Weekly Weigh In and Weight Watchers Changes

Remember all that stuff I wrote about Weight Watchers and points? Well, they just changed everything. If you have a TV you might have seen the commercials, and Oprah's smiley face seems to have taken over my app and the WW website.

They've been having mass technological issues - I unfortunately had several days worth of stuff just kind of disappear. It seems to be back online, and hopefully will be sorted out once everyone is on the new system.

The point is, last night I was down another 1.4, for a total of 5.4 pounds lost in three weeks! I am really excited at this progress. 

So, the changes to Weight Watchers - they've changed how they calculate points. Ten years ago, food points were calculated by calories, fat, and fiber. Five years ago, they changed that to carbohydrates, fat, fiber, and protein. Now, points are calculated by counting calories, sugar, protein, and fat.

The calories act as the baseline, and then protein can lower points while sugar makes it skyrocket. They're also trying to focus more on whole health, but honestly I'm kind of "eh" about that part.

The point is that they are really, really, penalizing sugar now. A candy bar that was 7 points is now 12. My standard breakfast, the Fage 2% with honey, jumped from 5 to 9 points! On the other hand, beans, tuna, and chicken breast went down. They adjusted the daily and weekly flexible/anytime points. Mine essentially stayed the same - my dailies went up by one, but my weeklies went down by seven. This is going to be tricky since a lot of food are higher in points now - not just sugar, but dairy - but I'm still on the same amount of points. Fruits and veggies are still free, though!

Regarding the sugar penalty - I adore sugar, and at first I was really annoyed by the changes. How can Weight Watchers have the whole "lifestyle" and "fitting everything in moderation" shtick if they make the cost of a slice of birthday cake basically prohibitively high? This I soupboxed at John for awhile.

After a bit of thought, though, I think maybe it could be good for me. I really do struggle with sugar. Maybe this could help me to have fewer treats and appreciate them more. How many times have I grabbed a 40-calorie mini Milky Way from the office candy bowl? A hundred million? How many do I remember, how many did I taste? Zero, probably. In the end it just became a habit. Maybe this will help me stop, when I realize how much it's costing me.

To my fellow, celebrators, Happy Chanukah! As someone trying to lose weight, I'm super duper pumped about a holiday that revolves around frying things and eating them.
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Weigh-In: How to Define Weight Loss

Happy Holidays to everyone! Or you’re like me and thrilled that it’s almost over.

This week’s weigh-in:

	6/8	8/19	9/30	10/29	11/6	11/19	12/10	12/17	12/24
Weight	191.2	182.6	181	181.4	179.6	177.6	179	179.2	179.6
Lbs. Fat	82.7	72.5	70.3	70.8	70.3	68.1	66.9	68.4	69.5
Lbs. Muscle	67.3	66.8	65.2	67.3	65	63.3	64	67.3	68

A little up, but mostly the same. Not what I was expecting, since I had a good week and was expecting to have lost a pound.

Zooming out over the last few months, overall I’ve been frustrated. Things don’t seem to be adding up (or rather, down) and I feel like I’ve been around the same 3-5 pounds for months now.

The upside is that I’ve been tracking my food intake consistently since maybe last February, so I have a lot of information to work with and I don’t just have to sit around and stew in my injustice. This is one of the things that I’m really proud of - I try to track as honestly as possible, even when the last thing I want to do is admit that I ate 500 calories worth of bread at dinner.

The last time I felt this way, that the scale wasn’t reflecting my efforts, was in June when I was 192 pounds.  However, when I added up the numbers, I quickly realized that I had been having way more “maintenance” days than I realized, and in fact my lack of weight loss was perfectly in line with what I was eating.

So before I got too mad at the scale this time around, I knew I need to do some more number crunching to see if I’m actually weighing more than I “should” or it’s all in my head again.

I made one large chart with all measurements from June through the end of last week - net calories and calorie deficit based on an 1800 calorie maintenance level for each day; then I cross-referenced it with weight measurements. So I can figure out what the calories say I should weigh at a certain time, and what the scale actually said.

So here are the results, in sum: Since June, I have eaten about 60,000 fewer calories than I need. Score! Of those 60,000, about 13,000 are from the last ten weeks. That means I theoretically should have lost 17 pounds total by now, and a little under four in the last ten weeks (yeah, October was not a great month).

In reality it’s more like twelve pounds lost overall and two pounds of that in the last ten weeks. Not adding up, so perhaps my frustration is legitimate. But what has changed is the fat - today I have a little over fourteen fewer pounds on my body, and exactly the same muscle mass. In the last ten weeks, I’ve lost about 2-3 pounds of fat. My conclusion is that the fat mass measurements are much more accurate overall than the weight ones. Thus, perhaps I should focus on the fat numbers and have the overall weight be secondary, instead of the other way around? Revolutionary!

I try to keep in mind is that my body is not magic and can’t defy the laws of physics and gravity. If I keep eating at a deficit, I will lose weight and it will all add up. It seems it will be frustratingly, agonizingly slow, but what other choice do I have?

The other thing to remember is that even the best estimate, hell, even the nutrition facts on a label are probably going to be off by a bit. With that, the gap between what I do weigh and what I think I should weigh shrinks. Or maybe my body only burns 1750 calories each day, though I’ve been counting it as 1800. I think 17 pounds should be gone, in reality it’s 14 pounds. That’s maybe not so much, in the end.

