Losing weight on a budget

On December 29th I went back on my diet in an attempt to lose those holiday pounds (and a few others I managed to acquire over the last few hurricanes). My diet of choice is WeightWatchers. In the past I've tried Atkins, which works great in the short-term (as long as you follow all the rules of the diet, not just the food rules), but in the long run you aren't changing your eating habits in a postive manner, so the weight comes right back on.

With Weightwatchers you’ll basically be on a food budget. You get a certain numbers of “points” for the day plus there’s a bank of points that you can take from for the week. So, for example, I get 22 points a day, and there are 35 points that I could use during the week (additional to the 22 a day). If you use them all, you will maintain your weight but not lose any most probably.
The number of points you get a day is determined by your start weight. The points drop as you lose weight. The idea being that your stomach slowly shrinks and you are less hungry.

The food is not limited in any way other than staying on the diet. There are Community meetings, at-work meetings (if you want to organize one), and there’s the web-page which is what I am using now. I have been an at-work member twice in the past. It does work. After each of my kids I followed the diet and lost the baby weight. In the last few years I slowly gained a pound here and a pound there mostly during the six hurricanes that came through. It’s difficult to pick wisely when all you have are canned foods and peanut butter sandwiches.

You can eat healthy and not be hungry as long as you don’t mind salads and veggies. There are many “free” veggies; vegetables that count as 0 points. So you can have a salad with a low calorie dressing (watch out for trans fat!) say 2 points (unlimited lettuce, tomato, cucumber, mushroom, sprouts for example; but not unlimited dressing). Then have two or three veggies with a 4 ounce piece (4 points for chicken or pork, 2 points for fish) of meat and 1/2 cup of pasta (2 points) with non-meat tomato sauce(also free).

That’s a large dinner and only 8 points (or 6 if you have fish). They also have frozen weightwatchers meals that are 4 to 6 points. Those are good for lunch when there’s a time crunch.

If you want 2 points for chocolate everyday, then you can do that. I do!

I like the webpage because I get to log everything online and they have a great database to search for point values, as well as, a large forum for communicating with other folks that are on the plan. But I would suggest, for the first 12 weeks at least, join a group so you get all the materials and hear the lectures once through. After that the webpage is enough, in my opinion.

In the last seven weeks I've lost 11.5 pounds. Not quite the best weight loss in the world, but adequate. I found out this weekend that I failed to re-take the "point allotment" test, so that explains why my weight loss slowed down after I reached 150 pounds. Now I'm allowed 19 points instead of 22. Next Friday we'll see if there's an improvement.