Tag Archives: smart points

But It’s FREE!!!

In the here & now, ,

melon drums

The irony isn’t lost on me, that as we speak I’m sitting in the corner of my kitchen talking to you lot about being on a diet and all the time my psyche is focusing less on what nuggets of wisdom will fall from these fair lips and fingertips this evening, and more on whether there are any naughty things to be had in any of the cupboards behind me. Concentrate!

My broken full-filter has come under scrutiny again this week. I hate to keep banging the same old drum but I’ve had to have a bit of a word with myself – it sort of came about because I bought the new phone. Indirectly, obviously but you know how my mind works. It’s a monster of a phone with a huge screen, which I can actually see…revolutionary, right? Even with reading glasses on, the old one had become a challenge so I really only used it for emergency Facebook stalking and phone calls you know?

This one is different. It’s been welded to my hand since I bought it, and I’m using it for everything. Need help wiping your bum? There’s an app for that! At least, I’m sure there would be if I looked. Anyway having a good look around the app store sort of led me to the Weight Watchers’ app which I’d never really used before, and it’s awesome.

Except my daily points seem to be adding up at warp speed, and it’s not afraid to point out a few home truths you know? Like I might just be eating a bit too much. And that’s my problem with the Weight Watchers diet. When they say you can eat as much of ‘these’ foods as you like, they have no points…well. That’s the law then. It doesn’t matter that my full-filter is broken, because it’s free food, right? Free. No points. I can eat as much as I like, LOOK…the book says I can. So I am.

Except it’s not really free is it? I mean it might be free of Weight Watcher’s smart points, but it’s not free of calories, is it? Or natural sugar. Let’s take honeydew melon as an example…I love that, it’s my favourite fruit. But just because it happens to be a free food on Weight Watchers doesn’t mean I have to eat a whole one. Every day.

It did occur to me on Sunday when I was doing the supermarket shop that seven melons felt a bit excessive, for two people. Especially when only one of them eats melon…uhuh.

When I was using the little battery powered calculator thingamabob I didn’t even enter free stuff into it, I mean what’s the point…there are no points in it so why would it matter. But now I’m tracking on the app I’ve realised how much I’m actually eating. Free stuff, you know but still…in industrial quantities it’s sort of against the spirit of the diet, dammit.

Which might be another reason why my weight-loss appears to have stalled. Yes, the pills and yes the widespread guesstimating of points values didn’t help, but whilst that’s all sorted now, I’m having a bit of an epiphany which seems to point to the fact that I appear to have swapped cheese balls for something else I can eat without boundaries.

Right now, the Asshole voice is screaming BUT IT’S FREE!!! IT’S FREE!!! DON’T STOP EATING IT’S FREE!!! like his pants are on fire. And granted, unlimited melon is better than unlimited hob-nobs. I doubt anyone ever got fat from eating too much melon.

But still.

 

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Curve Ball Alert

Biggest struggles, ,

resisting-change

So. Today was going well…I’ve been uber busy at work, Christmas chocolates flying around all over the place and a massive Christmas cake sent down to our office courtesy of our colleagues in the trading team, but I’m happy to report I resisted them all. Still firmly in the sweet spot, and in control. Arrived home with plenty of points in the bank, and my boy had popped a chicken kiev in the oven for me so I did what I often do and opened up the Weight Watchers’ website to check out the points value….ah. Houston, we have a problem.

It seems that Weight Watchers have decided to swap pro points for something called smart points. WTF? I mean I knew they’d been messing around with their website because for the last two weeks it’s taken me five times as long to find anything. I kept seeing a message saying you are seeing the new format, click here to return to the original, so I kept clicking. And shouting at the screen, like that was going to help. Then they stopped offering me the option to navigate familiar pages so it seemed I was stuck with the new format. Right then.

What I didn’t see, anywhere, was any mention that they were changing the actual diet. I mean just a small detail that, you know, I might have been interested in. Way to go Weight Watchers. I pay my subs every month for the on-line service, and you can’t even bother to drop me an email to let me know that you’re pulling the rug from under my feet, two weeks before Christmas, by changing the diet. I noticed by accident when I read smart points and thought what the hell are they..?

Not only that, but the website doesn’t appear to be working properly. Lovely! I don’t have any info at all about the new diet. I’ve figured out that a lot of the points values have changed, so since the change I didn’t know about, I’ve been tracking my food choices using my points calculator (pro points) at the same time as using the on line listings (smart points) so who knows how many points I’ve actually had over the last couple of weeks. Or indeed how many I should be having since all the values have changed.

If I wasn’t so deeply dug in to the sweet spot, that could have spelled disaster. It would have done in times gone by – I’d have been into the hob-nobs faster than the speed of sound thinking well that’s it, diet blown…might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb right?

Change makes me twitchy at the best of times…I mean, I always come around in the end but I’ll freely admit I’m a stubborn old mule who will resist for as long as possible. I’m sure the intent behind changing the diet is sound, and I’m sure the diet will continue to work well, once I know what I’m doing. But I’ve got to say, their execution of change has been utterly crap and they have let me down badly. I’m frustrated and beyond mad.

So. My only option is to pay them more money to get a new set of books and a new points calculator. What’s that you say..? They’ve sold out of points calculators..? Awesome.

You couldn’t bloody write it could you 🙁

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Gingerbread Meh

In the here & now, ,

gingerI braved the vile weather at lunchtime and popped down to the shop – like an almighty plonker I’d made lunch and then realised halfway to work that I’d left it on the kitchen counter. Duh. But it didn’t matter too much, there’s a lovely deli at the shop near where I work so I popped in there instead, and whilst I was there I couldn’t help noticing the promotional baskets at the end of the aisles…Christmas seems to have arrived with a vengeance!