I still want to get into the 160s by my 26 birthday, which gives me another 7-8 weeks to lose ten pounds. That may not be likely at this point, but I’m going to try to get as close as possible.

Weigh-In: Special Events Have Diminishing Returns

This week’s weigh-in:

	6/8	8/19	9/30	10/29	11/6	11/19	12/3	12/10	12/17
Weight	191.2	182.6	181	181.4	179.6	177.6	181	179	179.2
Lbs. Fat	82.7	72.5	70.3	70.8	70.3	68.1	71.4	66.9	68.4
Lbs. Muscle	67.3	66.8	65.2	67.3	65	63.3	68.7	64	67.3

So we’re at basically the same as last week, which is what I was expected. This week was hard; there was the happy hour, a potluck, another party, and I had trouble staying on track. I tried, but it’s sad how quickly you (or rather, I), can eat several hundred calories worth of fries. The upside is that I tracked everything, and had some good days and great choices that balanced out the bad.

Yesterday, they had a staff appreciation events, which simply equal two giant cakes. And I kept my no office food rule and didn’t have any! I didn’t even care that I didn’t have any → even bigger victory.

This week there are more challenges: it’s a Chanukah party on Saturday night, two meals with friends before that, and probably a lot of food at the office. Awesome events with awesome people, but definitely challenging food-wise. Especially Chanukah - one of the main traditions for this holiday is to fry food and eat it.

I’m trying to remind myself that when you have four special events in one week, they’re not special anymore and I should start treating them like regular days. This is especially true for annual non-personal events like New Year’s Eve or Halloween.

And even some are really special, like a wedding, that still shouldn’t give me a reason to overeat. This is maybe an area in which I should be selfish - I’ll only indulge with food if the event is special to me personally. It’s an easy way to be discriminatory. My birthday, my wedding day, that’s about it. Not my husband’s birthday or a friend’s wedding. Not that I can’t enjoy some fancy food at a wedding. It’s more about an attitude of, “This is not that day.” Hell, maybe it will help me focus more on the happiness of the event than what I should have for dessert.

We’re going to a friend’s wedding next Sunday, and there is sure to be a ton of food. But as thrilled as I am for the bride and groom, it’s not my wedding, right? So I will enjoy some food, but (try to) focus on the dancing and fun and romance of the evening, and not on how many cookies I can fit onto a tiny dessert plate.

Finally Done: Staying Accountable During Holidays

Whew. The major 2014 Jewish holidays, which ate up every single one of my vacation days, and then some, are done. I’ve never been more excited to go back to work on Monday with the knowledge that I will have a five day week. I like routines; I like being in control of my own schedule. Sure, there will be Thanksgiving and then Chanukah/Hanukah/Hanukka in December, but it’s more spread out and/or less of an eating fest.

I mentioned last week that I didn’t eat too well over the first part of the holiday, and only half-assly tried to stop myself. Unfortunately, this weekend wasn’t much better. Once again, I made a few good choices - having an apple when all I wanted was the leftover lava cake (made by yours truly, since I’m such a genius), and plenty of bad ones - eating the leftover lava cake the next day, when it wasn’t even that good anymore. I also didn’t move enough, despite my noble intentions to take a couple of long walks. This morning the scale was at 183.4 - some of that is hopefully bloat, but I may have put on a pound or so.

Whatever.

So the holidays were not great in terms of food, but like last week, I am diving right back into old (good) habits. Today my Zumba friend was back, and we went to our fun and calorie burner class, and I ate well and tracked. I am challenged during holidays, but routine I can do.

However confident and happy I am to be sliding back into routine with the confidence that I will finally, finally, get into the 170s, I probably can’t just ignore how much I was not in control over the holiday. Weight issues, I know, go beyond just food. Most people carrying around an extra 50 pounds have more in their head than “Mmm, donuts,” that helped along their weight gain. My issues seem to rear their chubby little selves around most when I’m not holding myself accountable, or I’m not able to to hold myself accountable. These past few weeks have included a lot of days in the second category, when I wasn’t able to track my food intake or weigh myself.

My brain seems to decide that if I’m not able to track, well then, I’d better take advantage of it, by golly. Just like when I was a kid and came across some unsuspecting cookies sitting out on the counter, I would wonder if I could eat two, or three, before my mother realized some were missing. And when I was filling my plate during lunch on Thursday, I knew that whatever I ate wouldn’t see the electronic light of day because I wouldn’t be able to remember that either, when I was finally able to record all my food. And yes, last night, I tried to track, and couldn’t even remember whether I had breakfast on Thursday or just coffee.

Maybe it would have been easier to have no dessert than to decide what I want to have, how much to have of it, and then to estimate how many calories it is. So far, trying to pick and choose has not been a good strategy for me, as I spent so much time and energy trying to figure out what I should eat. Letting myself go was definitely not a good option, since I went overboard. Sweets have always been my main downfall, and aside from fried items, desserts are usually the easiest to overeat. A nice-sized steak can have as many calories as a slice pie, but I would be able to eat half the steak more easily than half a slice of pie.

I’m not really sure how to deal with this, but maybe if I really can get right back on the horse after the holiday is over, it doesn’t matter. If a day can be a day (or even three days be three days) and as long as I’m not going too overboard during those times, for now I can just let the time go, take the pound or so gain that results from it, and acknowledge that my weight loss will take a bit longer because of it. Long-term I do want to figure out these triggers, but for right now being in a routine most of the time is enough.