Tag Archives: Smart Points

Cat vs Cookie

9 Feb

So there I was, sitting on my living room chair with two coveted Maple Shortbread Cookies. They cost me a whopping 6SP in Weight Watchers land so a definite treat.

The cat comes to sniff the first cookie. I’m ok with this because he likes to smell all my food but never tastes it. I am torn between he is sniffing for poison and if he ever smelled some he would save me by swiping the food out of my hand OR my food is so unappealing to anyone who isn’t me even a cat won’t eat it…

Anyways!

He comes to sniff the cookie. He sniffs for longer than normal. Weird, but alright. Then all of a sudden he decides to switch from sniffing to gnawing on the cookie! Doesn’t even try licking it first! Oh no, not him, just starts gnawing on it, like he could somehow fit the whole thing in his mouth. *rolls eyes*

So, being the supportive of personal growth person that I am I broke off the section of cookie that is now quite obviously never going in to my mouth and offered it to him. He nibbled it a bit then proceeded to ignore it in favour of giving himself a bath.

Seriously? He gave up a delicious Maple Shortbread Cookie to lick his own tummy. I think we can all agree he doesn’t make the best life choices.  😉

The travesty is that I lost about 1/4 of my cookie. My planned for, points already tracked, can not replace, cookie. 😦

Such a cruel world. *big epic sigh*

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Don’t let the innocent look fool you!

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Random Dessert

28 Jan

I have noooooo idea what to call this but names don’t really matter, taste does, and it turned out surprisingly tasty. Definitely going to make it again!

Looks wise though, um, yeah, so not pretty!

banana-pancake

Take one banana, it needs to have a little brown on the peel so it is easy to mash. Mash the banana, add two eggs, mix. You’ll have a runny mix that may be slightly lumpy, depending on how well you mashed the banana so mash it well!

Pour the mixture in to a frying pan, cook, flip, cook some more.

Top with PB2 that has been mixed back to peanut butter consistency, or use almond butter, or real peanut butter, whatever takes your fancy. Actually, I might not use normal peanut butter because it is made with a decent amount of sugar and the banana makes this sweet enough as is, the PB2 is not as sweet as real peanut butter so it is a nice counter taste to the sweetness of the banana. That’s just my opinion though…

My picture shows the banana pancake (that is my working title for now) covered in PB2, I should have taken a pic of it prior to topping it, sorry ’bout that.

I maaaaaay have accidentally burnt the one side, well, maybe overcooked is a better description of what happened, but it didn’t ruin the taste so bonus! Also, it is such a runny mixture that when I flipped it well, it basically turned into a big ‘ol mess , which is why I say it isn’t a pretty dish. I think if I cook it on a lower heat so it cooks more in the middle before burning on the one side I can flip it and it just might hold its shape…maybe?

The final consistency weirdly enough reminded me vaguely of custard, despite the fact it is in pancake form, I guess because it stayed so gooey, but a good gooey, nothing gross happenin over here, I promise! The PB2 was a great topping because the banana made the pancake sweet and PB2 is sooooo not sweet, together they matched perfectly. 🙂

So yeah, healthy snack / dessert / treat…whatever you want to label it. If you wanted to make it thicker and more filling you could probably add some oats to it, or if you want only the egg and banana in it but not as runny I suppose you could use just one egg. Tweak it whatever way you want, lemme know if you try something and it makes a tasty result! Sharing is caring people! 😉

 

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Pulled Chicken

17 Nov

I cooked and it didn’t suck! Yay!

I saw a recipe on YouTube I wanted to try but couldn’t find one of the main ingredients when I was in the store today so I randomly decided to try making pulled sweet & smoky chicken in my slow cooker.

I’ve had my slow cooker for a while but never quite got around to using it. My intention was to try out slow cooker desserts, of which I have heard many a good thing! but well, yeah, didn’t happen, shrug.

But hey, why not try cooking in it today, right?

The inspiration for this meal was this…

Sorry for the ripped package, I forgot to take a picture before I oh so delicately opened it lol This is Club House brand seasoning mix for sweet & smoky pulled chicken. Mmm!

The recipe on the back made it seem super easy. Boneless skinless chicken breast, mixed with ketchup, water, brown sugar, and the seasoning mix. Pop it all in the slow cooker for 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low. Remove it from the slow cooker and tear the chicken with two forks, put it back in the slow cooker to fully coat the chicken and bring it back up to a hot temperature, then serve on a bun.

