Two Day Recap

This is going to be really quick post. I am very happy today. Firstly, my new office furniture has been delivered. It looks wonderful! Secondly, and more importantly, I am following up on a resolution I made at the beginning of the month - the one about taking a mid-month vacation. I took tomorrow off, and am going to Portland to spend the weekend. Other highlights of the week:

* I had a friend over for dinner and a movie. It was wonderfully relaxing
* I went to bootcamp 2x this week. I feel good. I'll up that next week.
* I weighed at WeightWatchers for the first time in 3 weeks. I lost 1 lb.
- this is particularly precious because I had not been eating mindfully

02-16-11

Breakfast
WW English Muffin w. SF Strawberry Preserves; Cottage Cheese

Lunch
Veggie Panini, Kettle Chips

Surprise
I came home to find this in the mail: Bragg's seasoning packets

Dinner
Kimchi Soup made by my dinner guest

Red Pepper Artichoke Pasta; Spinach/Pear/Pecan Salad
I forgot to take a pic yesterday. I had the same thing for dinner tonight

We watched an Iranian movie while drinking Sparkling Lemonade
And eating unphotographed ice-cream bars

02-17-11

Breakfast
Banana (pre-bootcamp)

Oatmeal w. Pear, Pecans, Maple Syrup

Lunch
Red Pepper Artichoke Pasta, Bosc Pear, SF Coconut Cookies
I had a few more cookies after this.

Snack
Ryvita, Habanero Cheddar x2
I also had a bit of Wensleydale

Dinner
Pasta, Spinach/Pear/Pecan Salad. Same as yesterday. Same pic too!
Unphotographed icecream bars (2)

That's it!

I am never counting points again. This past week I have been eating out a lot - with my conference and what not. If I were counting points, I would be overwhelmed at the hundreds of points I was consuming, would feel guilty, and then perhaps eat some more to soothe the guilt. And I would gain a few pounds. That has been my modus operandum all my life - WeightWatchers or no. If it was not WW Points, it would be mental calculation of calories, or fat grams or whatever. So like I said yesterday, I was convinced that I must have gained a bunch of pounds because I ate out and not always healthily for the last week. Any other outcome would have been unimaginable!

Imagine my surprise then when I dragged myself hopped onto the WW scale today and saw a small weight loss. It's not a lot - only 0.4 lbs, but still! I realize now that the difference this week was that I never once felt guilty. I thought I would gain weight, and I was saddened by the thought, but I did not shame myself or lay loads of expectations onto my own shoulders. And I am nearly half a pound lighter.

Since I gave up counting points, I have lost 5.6 lbs, and have eaten more food that I like than I ever have done before without any of the associated guilt. I also have not had a single week of weight gain. I know it will happen at some time in the future - perhaps even next week, but I know if I continue the way I eat and exercise now, any gain will only be transitory. At long last, I think I have found the method that works for me!

Breakfast
Toasted (very) WW English Muffin w. Strawberry Preserves; Tea

Snack
Putting Conference Goodies to use - Chamomile Tea

Lunch
Palak Paneer Hot Pocket, Orange

Cranberry Trail Mix

Dinner
Rosemary Triscuits, Habanero Cheddar, Cranberry/Maple Wensleydale

Edamame

Exercise
Square Dancing Class

Datapoint Three

A couple of weeks ago when I decided to not count WeightWatchers points and see how it goes, I had a phenomenal loss (3lbs) in one week. I decided that one time was not enough and to collect more data to see if it really works. The second week I lost 2lbs. Today I had my third weigh-in since then. I lost again, but only a measly 0.2lbs. I am not disappointed - far from it! My eating this past week was completely out of whack with my long days and lots of eating out. I was actually expecting a gain, so a 0.2lb loss seems like a pretty good success to me. When I saw the minuscule loss on the scale, I started giggling. I don't think the scale liked that because it went back up 0.2 lbs immediately. So I stopped giggling and the scale now appeased returned me to the originally calculated loss. Good old scale! The day after tomorrow I go out of town and God knows what the scale is going to tell me at the next weigh-in.

In other news, I joined another dancing class - it's a square dancing class. This one is an hour and a half long and does not weigh on my knee as much as the folk-dancing does. It's also a smaller class. I loved it!

Datapoint Three - Not disappointing.
Square Dancing - Exhilarating.

Breakfast
Same old idlis and Sambhar

Lunch
Quinoa Salad, Orange, Chocolate Chips

Snack
Jasmine Tea, Chocolate Fudge

Dinner
Perugu Garelu - This is the Andhra version of Dahi Vada. It consists of pieces of medu vada in yogurt spiced with ginger and chillies. It was the last of the yogurt, so I ate it right from the pot.

Spinach Pakodas. I ate this. Then ate three more.

Exercise
Square Dancing

Datapoint Two

I went to my WW meeting today feeling apprehensive because once again, I did not count points this week relying instead on attempting to eat in moderation and make my splurges small ones. And once again it paid off - 2 lbs lost this week. This is so much more fun than counting points. Essentially, the WW message is the same - eat in moderation and exercise. However, they demonize culinary delights as "BAD" foods. There are no BAD foods - just foods that are meant to not be consumed in large quantities. In fact, the foods that are labeled "bad" are the ones that I have the best time eating.

Here is an example. In this week's WW Weekly, a woman received a "bravo" for skipping the bread-sticks using this method: she ate her salad and let the bread-sticks get cold. She did not find the cold bread-sticks appetizing, and so ate only a third of one. Honestly! I wish WW would not affirm this kind of thing. If she had said she ate a bread-stick and enjoyed it and then decided that one was enough - that would be deserving of a bravo in my opinion. But you get all kinds of tips like this in the weekly and at the meetings. It's not all bad though. Another bit in the weekly recommended that you focus on what the point is while eating out. If it is to socialize, then enjoy that and pick lighter fare. If it is to enjoy the cuisine, then don't hold back too much. It seems so simple, but I had never thought of it that way. I'll have to remember that next time I go out.

