically, to give me structure, since I could follow the points system on my own).

I really truly think Weight Watchers is the most sensible and most longterm "diet" program out there - it's really more about learning healthy eating habits than specifically eating or not eating certain foods. My main problems right now are 1) I get nervous and snack at work, and I don't have good snacks available (cookies eat up my points really quickly), 2) We don't cook enough - when we do cook, we have healthy, yummy food available for lunch and dinner, and 3) need more fresh fruits and vegetables. Without WW, I think I would be floundering a lot more than I am right now. WW tells me about how much I can / actually need to eat every day to be healthy (they're very big on hitting your minimum points every day so that you don't go into starvation mode), and it gives me tools to figure out more easily how much food items count for (supermarket veggie sushi - whole package = 5 pts, mmmm :) ). I know that arawen hit days, especially at the beginning, where he had to eat more food before going to bed. [g]

Probably evangelizing a bit too much here. :) I highly recommend giving it a try - I think 12 weeks is something like $139, which isn't too bad. I'm also more than happy to try and answer any questions that you might have (like here!). Right now I'm sort of rambling, because I'm not sure what information will interest you.

[doozer4200.livejournal.com]

just wanted to say congrats! glad that you're doing well with it, you sound really enthusiastic and I'm glad it's going well :-)

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

Any chance you could give me the point system??? I *need* to lose weight and having an idea of what I eat might be a good thing. Of course, it might not...

[whispercricket]

Thanks! I'm trying, but right now, I'm staring at a box of Thin Mints and telling myself, "Not yet - you're not hungry yet" and tyring to resist. I think I will put the box in a drawer and try to forget about them for a couple of hours.

[whispercricket]

Sure, no problem. I mean, if both you and autumnesquirrel both want to try this, I can just come over sometime (or pick you guys up and take you to my place, whichever) and explain it all to you. I don't have all the little books that they give out, but I have most of them.

[tpau]

the points are roughly (#caliris + 4*fat grams + 10*fiber grams)/ 50

you can also do the online program which is about 15$/month. it has all the same info and no meetings. but, you need to be able to be disciplined enough to weigh yourself at the same time every week

[whispercricket]

That can't be right, because you have to subtract the fiber grams.

When I don't have the nifty slider, I use this calculation:

cal / 50 + fat / 12 - fiber / 5 (not quite sure about the fiber division, but it's close; do not count more than 4 grams of fiber max)

Thus, a single thin mint = 40/50 + 2/12 - 0 = ~1 point (I tend to round points just for ease of use). Interestingly (at least to me), a standard oreo is 1 point but one of the purple festive ones is 2 points (are they doublestuffed?).

There's also a lot more to the program than just calculating points.

[mindways]

it's really more about learning healthy eating habits than specifically eating or not eating certain foods.

*nod* I think that another big help is that it gives immediate and tangible feedback/reward for exercising...

Both that + the food-habit are things that can stick with you, which makes -staying- a healthy weight a lot easier.

[mindways]

I'm 33% of the way to my personal goal

Go, you! [cheering]

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

What Thin Mints? I don't see no steenkin' thin mints...

:) I can relate to that lure....

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

That would be spiffy. I'm more likely to exercise in the summer than the winter, but I don't really like going to the gym. It's pretty inconvenient...