The World According to Jennyfur

So I’ve lost a total of 5 pounds so far, which is decent. Its nice to actually see the week to week improvement. Sure, its 1-2 pounds at a time, but its better than stasis or worse more weight gain.

I’m still doing fairly well with my daily Weight Watchers point intake. The next hurdle I need to figure out is when I cook or bake keeping that on track. I can manage salads and sandwiches just fine on the plan as well as easy prep stuff like bagels. The problem is that when I cook I love butter. I’ve switched to using Smart Balance Light, which is 1 point per tablespoon, but even that adds up over time. I ordered one of the easy prep cookbooks since I don’t have a lot of time or will power for laborious cooking endeavors most of the time. Its a learning process to say the least. I don’t want to be totally reliant on frozen dinners by Smart Ones and Eating Right and packaged foods in general.

I’m reworking my vitamin regiment a little as well. I spend most of the day at work chomping on vitamins, supplements and herbs. I have a morning pile, a post lunch pile and late afternoon pile. The main staples are a multivitamin, fish oil, flax seed oil, vitamin c, iron (as needed), ginseng (as needed) and a couple diet/weight management supplements. I’m trying to find the right balance there. I tried Acai and to be honest haven’t noticed any difference. I have some Tonalin CLA, Chitosan and something called D4 Extreme, which I guess is some sort of fat burner.

Everything is going well with my dieting efforts. I totally failed at doing the elliptical daily this week. Hopefully, I’ll get back on schedule soon. I was dealing with a sinus flare up plus inner ear thing that left me dizzy, weak and lightheaded for a few days. That is not the best state of being to hop on an elliptical machine. The good news is that I managed to lose 3 pounds since the beginning of my diet. I’m doing just fine with my daily point allowance. I only really go over on the weekends. At best, I dip into 10-15 points out of my 35 point weekly allowance for splurges and have yet had to dip into any activity points. ID

Today marks the start of the second week of my diet. While my weight has stayed they same, which is not surprising since its that time of the month, so much has changed.
- switched my daily Pepsi (Coke or Dr. P) to Coke Zero.
- cut down my food waste by about 90% since I am using the correct portioning.
- brought my lunch to work every day and stopped going out for lunch. I’m sure I will go out from time to time or hit the cafeteria at work, but at least I can find out all the nutritional information and get correct portions of things.
- started eating something for breakfast regularly, it drastically cuts down on my post dinner snacking
- explored healthier alternatives to snacking and meals. I shudder to think what my daily caloric, fat, carb and sugar intake must’ve been up until now.
- started using the eliptical machine again at home. My goal for the week is to do 10 mins a day or if I miss a day doing an extra 10 mins the following day
- replaced empty calorie, non-filling foods with more filling less caloric alternatives that are just as nummy. I am so addicted to the WW Double Chocolate muffins.

All in all, Weight Watcher’s is working out pretty well for me, which is surprising and nonetheless awesome. My daily point allowance is 26 and a couple days I went over by a few points and a couple days I was under by a few points. I get an extra 35 points per week and only used 10 or so. I never had to do any activity swapping of points either and had about 19 remaining. I was afraid that initially I would be hungry all the time, but that hasn’t been the case.

I’m now three full days into the Weight Watcher’s program and beginning my fourth. Its going well so far. I went over my point allowance on the first two days mainly because of lunch at Au Bon Pain on Friday and having ended up going out to dinner on Saturday. I didn’t go over by that much considering it was the first couple of days. Yesterday, I realized due to an accidental butter drop for breakfast, I ended up two points under for the day. I think I was contemplating butter on something and then decided not to use it. I made an awesome recipe for fruit stuffed cornish game hen on Saturday. Pretty easy to make, combine: shallots, scallions, butter, cranberries, crushed pineapple, apricot and rice stuff it inside the cornish game hen and bake. Its weird this is the first time that I’ve actually been motivated and excited about losing weight.

I decided to sign up for the online Weight Watchers program. I’m really glad they have an online system as I have zero interest in attending meetings and weighing in and all that bs. I have to say so far I’m impressed with the online management system, speaking as a techy and end user. Its super easy to use to manage your daily intake and exercise. Plus it appeals to my OCD internet habits.

I’ve already realized what one of my biggest problem areas is – eating lunch while at work. I just blew a huge chunk of my daily points on a chicken caser salad with dressing from Au Bon Pain. It ain’t no Big Mac from McDonald’s. I think sometimes we fool ourselves into believing if we are eating fresh salads and sandwiches that its much more healthy than grabbing a greasy fatty fast food alternative. In reality, they may be more nutritious, but are still high in fat, carbs and calories. The amount of points for 2 oz of salad dressing was more than the salad itself. The total amount of points for both was 15. My daily alotment is 26 not including the extra weekly points for splurging. In actuality,  if I had a Big Mac instead of a chicken caesar salad I would only have used 13 points.

Now lets see if I can stick with it for a few months. I’m super awesome at committing to things and being really into them and then completely abandoning them.