A New Plan

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So, I went to Weight Watchers last Wednesday (June 25th), because I was getting close to the end of the month and I had to weigh in or lose my Lifetime status. I haven’t really had an issue with weighing in every month these last two years, because I’ve always been well below my stated goal weight of 129, even when I weigh in with my shoes on. You might remember the last month I weighed in and had the issue with our leader at work, who wanted me to take my shoes off because I had gained 4 pounds. I was still only at 124 then, so still well below my goal and well within the “free” range.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve struggled with my weight these last five or six weeks, and I can’t deny that I was little bit worried about weighing in last week. When I arrived, I was the only person there because it was open weigh-in, and I was at the tail end.  As walked up to the counter, I told the leader, who I had never seen before,  that I’ve always weighed in with my shoes on, on the off chance that someday I might actually need to take them off. I admitted that it’s never actually been close, since I’m always well below my goal weight. Then I joked that today might be the day that I finally have to take them off!

As she weighed me, I told her about my struggles over the last couple of months, and we talked a little bit about the program. When she finished, she asked me what my goal weight was, and I said 129.  She said I was fine for this month, and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief, knowing that I was probably close, but at least I knew I was still under 129. Then she told me that I looked just fine, but that if I was having trouble, I should really look at what I’ve been eating. I mentioned that I’m a runner, and that I had recently run a marathon, and though I’m not training that hard anymore, I’m still running four times a week.

She asked me how many points I was eating in a day, and I told her 26, since I’m trying to lose weight. (My maintainence total would be 29.)  She immediately told me I wasn’t eating enough, and told me to add in three more points a day, but to make sure that it was three points of protein, not three more points of snacks or treats.

I moaned out loud and said, “But I don’t want to eat more food, I’ve already gained enough weight!”

She immediately shook her head, and said “you’ll be fine. You’re only at 130–”

At that point I stared at her and didn’t hear anything else she said. When she finally stopped talking, I asked, “Did you just say I weigh 130 pounds?”

She nodded, and started to add some placating words, but at that point, I didn’t care what she said. I burst into tears, right there in the meeting room lobby. I haven’t been 130 pounds in over two years, and finding out that I had actually got to that point was more than I could handle.  That poor woman probably didn’t know what to do with me, although the truth is, in her line of work, she’s probably seen more than a few tears. But dude, I was a full-on hot mess.  I had already had a bad enough day at work, which was preceded by many other bad days at work as of late, so for her to give me that news was just too much.

I have to give her an immense amount of credit, though. She handled it very calmly, giving me a hug, and asking me lots of questions. We talked at great length about what I’m eating, and what I’m doing, and she listened and then offered some really unique suggestions.  Or at least, they were unique to me!

She told me that I not only needed to add an extra three points of protein per day, she told me that every single one of my daily points, all 29, had to come from real food. She asked me if I was using my 26 points for a mixture of food and treats, like wine or dessert, and I said of course, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? To my surprise, she said no! She said the way she teaches it is to take the weekly points, which so many people rarely use, and make those your snack and dessert points. Activity points are also for the snacks and treats, like wine. She told me that my 29 points per day should be real food, and I should count any of my wine or chocolate and anything else that isn’t “fueling” my body as the weeklies.

This totally blew my mind at first, because I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to do that within the eTools.  She said she knew it was a different way of thinking, but that I should actually write down my snack point separately from the E tools tracker. She insisted that I needed to eat a full 29 points worth of real food. And she said, when in doubt, have more protein.

I told her I never use the weeklies, and she said that was part of my problem. She said that I wasn’t eating enough good, healthy food during the day, and that wasn’t helping my weight-loss efforts. She also told me that I had to really track my good health guidelines–you know…those things I never pay attention to. 😉

I was skeptical, but at this point, I was ready to try something new. Clearly, doing the same old thing was not working for me! I thanked her for taking the time to talk to me, and when I asked her her name, I laughed out loud–it was Glenda, the same person my friend Katie had told me she’d found and liked so much at her Weight Watchers meeting!

