Weighing In

Don't ask me if I have lost any weight because I do not know. I don't have a scale. I do know however that I have lost half an inch on both my waist and my hips and I can jog a bit further than I could at the start of last week. I started off my walking a brisk pace on Cuckoo Road (4 miles), but that was not enough. I am in great shape for walking so although the exercise is good for me, it is not the kind of excercise I need to shed a few pounds. Plus I find it difficult to motivate myself to go outside and excercise when it is cold, cloudy, and drizzly, which it has been 95% of the time I have been home. Yesterday and today seem like it may be back to normal.

I eat pretty healthy. I also have HUGE moments of eating pretty unhealthy. Let's face it, I love all kinds of dessert. I was wondering whether the two balanced out. Karrie told me I should try Weight-Watchers because it was easy to keep track of the kinds of food I was eating. It seems fairly simple and easy to do if you want to take the time to figure out the points of what you have consumed. Plus, she sent me a link for a comprehensive list of foods (it is 88 pages in Word) that includes everything from lattes to bear(!) to doughnuts.

So here is a breif explanation of WW for the uninitiated who perchance have never been on a diet like me (I still maintain that I am not on a diet, merely curious about the quality and quantity of food I put in my mouth).
-First you figure out the amount of points you get in a day based on age, weight, and activity-level. I got 26 (sorry don't know the formula, Karrie figured it out for me). Then you get 35 extra points a week to splurge. If you are like me that means really you get 31 points a day.
-To figure out points you can look at the handy table I copied and pasted, or calculate it from the nuttirional information using the formula - Points = (calories/50) + fat/12) - (fiber/5). I use this formula a lot, but the table is helpful.
Sounds easy right? The hard part is merely keeping track.

I am getting a little frustrated despite the fact that I maintain I don't really care. But if I am going to do it, maybe I should care.

Monday went fine - I only had 19.5 points. I grazed sort of all day like I normally do. I eat when I am hungry - which they say is good. I had even less points, but I decided to have 6 mini-cadbury eggs (the ones in the purple bag that are my absolute favorite that you can really only get at easter. somehow I have about six bags in my room, but I don't really want to open them bc I don't want to eat them. So they accumulate.)

Tuesday I was sooo hungry. All day. I wrote down what I ate and calculated my points at the end of the day (not the best dieting strategy, but who's on a diet?). I had a whopping 40 points. You know what killed me? Cheese. I put two peices of cheese on my sandwich and that was 11.6 points (mostly bc cheese has a lot of fat).

Yesterday I was also very hungry. I have been kind of eating the same sorts of things everyday, so today I made my sandwich with only one peice of cheese. Shooo. Actually I think I am going to make my sandwich without cheese and then eat the cheese separately so I can really savor it. I can't imagine removing cheese from my diet, but it is 5.8 points per slice. Ridiculous. I guess I need to see if they make lowfat cheese and if they do, if it tastes any good. (If you still eat American cheese you should consider that it is not even made with milk so it is not even cheese. They make it with oil. Gross.)

I still have 39.7 points for Wednesday and that is without calculating dinner. I still haven't added dinner; I am sort of in denial. What killed me today? I had a spoonful of peanutbutter (approx 1 tbsp) to tide me over as I attempted unsuccessfully some toning excercises. 7.2 points! Was it really that satisfying? One tablespoon is not that filling. So not including dinner, I have about 40 points.

I laugh; I shake my head; I sigh. What started as mere curiosity is seemingly turning into an obsession. I am trying to fight the obsession, but I am not a quitter. So how to keep at it without becoming obsessed? I still may be good for the week bc of that extra 35 points, but what if I go over? And if I really lose any weight I get even less points! I thought this was going to be so easy for me the healthy eater, but apparently, it is not so easy.