The Start of my Weight Loss Journey
If you’ve read the about me section you’ll be familiar with ‘My Moment’ when I realised enough was enough. I wasn’t happy with my weight or my body shape. In my heart of hearts I knew I was carrying too much junk in my trunk and certainly not in a Beyonce kind of way. I’d overheard a couple of people in the office talking about Weight Watchers and having dabbled with it in the past I was tempted. My previous attempt at the programme was with a little journal and a book of foods that I’d cross reference against. It wasn’t the easiest method. The thought of going to an actual class horrified me and I knew I’d never do it if that was my only option. Visions of Matt Lucas from Little Britain being the leader of a fat class flooded my head! Of course this works great for some people and the support can really help. One of my colleagues and now lifelong friend, Judith was doing Weight Watchers online using the app. She gave me a quick demo and with a bit of encouragement I’d signed up to membership. The first month was free then it was £11.95 a month after that. I knew that with the combination of using a really fancy, clever app and someone at work to swap tips with, I could be onto a successful action plan.
Setting my target weight was a little tricky. I wasn’t sure what I would look like a stone lighter, two stone lighter, three stone lighter? I also didn’t feel confident that I’d even be able to do it. I decided to set what I thought was an achievable target of one stone. The original plan I followed was Weight Watchers Pro Points so I had 26 points per day and I think it was 30 weeklies to play with. Basically your weeklies help you out if you want to use them on a weekend for alcohol or you have a meal out planned. You also have the chance to earn Activity Points by logging any exercise you do. I rarely choose to use my activity points as I see them as an extra chance to lose weight rather than an extra chance to eat more.
The way the app works is that you log the food you eat into it and a points value is allocated to everything. The great thing is there are literally thousands of branded foods and even restaurant menus fed into the app so it’s rare you can’t find what you’re looking for. The first month highlighted to me the foods that I was eating that were definitely NOT worth the points. We had a joke in our house that Chicken and Kung Po sauce, made using a Sharwoods jar and a portion of rice was a ‘Monday night tea’ this translates into a boring, not that delicious meal but was quick and easy for a Monday night. Woah – the points value was 10 points for half a jar! Add to that your chicken, 3 and a portion of rice, another 5 and you’ve pretty much taken up all of your daily calories allowance on a ‘Monday night tea.’ I guess the point I’m trying to make is that the thing you learn quickly is that some foods are worth avoiding because they just don’t taste like 10 points should. I should highlight here that the Weight Watchers system has changed to Smart Point so the above points values will differ to the current system. I’ll do a separate post on Pro vs Smart Points.
So – there I was, week 1 fully In The Zone! Horrified by the points of Kung Po and sticking to my daily allowance 100%. My first weigh in came around and I stepped on the bathroom scales with excited anticipation and…. I’d lost a quarter of a pound. Are you bloody kidding me?! A quarter of a pound! WTF? To say I was disheartened doesn’t cover it. I didn’t let this bring me down though as come on, I couldn’t give up after a week! Second week and I stuck to it again, in fact I was enjoying the meals I was making and I actually enjoyed every mouthful instead of just ramming down whatever was on my plate. Weigh in came around again and I’d lost a whopping 4 pounds. Woohoo, the delight I felt was incredible and such motivation to continue sticking to plan. I reached my first target of a one stone loss in just 2 months and reset it to another half a stone off as my next goal which I reached after another couple of months, I maintained this weight loss for a year so that I could enjoy being in ‘maintenance’ mode for a while and decide if I’d reached my ideal weight or not. The following year I reset my goal to lose another half stone which would take my overall weight loss to 2 stone. I’ve kept this weight off and am happy to be 2 stone lighter and 2 dress sizes smaller.
Weight Watchers isn’t a diet. It sounds so cliched but it really is a way of life. It helps you to make good choices and literally nothing is off the menu, you just learn about portion control and a happy balance.
