WW Freestyle Week 1 (and 2)

I’m back again!  I finally–FINALLY–got the last of the hockey pictures done and ordered.  I have one more set of prints, buttons, etc. to deliver tonight at JJ’s game, and then I can finally relax.

First though, I mentioned in my last post that Weight Watchers had made some changes to their program the first week of December (as per usual), and at the time of my posting, I was in the middle of my first week and wasn’t ready to offer any observations yet.  (Not any positive ones, at least. 😛 )  I finished out my first week on the program, which has some pretty significant changes from the previous version, and did my first weigh-in:

Super awesome, right?  Well, yeah…no.  That big loss had nothing to do with the program and everything to do with the fact that I got the flu two days before my weigh-in day. 🙁  I didn’t eat anything for over 24 hours between Saturday afternoon and Sunday night (December 9 and 10–remember, I’m a week behind!), and then even when I did eat Sunday night, it was very little.  So, yeah, a 2-pound weight loss is definitely expected, and definitely had nothing to do with the new Freestyle program.

So now we move onto last week (December 11-18 for me).  I started out pretty focused on the program.  The biggest changes are that chicken breast (without skin) is free, as are eggs (!) and also some of the more starchy vegetables that used to count towards your points value (corn, beans, peas–not that I ever eat peas, lol!).  To compensate for all these “free” foods, your daily point allotment has gone down. For me, that means instead of 30 points per day, I get 23. (Say what…?)

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do love chicken breast and eat it all the time.  Like, 6 out of 7 days of the week for dinner, and my Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice lunches are usually chicken-based as well.  But the problem for me is that I am big into carbs for my breakfast.  I have a cup of cappuccino, which consists of 1 1/4 cups of milk and 1 tsp sugar, plus espresso which has no points.  But that right there is 5 points.  I have that when I get in the car every morning around 7:30am.  Then about 9:30, I have half a multi-grain English muffin with 1/4 tsp of fake butter (luckily I am not a big condiment person, so I can get away with enough butter to be 0 points).  Then, to round out my morning, I have 3/4 cup of cornflakes with a couple tablespoons of milk.  So my normal breakfast is 8 points–that’s a lot when you only get 23 in a day!  I suspect they want me to start eating eggs for breakfast, which I did try a couple of days, but it’s not exactly convenient to make scrambled eggs in the morning (the easiest form of eggs to make).  One particular morning, I had to rush around my house to get dressed and run across the street to the neighbor’s to get Jamie’s forgotten French project to his classmates, which caused me to burn my scrambled eggs in spectacular fashion. At that point, I decided eggs in the morning was just not for me.

On the plus side, fat free Greek yogurt is now zero points.  I used to alternate my mid-afternoon snack between that (with strawberries for flavor, also zero points) and cottage cheese with peaches.  The cottage cheese snack was less points (1 point for 1/4 cup, zero for the no-sugar added peaches, versus 2 points for 6 oz of the yogurt), so although I preferred the yogurt, I felt like I couldn’t afford to eat it every day.  Clearly that has changed now–I never eat cottage cheese anymore. (Which is good, because I accidentally bought 16 of them last time I went grocery shopping, ha ha!)

Yesterday, I had to stay home with JJ because he was recovering from a stomach bug (not the same one I had, I’m sure, since it came a week later).  I decided that since I was home, I would make eggs.  I was going to make two, but then I said, heck with that, they’re free, I’ll have three!  I just wonder if that’s really the point of the plan–is eating all those eggs really good for me?

I do like having the free chicken breast.  I often talk about how much I love grilled chicken breast.  I could just eat it all the time.  And now I do!  It’s nice not to worry about weighing my chicken breast for recipes…I just add in as much as I want and then eat as much as I want, ha ha!  I’m a little worried about getting sick of it, though…

The downside is that when we don’t have chicken for dinner (and sometimes we don’t), I feel like I’m being punished.  We might decide to have sesame beef or meatloaf (both made with lean beef) and suddenly my usual 6 or 7 point dinner becomes 13 points…more than half my day’s worth of points! 😮

Speaking of being punished, I am a little frustrated at the whole “blue dot challenge.”  If you’re not on Weight Watchers app, let me explain: for every day you stay within your suggested point range (10 points below your stated goal and 5 points above it), you get a “blue dot” on your day in the app.  I’ve discovered that it doesn’t add in any exercise points you earn, though.  So here is my week last week:

As I said, I started out within my range each day, but then I had some “real life” curve balls thrown at me.  Like this:

And this:

The first picture is my sister’s cookie tray, which she gives me every year (and which I live for).  The second is the top tray of chocolates from the box given to me by my boss for Christmas. (There were two trays.)  I also live for chocolate, in case you don’t already know.  So yeah, those were definitely a challenge.  On the other hand, because I knew that I had these deviations from the norm, I made sure to keep up with my exercise.  I ran 3 miles in the snow on Wednesday, four miles on Friday (after our big snowstorm) and then on Saturday, I ran 7 miles at the Metropark.

So while I was not within my 23 points per day every day (or even 28 points), I was still within my available alotment when Fit Points were included.  So I do feel that it’s a bit unfair that those of us who regularly exercise are made to feel like failures. :/  I need that food to help fuel my runs!  Okay, so maybe I don’t need the chocolate and cookies, but still… 😛

Anyway, here is how my second week (and really, my first true week) on the new program went:

I fully expected a gain after being sick the week before, but with all those cookies and chocolate, I think that a one-pound gain wasn’t so bad.  I’m working to stay on track this week, so hopefully I can make it through the Christmas Eve gathering at my uncle’s house without going overboard.  It doesn’t help that the very next morning is when I weigh in, ha ha!

Thanks for reading and being patient while I was MIA.  I’ll try to be more consistent now that pictures are done!

PS:  I know I desperately need to update my weigh-in page. 😮  It’s kind of a pain to make the changes to that page, so I’ve been a bit lazy about it. I did finally get it updated a couple days ago, but now I’ve lost the jump drive that had the new files on it. :/  I’ll upload it once I find it (I’m praying that I DO find it!).  Thanks for your patience!