I did everything the recipe said to, except I halved it. I own a small slow cooker, and I’m cooking for one person over here, an 8 portion dish is a tad much for me!

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See? Tiny slow cooker!

Oh! I lied! I also kinda changed the meat, but not really. It is supposed to be 2 pounds of chicken breast, I used 1 pound of chicken breast fillets. Same bird, same section of the bird, just cut a bit, and cheaper. I thought the thinner cut might be the better choice because of the size of my slow cooker, also, it came in packages closer to the size I needed where as the chicken breasts were all packaged in larger amounts and I didn’t want a bunch of extra raw chicken lying around, what the hell would I do with that?

Since the original recipe makes 8 portions and I made half the recipe even I can do the math that means what I made would equal to 4 portions. Lemme tell ya, it made 4 reeeeally big portions!

I put the entire contents of the meat and sauce in a measuring cup to see how much it made, it was 2.5 ounces or 2 1/4 cups which I attempted to then measure out, on my kitchen scale, so I’d properly divide the meat and sauce but um yeah, that so didn’t work…sooooo I guesstimated *rolls eyes*

So here is how much ended up on my sandwich…

pulled-chicken-sandwich

And here is how much ended up in my tupperware container…

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I suppose if you don’t care for meat, or pulled meat, or meat in sauces, the above pictures won’t look good to you but to me, they look delicious. Mmm!

The dish turned out quite good.  🙂 Easy enough even I could make it, and a tasty end result, yay!

For all you Weight Watcher people out there, one serving is 7 SP. For those of you not on Weight Watchers, I have not calculated the nutritional information, sorry! 😉

I didn’t do anything fancy with it, just put it on some toast and made a toasted sandwich. I know in restaurants they usually put coleslaw on pulled meat sandwiches, and it is crazy delish, but I didn’t think to get any and lets get real here, I didn’t need to add even more to this sandwich, making it even more unhealthy lol

I’ll probably eat one more serving of it tomorrow then freeze the rest. I may really like this sauce but that doesn’t mean I want to eat it 4 days in a row, seems a tad excessive.

The ease of making this meal, and how good it made my apartment smell makes me think I should use the slow cooker way more often. I just might have to try some experimenting over here! 😀

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Progresso Soup

19 Oct

I was in the states today for like, a minute, well ok, about 20 minutes, and while there I bought some soup and some yoghurt – both specific types I can’t get here, in the land of maple leafs and hockey.

I’ve written about the yoghurts before, I buy them it seems almost every time I go to the states but today I bought a new soup. Theoretically you can’t go wrong with soup but alas, today proved that line of thinking wrong.

I bought one of the Progresso Light soups, specifically the Beef Pot Roast flavour. If you follow Weight Watchers one serving is 2 SP and the can holds two servings. I ate the entire can for dinner, hey! don’t judge, that’s mean! 😛  If you are not on Weight Watchers well, the nutritional info is below, take from it what you like…

I had high hopes for this soup, you’d think I’d learn to stop doing that! *rolls eyes*

The broth was good but weak, it is hard to describe, think of hot chocolate that isn’t quite chocolately enough, it has potential to be good and you can get hints of a good flavour when you taste it but it isn’t quite there yet, it needs to be stronger. The broth is like that, decent but weak, needs to be stronger.

The meat, oh geez, the meat is where this soup fails, and truthfully, where Progresso soups always seem to fail. The beef cubes were dry, and chewy, and had no flavour, and I wouldn’t feed them to a dog let alone another human being. I, however, obviously have lower standards for myself, or I was too lazy to scoop the beef chunks out of my bowl, so I ended up eating them. 😛

The veggies though were good, actual chunks of vegetables, good texture, good taste. In all the Progresso soups I have had the vegetables are always good. The meat is always terrible. Which is why I tend to lean towards buying only their vegetarian soups but today I thought I’d give them another chance.

Lesson learned. Don’t give Progresso another chance lol Buy what they are good at, their vegetable soups, avoid the meat, it is always dry and chewy and just not worth it.

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Bubble bubble toil and trouble…

The broth has a nice colour, and look at those vegetables! Mmm veggies! 🙂

Overall I wouldn’t rate this soup high, and wouldn’t buy it again, the veggies don’t make it worth eating the beef and the lightly flavoured broth. The extremely low amount of WW points makes eating those beef cubes worth it though, especially since my meeting is tomorrow. 😉

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Weight Watchers Thursdays an Stuff

8 Sep

So today was interesting but boring all at once…at least for me, shrug.

