Weight Watchers Poster Girl

The good news first - two more secretaries at work complimented me on my weight loss today!  One even said she could see my clothes were getting loose - which is pretty cool since about two months ago I bought clothes that were2 sizes smaller than those I started out in!

But the bad news is I went out with a friend last night, and then I went to a work lunch today, and had wine on both occasions.  I’ve pointed it all, but when you only realise after the fact that your glass was being topped up for you, it’s kind of hard to know what you had.  So one, I may have gone over points, and two, I may have a lot of water retention come weigh in on Sat.  I’ll just have to have a good day tomorrow!

K.

PS But I did get to sit next to that guy I fancy at lunch.  He wasn’t the one topping up my glass though - he did start to look quite horrified as I became more and more garrulous… Damn wine.

I had a great non-scale victory today - one of the ladies at work cornered me in the kitchen and said ‘you’ve lost weight, haven’t you?’ I said I’d lost two stone, even though it’s now just over two and a half.  She said that was a lot of weight - I’m so pleased people are noticing, even if most say nothing!

And an NSV that really isn’t - on the weekend I got dressed up to go to the theatre, including doing my hair and eye makeup.  On the way I stopped in work to drop off some documents, and the guy at work I really fancy was in there working.  So that was nice, to stop and say hi to him when I was looking my best (even if my dress was too baggy because I’d decided I wanted to get one more wear out of my size 20 dress before I got rid of it.  It’s going now!  But I have to say, as pretty as I felt, the guy I fancy looks even better in casual clothes!  And he was just catching up on work at the weekend!

K.

So, I didn’t lose this week, but I didn’t gain, either. When this happens, I try and think of three changes that I’ll make in the week ahead to ensure a loss. This week, they will be:

- Not to eat a big meal the night before weigh-in.

- To get more exercise Ive been very slack with this one. I’m going to aim for 14 bonus points this week. Shouldn’t be too hard, as I’m running a 10k tomorrow (gulp).

- To eat more salad. I’ve been slack on this one, too, and I need to lift my game as I do lose more when I get some salad vegetables into me.

So, that’s the plan. Hope it works - I want to slip below 90kg next week!

K.

Just a quick post to say it was well worth saving points all week - went to Chinatown and had a delicious dinner.  Veg soup for a starter, followed by mushrooms and bamboo with egg fried rice.  I’ve never had bamboo before, and it was really nice. Haven’t assessed the damage yet, will do that in the morning!  Weigh-in tomorrow, but as I think I’ll weigh full of soup and bamboo,I’m holding out no hopes for a loss.

K

I had a weird conversation at work today that reiterated something I’ve realised from WW.  People really do come in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes size doesn’t seem to co-relate to weight. A very skinny co-worker and I were talking about another, tiny co-worker. The co-worker we were talking about is about my height, very petite build, and an athlete.  “Ho much do you think she weighs?” my skinny co-worker mused.  “I think she weighs about 8 stone” (50 kg/110 pounds).  Now, I was amazed.  One, because I’d assumed she was lighter than that (seriously, there is nothing to her).  But two, because if you’d asked me to guess how much my skinny co-worker weighs, I would have said about 8 stone.  But she must be heavier than that, otherwise she would have guessed lighter.

And as I said, I had been realising this at WW.  I sometimes help with weigh-ins, and people would come along who looked about my size, but weigh lighter.  Others look thinner, and weigh heavier.  So I think the lesson that I’m taking from all of this is not to get hung up about the number on the scale.  If I can get happy with the way I look, the sizes of clothes I can fit and the way those clothes look on me, and I’m within a healthy range for my height, I’m not going to kill myself to get below 55 kg again.  (although I haven’t been that size for eight years, so it would be amazing … )

K.

Believe it or not, I used to be rather slender in my salad days.  And the reason probably was because I used to eat salad.  I put some weight on in my last year of university, probably muscle gain as I was doing a lot of exercise that year, and then I really put weight on when I started work.  I mostly blame the late nights.  It’s a vicious cycle- you work late, you need to eat, there’s only rubbish available, and because you’re tired, you feel like eating that rubbish.  Which makes you more tired, still doing late nights, so you eat more rubbish…

Tonight I had an unexpected late night, but I managed to avoid the freezer with its meals so full of saturated fat it’s amazing they can fit anything else in them.  Instead I waited until I came home and had a Tescos brand mushroom burger - 2.5 points and very yummy.  The packaging says oven cooking only, but I was hungry.  The microwave did a fine job

K.

