Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The Incredulous Shrinking Woman

A while back I posted about my recent "shock and awe" experience with my post marriage weight. So, now a month later...it's time for an update.

As I mentioned I signed up for Weight Watchers - a program I'd had good success with back in the early 1990's when I lost 20 pounds of college partying weight. Over the last sixteen post-college years however, my weight has yo-yo'ed up and down the scale to frightening heights and satisfying lows. My biggest challenge - the inability to lose and then maintain a healthy weight.

So far, my experience on Weight Watchers has been very good. The program has changed a lot since I tried it last and does a much better job of accomodating people like me who struggle with sticking to a weight loss plan due to:

1) Being constantly on the go, which makes it tough to thoroughly plan foods ahead of time.
2) My love of eating out at non-chain restaurants (most diet plans only seem to provide food values for chains).
3) My love of ethnic foods that most diet programs seem to have never heard of.

The expansion of the discussion of these programs on the Internet - in chat rooms, food web sites and message boards - really helps someone like me to be able to stay on program AND continue to eat the things I like to eat (so I don't feel deprived).

For example - last weekend we were invited to have dinner at the home of another couple. They wanted to share their love of a local Pho restaurant. I scoured the Weight Watchers Web site and no mention of a points value for Pho. But...thankfully I found several message boards and online communities that addressed how to count this innocent seeming food. Those sites have been a Godsend to my ability to diet AND continue to stay a part of my social world. Some great sites to be sure to bookmark:

Dottie's Weight Loss Zone - the points values for hundreds of restaurants!

Health Discovery - great message boards and chats for people doing Weight Watchers to discuss just about everything.

Calorie Lab - a site that lists the general nutrition information for just about every category of food - including ethnic foods.

In addition, I've become a big fan of the Weight Watchers E-Tools - which allows you to track the Weight Watchers points values that you've consumed, your activity points and how many weekly points you have remaining. There's something very satisfying about inputting everything into the computer and letting the machine track everything for you. (many people also enjoy and have similar success with the Fit Day web site, which is great as well).

All in all, I'm thoroughly pleased with my progress so far. After weighing in today I'm down 8.5 pounds and still striving to meet a 10 pound loss by the time I head to the beach next week. Say a prayer, will ya?

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