Losing

[davidn]

I'm proud to report that since starting the Weight Watchers programme, I've lost more than ten pounds over three weeks - a figure normally only achievable with the aid of leprosy. I don't feel any different just yet, but it's got to be a little healthier for me, even if my actual healthy weight is still thirty pounds away. For now, the ever-elusive goal weight line has been shifted down so that I have another ten pounds to reach it again.

I definitely feel a difference since starting - the high weight loss at the start is mostly due to coming back from my parents-in-law and not being fed on eighteen-course meals in San Francisco restaurants all the time (which was a nice problem to have while it lasted), but I felt noticeably hungry throughout the day at first - now, I've got used to eating less and don't feel the need to stuff myself with as much zero-point fruit as I once did. We've also been going to the gym more regularly (or... ever), where I spend a while with weights and on the elliptical machine - I'm not quite ready to start running again yet as I can definitely feel my stomach, er, jiggling uncomfortably if I try.

Knowing the things that cost more points is a huge help, because they're sometimes very innocuous (what's wrong with bread?!) - and it's now much easier to refuse someone's offer of some weird chocolate-caramel wafer thing if they're being passed around, purely because of how much of a pain it's going to be to look up and put it into the tracker.

Comments

[raptorianone.livejournal.com]

I could use this myself. Does it cost anything? :o

[kjorteo]

Yes, there are fees involved for a Weight Watchers membership.

If you want to do a poor man's version of it, without the fancy points system, meetings, support, or basically anything except the whole food logging idea, SparkPeople is 100% free, and comes with food and fitness trackers, with the food tracker including a massive database of just about everything. Rather than a points system, SparkPeople is just pure literal calorie counting; figure out about how many calories, how much sodium, etc. you should have per day, log whatever you eat, and figure it out from there.

You know, I actually have a friend whose diet plan was "I can eat however much I want of whatever I want, but I have to log it on SparkPeople", and just that extra step of having to think about it and be aware of everything made him a lot more careful, which led to tremendous weight loss. He ended up losing around 100 pounds, but to be fair, he did switch to an actual regimented daily caloric intake later; not all 100 pounds came from the "I can do whatever I want as long as I write it down" method. But quite a few of those early ones did!

[davidn]

The act of logging definitely helps a lot on its own, it makes you so much more aware of what you need to be eating versus how much you actually eat. The online tracker is the only part of the membership that I use, but it's been working so far!