I had my WW meeting, which is at 12:30pm. The reason I am telling you the time of the meeting is because I sleep in Thursday mornings and get up when I will have juuuust enough time to make myself look partially presentable (this means hair styled but no make-up) and get to the meeting. I do this because (1) I’m lazy and don’t want to get up any earlier than absolutely necessary and (2) if I don’t get up until right when I need to then I don’t have time to eat (or get hungry) prior to the meeting and I am weighing in on an empty stomach.

Hey, don’t judge! We all have our quirks! 😛

So yeah, slept in, went to my meeting, found out I am the exact same weight as last week, realized I am not upset about it and continued on with my day.

In case you are wondering why I am not upset, when normally I would be, it is because…

  1. I had three days where I wasn’t feeling well, one of those days I under ate my points, all three of those days I was as lazy as humanly possibly while still going to work.
  2. Today is the beginning of shark week so kinda bloated over here (sorry for the tmi)
  3. I had a huge (for me) loss last week and after a huge loss it is normal for the following week to either not lose or lose a small amount.

So there ya have it, all reasons I knew would affect my weigh-in, and they did. At least I am assuming they did since all but that one day that I under ate I followed the plan and ate my points (ate my points using healthy food I might add, yay me! lol) so theoretically I should have lost at least a little bit, except for those reasons not to…I’m gonna stop rambling, I am making this sound more complicated than it is lol 😛

After the meeting I rushed home, normally I would have eaten something but nope, today I rushed home to put on makeup and make sure my hair was still ok then I skeedaddled off to get passport photos taken. Always a lovely way to ensure you feel bad about how you look, take a close up picture of you where you can’t smile or have any facial expression *rolls eyes* Some weirdo walked by right when my picture was going to be taken and made a “make sure you don’t smile” comment like he was making some great joke. Then he said he would tickle me just to make me laugh to mess up the picture…uh…okaaaaaay…*cringe* Some people shouldn’t be allowed outside without supervision.

The lady working at the store was a chatty-cathy and kept stopping work to talk to me about her hair and how she styles it, wth? All the while I am practically willing her hands to finish trimming the picture and stamp the back and ring the charges through because the passport office is downtown and isn’t open forever ya know and I was hoping to grab something to eat on my way there and every time this lady stops working to talk is less time I have to maybe get lunch aaaaaaand she kept talking, so I ended up going right to the passport office sans any food.

Hell, at that point I would have been happy with a bottle of water, a mint, something! Anything to trick my stomach lol

When I got to the passport office I was so happy, there was no line, all the cues were open, this was gonna be a breeze!

Ha! How silly and naive I can be at times, sigh.

passport

I stood there, at the front of a non-existent line, just little ‘ol me, 4 people behind the desk at their stations who are theoretically there to serve people standing in the line and they just keep talking amongst themselves. It was kinda awkward. I was debating between just picking one and forcing them to help me by going up to them or continuing to stand there like the last teen at a school dance left on the sidelines, trying to look like they don’t care but in reality desperately wanting someone to call them over. Finally one of them motioned me forward and life seemed good again.

Can’t say that she was all that friendly but she did her job and really, if she wants to be grumpy while working that is her deal, shrug. She did some stuff with the paperwork then gave me a number and told me to go wait over in the waiting area for my number to be called. I looked over at the waiting area and couldn’t decide if I should be distraught or tentatively optimistic…there didn’t seem to be thaaaat many people there but the ones that were there looked like they had been there a while…oh boy…

While waiting for my number to be called I got to eyewitness a lady decide her perfectly content baby was hungry and thrust him under her shirt to nurse. The child obviously had other ideas about this decision of hers and started screaming something fierce, even when being pushed against her breast, under a shirt, the screaming was still loud. Of course no one can say anything cause duh, so not socially acceptable to comment on how a woman is breastfeeding her child but to my untrained eye it seemed like she might have waited till, I dunno, the kid was making some sort of movement indicating hunger…but what do I know? Oddly enough the kids grandma apologized to everyone in the vicinity for the screaming baby, kinda confusing. Babies cry, no need to apologize for that. shrug.

Eventually, right when I thought I was going to have to risk losing my spot in line and duck outside in the hopes of spotting somewhere that sold food my number got called. Yay! I got a slightly nicer lady this time, she finished processing the paperwork, got my signature on some stuff, took $120 of my hard earned money (why oh why does a passport cost so much?) and informed me if I have the passport mailed to me there are no additional charges, if I want to pick it up I have to pay an additional $25 which makes no sense to me. Maybe they charge you to pick it up because they are trying to discourage people coming in and crowding the place?

money

I opted to have it mailed to me, got my receipt and was out of there!