Today was a sort of "snacky" day - breakfast was my only real meal today.

Breakfast

I like holidays because I get to make a more elaborate Indian breakfast. I made puttu today. It's steamed cakes made from packed roasted rice flour using this:

Puttu w. leftover frozen Black Chickpea Curry

Tea w. LF Milk

Day-long Snacking

I went to watch a movie and took mix-in Green Tea and Ginger Snaps with me.

Unphotographed Pepperjack cheese while at the Grocery Store (was starving)

Then I came back and watched a movie at home while eating popcorn.

Don't shop while starving or you'll end up with this for dinner -
Jalapeno Poppers (I ate 12 - and added on about a pound)

Orange - my only fruit of the day!

Diets Don’t Work. WeightWatchers Doesn’t Either!

I shouldn’t be so harsh. But the WW slogan – “Diets don’t work. WeightWatchers does.” is not true for me. I suppose the WW “lifestyle” , like any other diet plan works for those who follow it and buy into the philosophy of it. For those with bad WW attitudes (like me), it doesn’t.

I blogged yesterday about how this was the first week since I joined my insurance-sponsored WW, that I had not counted points at all. I chose instead to eat whatever I wanted to. Since I could eat whatever I wanted to, I ended up not binging when feeling deprived. And since I did not spend hours calculating points values for recipes, counting points and obsessing about how many points I had left and what I could consume that would be within my daily allowance, I had more time to make what I wanted to eat and enjoyed eating it. Unlike other WW weeks, food was not constantly on my mind. Unsurprisingly, I was a bit apprehensive when I went to the weigh-in today. Astoundingly however, it turns out that I lost 3lbs. That’s the biggest loss a week I have had since I began the WW program (not that I am on the WW program really). And how did I get there? By eating Belgian truffles all week long. And loads of cheese. And French toast, cornbread, mutter paneer, pakoras, banana bread, noodles and pastry savories. Sounds fantastic to me!

Of course, the 3lb loss might have been because of many other reasons. I’ll wait a few more weeks before I have a larger dataset to make a more substantive argument, but somehow, I think not. Now, this eating-whatever-I-want-to-in-moderation business – that can be called a “lifestyle change”. To each his own, but I don’t think counting numbers all day long qualifies as a particularly alluring or sustainable change in lifestyle. WW-hardliners, eat your heart out!

Breakfast
Oats w. Pear, Pecans, Honey; Tea

Snack
Pepperjack Cheese, Unphotographed slice Banana-Pecan Bread

Lunch
Veggie Burrito. I ate half of this.


Artesian water from Norway. At first I chuckled because I thought that was a spelling variation of "artisan", and there can be no such thing as "artisan water". But it turns out that this is water from an artesian well in Norway. The idea of shipping groundwater from Norway to the US is ridiculous, and the toll it takes environmentally is monumentally ridiculous. However, it comes packaged in a pretty 800ml glass bottle that's just perfect for water consumption on the go. I'm hoping that using a BPA-free container will limit health risks, as well as be good for the planet in the long term.

Tea
Tea, Samosas w. Tomato-Chilli Sauce

Dinner
The rest of the Veggie Burrito, Mild Sauce, 1/4th Avocado
Peanut Tofu/Veg Stir-fry. This is the tastiest stir-fry I make. All I do is stir-fry a bunch of vegetables and tofu in a tablespoon of oil and add 2-3 tbsp of peanut vinaigrette at the end. I use TJ's spicy version. Yum!!! (makes 4 servings)

Cottage Cheese, Bosc Pear

Thoughts on WeightWatchers

Since my insurance through my employers pays for WeightWatchers, I joined the program 10 weeks ago to start to keep track of my eating and weightloss. I started out a new round of 13 meetings today. I have mixed feelings about WeightWatchers.

The positives are that they provide a supportive environment and lots of motivation through their meetings and online forums. They also encourage tailoring your diet to your lifestyle, restrictions, and work schedule. On the negative side, which in my opinion slightly outweighs the positive, they are overly reliant on numbers and everyone who is a certain age, height, weight and gender gets treated equally on the program without regard for other factors such as health history, genetics, metabolic rates and so on. Everything is reduced to a number - weights, percentages, points values and so on. I have been to too many meetings where people talk about how they follow the diet to what I consider to be extremes - depriving themselves of all that they enjoy in order to stay within their points. WW is a "lifestyle" that encourages and often rewards obsessiveness and perfectionism. A further gripe I have with WW is that although they so strongly encourage eating unprocessed and healthy foods, all the WW products themselves are highly synthetic, tasteless substances.

So, my approach to WW has been to try and eat what I like in moderation, and to use the meetings as a place to track progress, give and receive support, get some tips and recipes, and maintain accountability. My progress has not been as spectacular as it might have been if I was spending about an hour each day trying to figure out PointsPlus values, but I am much more satisfied in my diet.

Here is what I ate and was fully satisfied in:

Breakfast
Oats w. Banana, Apricot Preserves and Honey
Tea w. LF Milk

Unsweetened Green Tea at work. I drink several cups of this each day.

Lunch
Noodles w. Tofu, Asparagus and Purple Cabbage (leftover from NYE Party)
Apple, Orange

Snacks
Homemade Hummus in a recycled store-bought hummus container, Carrot

100 Cal Trail Mix

Dinner
Chapatti (Indian Flatbread)
Mutter Paneer (Someone at work brought in a box they did not want. Yum!)

Impressively sparse ingredient list for a processed product

Odds and ends: Spinach Pakoras, Pear, Cheese