It made me smile, especially since I already know that this is the month where every aisle in every store is going to be bursting at the seams with Christmas goodies, and boobytraps designed to make the wheels come off any self-respecting food plan. But what jumped out at me was the box of ginger viennese whirls…and I knew I was lost. Firstly, ginger is one of my favourite winter spices…cooked in savoury dishes, in cakes, as a flavouring in coffee…I love it’s warm and spicy aroma, and the tongue tingle. And I’m also partial to the melt-in-the-mouth awesomeness of a viennese whirl.

Now, I’m not sure what rotten sod decided to combine these two taste sensations and make them a new thing when I’m on a diet…I mean that’s just bloody unfair, right? However, on the basis that I’m following weight watchers, where pretty much anything goes as long as it’s counted, I was allowed. I did the maths, four points that I could afford to spend…happy days, before I knew it I was hot-footing it back to the office with a box of them nestling on the passenger seat next to me, feeling as giddy as a virgin on prom night.

So, we ate lunch on the run…sort of a working lunch, our small but perfectly formed team of six sitting around the meeting table, chatting through our respective updates…all the time the box of six gingerbread whirls were sitting there just begging to be eaten. I barely tasted my salad – said, as if anyone tastes salad, ever – all I could think about was the way in which I’d have four, maybe five bites’ worth of crumbly, gingery scrumptiousness to go with my post-lunch coffee.

I imagined the sweetness of the buttercream filling and wondered what it would be flavoured with. Orange..? Vanilla..? Maybe even lemon….big yum. All good with ginger, in my humble foodie opinion. The anticipation almost killed me.

Shall I tell you what the filling tasted of…? Nothing. The actual ginger whirl wasn’t much better…I swear, I was so ready to be blown away. The MMMmmmmm….was poised and ready to burst forth as I took my first bite but it fizzled out before it got going…it didn’t even merit a Mmm. Not even close. I couldn’t bring myself to award a single M.

So lets have a pop quiz…what did I do, after eating the first disappointing bite..? One point consumed remember, in that one mouthful of vaguely spicy sawdust held together with gooey white stuff flavoured with…oh yes that’s right, nothing! Did I put it to one side?

No, of course not. I had another bite. WTF? Was I checking to see if the next one was better..? Like it’d improved since bite one..? It hadn’t. So I’m going to set it aside now, right? I mean, I’m two points in and I don’t like it.

Bite three and I’d cottoned on to the fact that it tasted of MDF and as I polished off bite four it occurred to me that I need only have wasted one precious point…I could have saved three by chucking this impostor of a Christmas treat straight into the bin. On reflection it’s like I was SO determined to enjoy it, I hoovered it all up anyway and then declared it inedible. As I wiped the crumbs off my lips.

Times like this, I realise I have a way to go…

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Switching It Up

Diet update, In the here & now, , ,

hippo

Well it had to be done. You know my attitude to standing on the dreaded scales, and it’s probably what, five or six weeks since I did it? Diet is going well, or should I say my motivation level remains at an all time high thanks in no small measure to writing my blog, and to you lot in the posse for your lovely posts and emails. I’m still front and centre of the sweet spot…BUT. I don’t appear to be skinny yet. Which to be honest is pissing me right off. I mean it’s all relative isn’t it, I know I’m not going to break out the skinny girl in like 10 minutes, but I’d hoped to be at least one dress size smaller by now and I’m not feeling it. So this morning I had a face-off with the bitch in my bathroom.

(Please do excuse my fruity language especially if you’ve joined us for the first time…I don’t generally have a potty mouth but since I’ve named the asshole in my head his power to upset me has diminished quite considerably, so I’ve adopted it as a strategy. The scales have been duly re-named.)

AAARGH. It’s the good news/bad news thing. I’m 5lbs down since my last attempt to make friends with the number on the scale – cast your mind back to last time, I had a sour mood for days afterward. So 5lbs off is good on the one hand but I’ve gotta be honest, I’d expected more. Shit. No wonder my clothes aren’t hanging off me yet. Right then, well I refuse to be fed up about it, but I need to switch this up a bit and I know exactly how I’m going to do it. I’m going to change my diet of choice.

Whatever diet we all choose to follow, if we stick to it it’s going to show results, right? Low carb diets in the past have worked fairly quickly for me but this time I’m not getting there any faster than I would if I was following a broader food plan, therefore having given it a good go over the last couple of months, I’m going to ‘spend’ my food budget in a different way. I’ve been toying with the idea for a couple of weeks anyway – I’ve had to think about what’s going to happen on holiday, given that champagne is a no-no on a carb free diet and I need to feel in control but not limited. So, I’m going to fish out all my weight watchers paraphernalia and crack on with that and see how I go on. The next couple of days should be interesting as my body adjusts to a new regime.

It may make you smile to know that I’ve just had a very predictable dialogue with the asshole in my head…“why don’t you have the weekend off then, and start on Monday..new diet, new week? You could have a Chinese tonight, no need to go mad but how about some noodles? I know you can have those on weight watchers anyway, but if you start officially on Monday you can eat Chinese tonight without it coming out of your weekly points”…he thought he was going to score an easy victory there. No chance asshole, get back in your box. No chink in this armour buddy, better luck next time fu

Have a good week everyone and thanks for your continuing support…it makes a big wide world of difference 🙂

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