Now that I was free you’d think I’d beeline somewhere for food but I’d just spent $120 on a passport, the last thing I wanted was to spend more money so I just went back to the car and started driving home. You wouldn’t believe how many times I contemplated calling in a sushi order for pick-up or debated hitting up a Subway on the way home but in the end I waited and cooked at home. Not only did I cook but I made a decently healthy meal, WW approved. I had my first meal of the day around 5pm and it tasted soooooo good! I then had a second meal around 9:30pm…eating so close together, and two meals I classified as dinner reminded me of Hobbits with their second breakfasts lol

So there ya have it, not exactly a riveting day but some random things in there to keep it kinda interesting…sorta…ok, maybe not, but oh well, shrug. Not every day can have something awesome happen in it 😛

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Weight Watchers Thursdays

1 Sep

Ok so I have given up on Weight Watchers Wednesdays and changed it to Thursdays because even though I prefer how Wednesday sounds I never make it to that meeting. *rolls eyes* Might as well just admit that Thursdays are my WW day and adjust the blog accordingly, shrug.

So I have some happy news, the scale was most definitely my friend this week! 🙂 Not just my friend, my bestest friend! lol

My body is reluctant to lose weight so every week I stand on that stupid scale and consider myself lucky if I have managed to lose 0.8lbs. I had already done the math and figured how long it would take to get to goal if I continued on at that rate and oh man was that depressing math, sigh.

This week though, oh wow! I stepped on the scale and kinda freaked out because it showed I had gone down by 3.6lbs! Three point six pounds! Oh. My. Gawd! How is that even a possibility?

I am crediting the crazy awesome loss to three things:

  1. two weeks ago I had a super active week and apparently it can sometimes take a week for the results of extra work outs to show on the scale
  2. I cut out peanut butter…it almost killed me to do it but I realized I kept lying to myself about how much of it I was eating and it was burning through my weekly points like crazy so I cut it out completely and will sloooowly work it back in, when I can trust myself to measure and track it honestly
  3. Magic, and unicorns, and fairy dust…obviously it is mostly these that did it! 😉

The loss of 3.6 pounds resulted in my surpassing my first 10 pounds lost (I am at a grand total of 11.8 pounds lost right now) aaaaaaaand it resulted in my losing 5% of my body weight. Boom!

In the land of Weight Watchers this means I earned me some bling! 🙂

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The charm with the WW I got at 4 weeks as a celebration of sticking with the program for a month.

The charm that says 5% is celebrating my having lost 5% of my body weight, yay!

The charm of the running person is for a Try-A-Thon challenge that has been going on for the last 9 weeks. The challenge is to try something new every week, something that falls under the category of Fun, Food, or Fitness. I managed to try (and track) at least one new thing every week.

Oh, I also got a sticker for having lost another 5lbs, you get one with every 5lbs lost, but I didn’t take a picture of that lol

The WW app gave me this lovely message after I input my weigh-in weight…

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The team leader gave me a high five, I did a girly happy scream in my car, all in all, a good day. 😀

Things we talked about in the meeting today:

Hydration!

This week is all about hydration. Apparently most people don’t drink enough fluids in a day, I don’t really have that problem thanks to my tea addiction, but doesn’t mean I shouldn’t keep an eye on how much I am drinking just to make sure I don’t start cutting back without realizing it.

An average person should be drinking six 8oz glasses of fluid a day, that is 1 1/2 Litres each and every day.

That’s a hella lot of fluids! Are you drinking enough?

There is a myth that you should be drinking all that fluid as water but that is not true. Any unsweetened, non-alcoholic drink counts. So tea, milk, diet pops, basically any 0 SP drinks. You can also get some of your fluids from certain foods, like watermelon, celery and the like.

Drink up my friends! 🙂

Fun fact I learned about water, it has been shown to help women regulate body temperature so if you are going through menopause drinking lots of water might help control the hot flashes.

