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Weight Watchers
Jan. 8th, 2014 09:15 pmI really haven't ever worried much about my physical appearance throughout my life, being one of the lucky few people to be able to subsist entirely on a diet of crisps and not look like a hairy beige bin bag full of pudding as a consequence - I'm fairly content with people assuming I'm about a decade older than I really am, with a head increasingly like a potato that someone has amusingly stuck glasses on to. But my weight has been silently increasing over the last year, something I can attribute slightly to the side effects of my medication but mostly to the vast amounts of food that I consumed while staying with my in-laws for Christmas. At Furfright my BMI was hovering on the border of the "obese" range even though you wouldn't be able to tell from looking, and now I think I've reached the point where the calculator doesn't even give you a BMI, it just says "You fat git" instead. While it still isn't physically very noticeable, I've definitely felt myself more winded by climbing stairs or just feeling my knee joints creaking from the strain of holding the rest of me up. So for the new year, I've started a plan on Weight Watchers, which my wife had also tried with great success.
The system they use is of assigning point values to foods - there's a vast database of foods and brand names, or you can work it out from the nutrition information. You're allocated a daily budget of points that is adjusted each week depending on your rate of weight loss, and you're supposed to budget yourself out so that you consume about that amount of points per day, with another sort of bonus allowance per week for treating yourself occasionally - and as you record things, it graphs them out and gets you to notice problem areas as well as awarding you little achievements when you reach milestones.
And as my existence is brightened up so much by graphs, I've found the experience very positive so far. Just the act of remembering to record things works wonders - if I know that I'm healthily supposed to have 43 points over the course of the day it's much easier to be aware of what a sensible portion size for each meal is (I hadn't realized that my breakfast size had doubled over the last year until I measured the weight of what I was eating). I tend to be a little hungrier throughout the day, but now I alleviate that with zero-point grapes or other fruit rather than grabbing a handful of Custard Creams from the British supply basket and sort of chain-smoking them.
In fact I've been slightly horrified at how bad some things are that I had previously thought were pretty innocent - compared to my homemade lunch total size of ten points, the chicken and bacon sandwich from the Subway across the road from work amounts to an eye (and blood vessel)-popping fifteen points, and that's if you get the six-inch variety and have it on whole grain bread. Have it on a white buttered roll with a packet of crisps and you might as well just inject the hydrogenated vegetable oil directly into your arteries. Meanwhile, Munchkins - the little negative-doughnuts so popular at the office - are two points each, meaning that on days when we did the book sales, I habitually ate roughly the point value equivalent of an entire walrus.
I usually end up twelve points or so short, but using them up in meals would honestly feel like too much now that I'm just a bit more aware. I'm aiming to get back down to 160 pounds, which is where I hovered before and is the ideal weight for someone male and 5'11". (The trouble is I'm 5'7".)
The system they use is of assigning point values to foods - there's a vast database of foods and brand names, or you can work it out from the nutrition information. You're allocated a daily budget of points that is adjusted each week depending on your rate of weight loss, and you're supposed to budget yourself out so that you consume about that amount of points per day, with another sort of bonus allowance per week for treating yourself occasionally - and as you record things, it graphs them out and gets you to notice problem areas as well as awarding you little achievements when you reach milestones.
And as my existence is brightened up so much by graphs, I've found the experience very positive so far. Just the act of remembering to record things works wonders - if I know that I'm healthily supposed to have 43 points over the course of the day it's much easier to be aware of what a sensible portion size for each meal is (I hadn't realized that my breakfast size had doubled over the last year until I measured the weight of what I was eating). I tend to be a little hungrier throughout the day, but now I alleviate that with zero-point grapes or other fruit rather than grabbing a handful of Custard Creams from the British supply basket and sort of chain-smoking them.
In fact I've been slightly horrified at how bad some things are that I had previously thought were pretty innocent - compared to my homemade lunch total size of ten points, the chicken and bacon sandwich from the Subway across the road from work amounts to an eye (and blood vessel)-popping fifteen points, and that's if you get the six-inch variety and have it on whole grain bread. Have it on a white buttered roll with a packet of crisps and you might as well just inject the hydrogenated vegetable oil directly into your arteries. Meanwhile, Munchkins - the little negative-doughnuts so popular at the office - are two points each, meaning that on days when we did the book sales, I habitually ate roughly the point value equivalent of an entire walrus.
I usually end up twelve points or so short, but using them up in meals would honestly feel like too much now that I'm just a bit more aware. I'm aiming to get back down to 160 pounds, which is where I hovered before and is the ideal weight for someone male and 5'11". (The trouble is I'm 5'7".)