I went home, and after telling my husband my sob story, I went into my eTools tracker and changed the way I had tracked my prior two days worth of food. (My week starts on Monday, so I had to backtrack some.). At first I wasn’t sure what to do with the whole “weekly points” thing, since you can’t take the weekly points off until you first used up your dailies. But then I discovered that there’s actually a little “notes” section down at the bottom of every daily tracker, so I just started doing the math manually. My kids would be so proud of me. 😉

Each day, I logged my “real, healthy” food in the tracker, but if I had a treat, like chocolate or wine, I would log it as what I begin referring to as “treat points”. I do eat chocolate nearly every day, usually a few Hershey’s kisses after lunch, because, well…because I LOVE CHOCOLATE. :p. But I never tracked them before, because I figured they were pretty much the equivalent of my weekly points, and I just didn’t feel like going through the trouble of tracking them. Yes, it’s my one vice, but you know what, I’ve lost weight and kept it offered two years doing that (prior to recently), and I didn’t see a problem with it.

But clearly what I’ve been doing all this time isn’t working now, so I decided I would track them as part of my treat points. I made a real effort to try and get in all 29 points of real, healthy food each day, and I did track my GHG’s every day, although I didn’t always meet them. Water and milk aren’t a problem, but sometimes the fruits and veggies, and very often the oils, are more challenging for me.

By the end of this past Sunday (the last day of my week), I had used all 49 weekly points as treats.  I had also eaten 29 points worth of healthy food every day but one (and on that day , I was short by 2). I still logged my exercise, and I earned about 40 points last week, but to my surprise… I only used seven of those.  It felt really weird to use so few, but to be honest, there were days when I had to force myself to find something healthy eat at the end of the day because I hadn’t used up all my daily points. I really wanted to use the extra daily points on sweets, but I knew that I wasn’t supposed to, so I didn’t.  More than one day, I was having leftover chicken breast at 9:30pm. 😛

So what was the verdict?  Well, I didn’t get to weigh-in yesterday at Weight Watchers, because my schedule wouldn’t allow it, but I did weigh-in on Monday at home.

 

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That’s a loss of .6 pounds, and let me tell you, I haven’t been so happy about losing a measly 6/10ths of a pound in a long time!  It felt good to be going down instead of up, and although I’m still high above my goal, this is the first time in three months that I’ve had a loss two weeks in a row!   So, yes, it may only be 6/10ths of a pound, but I’m grasping at the straws of that 6/10th with every fiber of my being right now.  🙂

Of course, this is only 5 days on the “new” plan, but I do feel better than I have been.  I don’t feel quite so fat, and my size 4 pants aren’t quite as tight as they have been.  I’ll be interested to see how this plays out for a longer duration, but I’m willing to give it a try.  I haven’t been hungry, which is nice, and I find I like being “forced” eat 29 points of good food every day.   And believe it or not…I haven’t been eating nearly as many treats as I usually do. Even wine. 😉

And because I don’t want to have only one picture for this post, here’s a shot of Jamie doing his last 5k training run in the heat and humidity earlier this week.

 

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He was so hot and sweaty when he was done.  Such a trooper!  His 5k is tomorrow…wish us luck!

Thanks for reading!

3 thoughts on “A New Plan

  1. Jenn

    I weighted in last week (my WW meeting at work started up again – finally) and I was OLT. I hate that they write it in your weight tracker and everything. Not to mention, my leader had a helper and said, “At least, you don’t have to pay this week.” I like having a little bit of a buffer – I need wiggle room in my life (not just on the scale). I haven’t thought of using my weekly points as treat points and focusing on using my daily points as “real” food points. I might need to consider trying that. I love using the notes section, but I have used it for jotting down the event or restaurant of the day not specifically for separating out food choices. I have never consistently tracked the Healthy Guidelines, perhaps a way to start is to go over it at the end of the day, so I am not bogged down during the day with it and see if I can get a good baseline. Let’s hang in there and make it work. Love you!

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