Something else we talked about was the truth of the scale. The scale never lies, it will always tell the truth but it is only the truth in that moment, it is a snapshot. The scale will tell a certain truth, it doesn’t give the big picture of how a person is doing. If you do everything right and you step on the scale and it doesn’t show the result you are expecting think back to the last 24 hours. Did you eat something high in sodium and are retaining water? Is it super humid? Are you taking a new medication? There are a lot of things that could affect your weigh-in so sure, the scale never lies, but maybe in that moment the scale is showing the effects of that salty popcorn you ate the night before. Take that number with a grain of salt…heh, salt, get it? 😉

Lastly we talked about treats and tips for dealing with parties. One lady said before she goes to a party she thinks about what she wants to get out of that event, does she want to lose, maintain, or gain. She says she never wants to gain but may be ok with gaining because of what she ate at that party due to circumstances.

The other tip was about keeping treats out of easy reach. One lady has so much trouble not eating allllll the treats allllll the time that she keeps them in a box in her trunk in her underground parking. That way, if she is craving something she can’t just go to the cupboard in her kitchen but would have to go down 3 floors and get them from the car and that extra effort just to get a cookie (or whatever her treats are) is usually all she needs to get her aiming for some fruit. She goes the extra step by giving herself rules about the circumstances in which she is allowed to eat those treats. She must eat them in her apartment, so she can’t just grab something from the trunk when she is about to get in to her car. I figure she must be very good at following her own rules to resist just grabbing one when on the go…but hey, whatever works for her! 🙂

My treat to myself for losing my first ten pounds (technically 11.8lbs, not that I’m counting or anything…) is to buy a new book, Chapters here I come!

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Try It Tuesday: Butternut Squash & Quinoa Pilaf

23 Aug

Oh Jamie Oliver,  how you tempt me!

It seems every time I go grocery shopping and am in the frozen aisle I see a Jamie Oliver product I want to try, dangerous not only to my eating plan but also to my budget lol Lucky for me I seem to spot his items when they are on sale, or maybe they are always on sale…nah, that can’t be it!

Once again I bought the item thinking it was a meal on its own and it turned out it is actually meant to be a side dish. I figured I’d try eating is as such which meant I had to cook an entire meal -the horrors!

Here is what I started with…

Sorry it isn’t in focus, I would have sworn it was when I took the picture and the box is in the recycling now so too late to try again, oops.

Like the box says, this is a butternut squash & quinoa pilaf with mixed rice, pumpkin seeds and cranberries. The box makes a point of saying how it is made with whole grains and contains no preservatives or artificial flavours, so ya know, if that matters to you, there ya go. 😉

When frozen it looks like this…

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Pretty decent huh? I chose to microwave it because (1) the box says I can do that and it’ll be fine and (2) my oven was busy cooking other things and coordinating multiple food items in the oven is not a strong skill of mine…something always ends up either burned or not fully cooked, ugh.

So yeah, this sucker got microwaved and turned out great! I paired it with some chicken from M&M Meat Shops and McCain’s Super Fries. Random? Yes. Tasty? Also yes. 🙂

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A portion is 1/3 of the package, or 125 grams. I weighed my portion out then portioned out the remainder of the package so it would be ready for when I wanted the leftovers and there is actually more in the package than three full servings. Not a big deal, just a large spoonful over but if you are really strict about portions you’ll end up having a bit left over. I may have eaten the random spoonful and pretended it didn’t count but ya know, that is me, you do you! If you follow Weight Watchers the Smart Points are 6 per serving.

It isn’t some flavour packed dish, not that I was expecting that, I mean c’mon, it is butternut squash, quinoa and rice…none of those are particularly flavourful items. Having said that, it tasted good. It isn’t covered in some sauce or trying to pretend it is anything other than what it is, which is a nice change for packaged, microwavable food lol. I did put a spoonful of salsa on the left over serving I had the next day at lunch and it took it from good to yum, but you have to keep in mind I love salsa so I’m biased. 😛

I’d put this on my buy again list, as long as it is on sale! 😉

 

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Weight Watchers Wednesday…Sorta…

20 Jul

I didn’t write last week, not because I stopped doing the whole Weight Watcher thing but because I had my weekly meeting on Thursday and planned to write up my post after the meeting but I was sooooo sick I couldn’t do it. Ugh. It sucked. I couldn’t even look at the written word, let alone type it!

But this week I am doing better! Yay!

