A New Habit

Old habits are hard to break. Creating a new habit, this is even harder. Getting into the grove of Weight Watchers hasn’t been easy. But then again I haven’t made it priority. Even worse, is that I haven’t told Chris that I joined. I did speak to him about joining some plan, doing something. And he encouraged me and told me that he would be supportive. Well, how can he help when he doesn’t know that I’m on a plan and that I need his help to hold me accountable? Not that I expect him to babysit me with every bite of food I put in my mouth, but I am around him during most of my meals, and well the afternoon/evenings are the most difficult. Part of my point is, had he known that I joined WW 2 weeks ago, he wouldn’t have suggested going to get ice cream last night, and I most definitely would have said no. That’s what I like to think anyways. That even though I’ve felt ready to begin the last part of my weight loss journey, I wasn’t ready to accept Chris’ help in it. I suppose part of it is in my head. Ok, maybe all of it. That I’ve done all of this by myself. Without having to really depend on anyone. That’s what makes this round so different.

So this my attempt to get back on track. I’ve always wanted to take pictures of what I eat and show you guys. So this is what I’m doing. Here is what I ate today, and the points associated with that. I figure if anything this will help hold me accountable and give you yet another peak into my world.

Now for the points. I have yet to actually use Weight Watchers to track a whole week. Now they make it easy enough to find and track the food that you eat, they even have an app that I downloaded on my phone. So truly I have no excuses to not take advantage of this. Anyways, right now my I have 30 points to get me through the day. I also have a PointsPlus budget of 49 that lasts me all week. I think I need to figure out what this is, because to be honest as of right now I have no idea what that gets me or how to use it.

For breakfast I had Quaker Instant Oatmeal, Raisin, Date, and Walnut. 4 points.

1 cup carrots. 0 points

2 cups strawberries. 0 points

½ a kiwi. 0 points.

Right off the bat, the great thing about Weight Watchers, fruit and veggies don’t add to your daily point value. I know that I need to be careful of the fruits, as some fruits contain a lot of sugar. But I like the idea that if you are hungry, you don’t have to sit and starve yourself. You can eat something colorful and nutritious!

My morning meal is also when I take my pills. My daily vitamin and fish oil.

My mid-morning “snack” is a cup of coffee. Fancy coffee. It’s regular coffee stirred in with Maxwell House International Latte in Vanilla Caramel and non-fat Hazelnut creamer. And oh my goodness it is good. I look forward to this snack every morning. I’m really not a big coffee drinker, but this helps me feel like I’m having a little treat. I just used the last of the creamer this morning, so for the rest of the week I’ll just be using the Vanilla Caramel Latte stuff with hot water. Once that is gone I plan to transition to hot tea, as that has no points.

Coffee with cream and sugar. 4 points.

I learned early on you don’t want to drink your calories…or in this instance points. Which for me isn’t really an issue. I can easily go from coffee to tea, but the other issue I know I’m gonna have is with alcohol. Now by no means do I drink a lot. And neither does Chris. But do we enjoy a glass of wine or some other alcoholic beverage on occasion? Yes. I would say on average we’ll have a drink about once or twice a week. For the next few months eliminating alcohol will be hard. It’s a social thing. But I know it has to be done.

Next is lunch. I like to eat between 1 and 1:30pm…for me the later the better, because the afternoons are hard for me. Once I eat lunch I feel like I could just keep on eating. And that’s when my bad snacking usually happens. Monday lunches are usually the same for me. Salad from the grocery store. We do our grocery shopping on Sunday’s. So I grab a nice salad to have for lunch on Monday. Today’s pick is a “Dried Stone Fruit Salad with chicken”. A mix of green leaf lettuce and baby greens, grilled chicken, dried fruit, red onion, red grapes, walnuts, feta cheese, with a pomegranate blueberry vinaigrette. Mixed in are also some carrots, and a couple of cut up strawberries that were on my plate this morning.

Salad. 6 points (what really got me on this salad were the walnuts and feta cheese).

By the time I finish my salad I am starving. This is usually what happens when I eat lunch. And I hate it. I’m more hungry after lunch than before I even started. I seriously feel I could eat forever and not get full. I don’t know why this is, but that’s just how I feel. After my meal I want dessert. I usually bring some snack or protein bar, but today I forgot! Ugh. To help me through I chew on a piece of gum. Gum is the perfect “trick” to get your mind thinking it is eating something, plus no points!
Thankfully my afternoon passed with meetings, so I was distracted with that, instead of just sitting at my desk thinking about my hunger. I didn't take a picture of it, but shortly before I left work I ate an apple.

Afternoon snack: apple. 0 points.

Once I got home I had my delayed dessert.

A chewy granola bar: 3 points.
For dinner I made a spicy sausage pasta, in a cream sauce with mushrooms, with a side of green beans.

This used the rest of my points for the day.
Dinner: 13 points.
Another speaking point I want to make is water. I’ve never had difficulty drinking enough water. I can’t remember when I started this habit, but truly the majority of what I drink is water. I have my handy dandy Camelbak water bottle right at my desk (I keep one at home too, for my workouts) and fill that about 3 times a day. It holds a little more than 24 ounces. So before I even leave work I’ve had around 72 ounces of water. (Yes, I go to the bathroom a LOT!)
So that is today in a very long nutshell! Obviously lots of information. That's going to be used primarily for me. I've had the idea of taking pictures of what I eat for awhile now, and I gotta say it makes you think. Well it makes me think. About what I'm putting in my mouth AND how much. I didn't want to up-load 20 pictures of a ton of food. I'm proud that for the most my meals were colorful.
I hope that this will help me throughout the rest of the week, and tracking my food. I had hoped to get in a workout today to get "activity points" but that didn't happen, and am going to go for later in the week. Plus I need to figure out how exactly the activity points work.

Things are in full force. And I hope to be successful.