Okay, I didn’t manage to have the health and houmous salad after all.  Instead, I went to Marks and Spencers (an upmarket supermarket/dept store for those not in the states)and got a salmon and potato salad. It tasted divine, and it was only 4 points, but potato is one of the things that I’m trying to cut down on.

Then for dinner, I had tofu with steamed spinach and carrots - and a huge breadroll.  Tofu is amazing, you can have heaps of it for really low points (100 g for one point in UK points) and I have a great Asian Marinade to cook it in (left over from my Sureslim days - but that’s another post for another time).  But that did mean that I had two lots of carbs in one day, and everyone  speak to says you don’t lose  weight if you don’t cut down the bread and the potatoes.  Which I have been doing, but it’s been hard because bread and potatoes are two of my favourite things!

Anyway, I’m going to try and cut down for the rest of the week.  My weigh in isn’t until Saturday, so that should give me heaps of time to get back on track. And not only did I stay within points today, I saved four for my dinner on Friday, so that’s a plus.

K.

After the disaster that was my eggs florentine, today I made a tuna-stuffed marrow that was - if I do say so myself - absolutely delicious! And I don’t even normally like marrow.

Okay, so I had to make the afore-mentioned marrow at midnight last night in order to have it ready for lunch tomorrow.  Obviously I’m still getting used to the timing of the slow cooker.  But still, I got home from the shops today and it was done, it was warm and it was delicious.  And best of all, it was only 8 points for the whole marrow!

Then I had another culinary success tonight with lentil burgers, a recipe taken from the weight watchers website. (5 points including the bun).  The burgers by themselves would have been a little bland, but they were very tasty with fresh tomato.  And with tomato ketchup at half a point, I’m eating a lot more fresh tomato now!

So, a fantastic food day for the bank holiday.  Too bad tomorrow it’s back to work and back to something quick and shop-bought for lunch.   Hopefully, for me, that will be Pret’s health and houmous salad, which I love when I’m eating it, and it is good for me, too.  But it just looks so boring on the shelf, I  get distracted by more processed choices, and then end up eating more points than I intended.   I’m saving points to go out on Friday night, so tomorrow it had better be the salad!

K.

Hello! Time for my second post.

Today’s main news is that I tried to cook Eggs Florentine in my new slow-cooker, which was a complete and total disaster. My sauce was lumpy and sort of congealed into clumps of baked flour, and the spinach dried itself out. I think there are two lessons to be learned here:

1. I am no good at making sauces and I never have been.

2. Swapping butter for low fat cooking spray is not a good idea when using a slow cooker.

Nevertheless, I’m not going to be disheartened. I have my slow cooker cookery books here and I’m going to find another recipe to try another dy, though perhaps a more soup/stew kind of recipe next time.

Does anyone have any good slow cooker recipes/ tips on using a slow cooker?

The whole dish was supposed to be 6.5 points. But do you think I get some sort of discount for scraping off the flour lumps?

K.

Hello, readers!

After agonising for a week or so, I’ve finally taken the plunge and set up a blog.  I thought I’d use this first post to give you some background about myself.

As you will no doubt be able to tell from my strange spelling, I am not in the states.  I live in the UK.  Recently I was diagnosed with a weight-related medical condition, which meant I had to finally get my butt into gear and lose weight.  As you can probably tell from my name, I chose Weight Watchers as a way to do this.  I have been doing Weight watchers for 13 weeks so far.  When I started, I weighed 16 stone 6 pounds; now I’m down to 14 stone 2 and half pounds.  That’s a 31 pound loss, and means that I’ve just crept in under 200 pounds!

I chose my username, partly because I’ve been so successful with Weight Watchers, and my leadersaid to me the other day “You’re practically the poster girl for weight watchers!” (I wish!  Maybe in another year’s time…  I have a long way to go.)  But also because, when I’m looking for blogs to read, I like blogs by other people who are doing WW, because I know the system and I like to hear about people who are doing the same thing.  However, I should probably point out that UK WW is slightly different from the US - as far as I can tell, we don’t have Flex points, and our points are worth slightly more  So I have 22 a day, but I think I would probably have about 26 in the US.  And in case anyone was wondering, I’ve eaten them all already and might have to head to bed soon to stop me going over!

Okay, I’ll stop there for today, but looking forward to hearing lots of comments and inspiration (and hoping I can in turn inspire…)

Cheers,

K