Starting Weight Watchers

Starting Weight Watchers was a huge reversal for me, I've never been a fan of "diets." Instead, I've always believed you should eat what you want, but only when you're really hungry and then smaller portions. My belief hasn't changed.

So what did change?

A couple of things. 1.) My close friend and my sister both started Weight Watchers and had amazing success. Both of them, like me, needed to lose 15-20 pounds or so. All of us were at the top of our "healthy" weight ranges, sometimes going over that line. 2.) Another family member, struggling with more to lose, experienced high blood pressure and probably needed to shed the weight for her health, I thought Weight Watchers would be the way to do it, and hoped we could join together.

I started to research the online version of Weight Watchers and then told her about it, but she wasn't interested. By then it didn't matter because I was. Once I saw what was available online and how it worked, I knew it could fit in to my own personal philosophy of healthy eating and might be just the thing to keep me on track and encourage me.

I started the program, weighed in, and began to record my daily food and exercise.

Immediately I had decisions to make--what was important for me to eat and what wasn't.

Example: I love my coffee in the morning, but the vanilla creamer was costing me points. Did I love my coffee? Yes. Did I love my vanilla creamer more than other things I could eat or drink? No. Solution: Get rid of the vanilla creamer and drink my coffee black.

Example: I love to pop things in my mouth, here and there, throughout the day. One of the things I'd pop in was a square of dark chocolate. I looked up its point value and found it was worth 5 points all by itself! I get 26 points for the entire day, do I really want 5 of them to be a square of dark chocolate? No way! I bought carrots, broccoli, and sugar snap peas to snack on instead.

With everything else, daily meals, I'm trying to find alternatives for flavor--like lemon (0) points, and smaller portions, eaten slowly.

I've been at it for 4 days and I find that I'm getting better at staying close to my daily point goals. I've educated myself about where I'm losing the most points and where I can cut back and add in 0-value point items without feeling deprived.

I never feel hungry.

I'm very excited about this program and hope one day to be A Skinny Cowgirl.