I'm a "meat and potatoes" kind of gal. I was born and raised in the Midwest. My "comfort foods" lean towards thick, hearty, hot and fattening... so I have a hard time conceptualizing making - let alone eating - so many of the Points-friendly dishes I find in cookbooks or online. I also have a major aversion to fish... and to be honest, I'm just a very picky eater in general. All of this has made me think that going on Weight Watchers, let alone any other "diet" plan, was going to be a massive struggle of epic proportions.
Zeb... aka the hubby... and I have been gradually introducing ourselves to Weight Watchers for the last month. By gradually I mean it's gone something like this... tentatively walking into the room, glancing around, spotting our intended target and then circling it... watching its habits, eying it suspiciously, sniffing the air, checking out its shoes... asking a few other people, "hey, do you know WW? Are they ok? Trustworthy? Plotting to take over the universe?" It has been a process... but this week, we officially walked up, shook hands and introduced ourselves.
And you know what? WW is much less scary than we'd thought. LOL
I'm a total geek, so anything that feeds into that is a good thing. WW is definitely geeky, at least in their Online program. Plugging in my Points, looking up foods, adjusting portion sizes, all in a friendly little GUI with happy little smiley faces that appear when you've eaten your whole grains for the day? Yup, almost gives me mini-geekgasms. I've got this whole weird synergy going on with my Tracker... it's a rush when I get to tell it what I've eaten. I spend way more time intimately connected to that Tracker than is probably healthy, but for right now, it's stirring up excitement and keeping me interested... and more importantly, on track.
I'm also finding that I can eat all sorts of things I assumed I'd have to do without... things I like... things that fit in with "how" I eat and what I'm comfortable with. I like "snacking" as opposed to sitting down to three set meals a day... and if I'm honest with myself, while the HABIT has been to eat those big meat & potato type meals, it isn't how I LIKE to eat. It's just how I was raised to think of food and of mealtimes. Unfortunately, that thought process has led me to where I am today... and that hasn't been working for me so well.
Weight Watchers, by tracking Points, is actually encouraging me to eat the way I actually, physically want to. It's ok to not plan some big involved meal. It's ok to nom my way through the day. It's ok to fill myself up comfortably every two hours instead of stuffing myself every six. For someone as big as I am, I have a relatively small stomach. Trying to eat an entire steak and a baked potato? It's an effort. I always did it anyway. I ended up feeling bloated and uncomfortable at the end. I didn't eat until I was full, I ate until I was done.
It doesn't have to be that way. Instead, I'm doing things like waking up and having a bowl of Kashi Strawberry Fields cereal with a banana cut up into it. Nomming an orange an hour later, with a couple of Spaan meringue cookies (14 of the little suckers is only 2 points - and you don't have to eat them all at once!). Grabbing a string cheese and some low-fat cottage cheese a few hours after that. A small salad. Kashi 7-grain crackers with two wedges of Laughing Cow garlic & herb lite cheese. A Kashi entree for dinner (yes, I'm having a love affair with Kashi), or a Trader Joe's chicken burrito, or some Trader Joe's mandarin chicken and some brown rice. I'm eating when I am hungry and only eating enough to keep me from feeling hungry for about 2 hours.
In so doing, I'm staying on plan. I'm able to stick within my Points. And most importantly, I'm not feeling as if I am "dieting" at all.
This is working for me - and that's what counts!
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