However, I am missing my Wednesday meeting again! because of life plans and will be going Thursday. It’s not that I don’t like the Thursday meeting, it is fine, but I hate missing the Wednesday meeting, again, not because of anything specific to do with the meeting just because I like going Wednesdays. In the app I have Wednesdays as my weigh-in day so that is the day my weekly points roll over and is technically the beginning of my new food week and I guess I prefer having my official weigh-in happen on the day it is supposed to happen on. shrug. I know I could switch the weigh-in day on my app to Thursday, since I appear to be hitting up the Thursday meeting quite often but I don’t wanna *foot stomp* so there! 😉 lol

Last week we talked about trying something new and our leader gave us the challenge of trying a new food this week. So far, I have epically failed that challenge *rolls eyes*. Once I got my appetite back I was really only wanting to eat bland, simple, foods and I figured following my stomach’s lead over the meeting leader’s lead was the wisest choice.

My weigh-in results from last week had me losing 1.2 pounds, bringing me to a total loss of 6.2 pounds. I can’t wait till my weight loss numbers get bigger and sound more impressive. People keep asking me how much I have lost and when I say 6.2 pounds they look so disappointed, it’s annoying! Then they start wondering, out loud!, why I’m not losing faster, or is the program really worth it, blah blah blah. I always want to respond with a comment along the lines of “get off my freakin back I’m doing the best I can!” but instead I just give a little smile, say something positive about the program, point out I haven’t been going all that long, and walk away sorta wondering if I am sucking at this whole weight loss thing since the whole entire world seems to think I should be losing faster. sigh.

But ya know what? It is healthier to lose the weight no more than 2 pounds per week, and I know from past experience my body does not like to lose weight so any weight loss is a minor victory in my world. I’ve just got to remember that people suck, and often say things they may not realize can have a negative effect on the person they are speaking to.

Ultimately, I decide how I feel about myself and my weight loss journey, and so far, I feel good about the journey. I am re-learning proper food portions, meeting great people, enjoying using the app, and am seeing results. Really, what more could I ask for?

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Try It Tuesday: Skinny Cow

5 Jul

It’s summer and in my world that means a shift in desserts and treats. I tend to lean more towards fruit pies / tart type things and of course ice cream. Can’t go wrong with ice cream!

However, there is nothing remotely healthy or helpful to weight loss in ice cream. I figured I was going to have to give it up and was actively trying to not think about it but warmer days came to us and all I wanted was soft serve ice cream…or an ice cream sandwich…or a sundae…basically any form of ice cream lol

Then I remembered Skinny Cow! I don’t normally buy Skinny Cow items because they are suuuper expensive and in the past I tended to lean towards buying me some Ben & Jerry’s, they are two of my favourite men. 😉

Well guess what happened last week? Skinny Cow was on sale! Yay! So there I stood, in the ice cream aisle with my WW app open scanning each different products barcode to see juuuuust how bad for me Skinny Cow is.

Lemme tell ya, it ain’t good!

I eventually chose the Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwiches because, well, how could I not? Chocolate and peanut butter? Yes puh-lease! 😀

 

I know some people like to say that Skinny Cow isn’t as good as “real” ice cream, to those people I say hush up! You are obviously delusional because these taste great!

They are a perfectly acceptable size, in fact I am surprised they aren’t smaller. The cookie part is soft and sticks to your hand just like a so-called real ice cream sandwich, the ice cream is freakin delicious. I mean c’mon, they are real and beyond that there is a bit less guilt when eating them, which makes me a happy camper lol

They come in a variety of flavours, there is a cookie & cream, a regular vanilla, and I want to say there was one other flavour but maybe I am wrong…I was standing in that aisle so long scanning my brain might have gotten a little frost bite. 😛

Skinny Cow of course has other items, just walk down the ice cream aisle at your local grocery store and you’ll see them. I haven’t tried any of those but summer is long, I still have time!

Sidenote: for anybody on Weight Watchers, one ice cream sandwich is 6 smart points.

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The Weight Watchers Plunge

15 Jun

Last Sunday on my lunch break I said “screw it” and I signed up for Weight Watchers. And not in the I’m-doing-it-on-my-own kind of way but in the for real, paid money, am officially a member of Weight Watchers kind of way. It kinda feels like I’ve joined a cult…but full of nice people and so far none of them have asked me to drink anything suspicious or pledge allegiance to anything weird…or anything at all lol 😛

I chose to attend meetings as well as use the online resources, might as well utilize everything they have to offer, right? Right! Since I signed up online on Sunday that is my official start date even though I wasn’t able to attend a meeting until today, Wednesday. At first I was going to wait to start tracking my food and figuring out the system until my first meeting but changed my mind and started using the app and the website on the Sunday when I clued in to the fact that I was already paying for the services so I shouldn’t waste four days of access to the WW  info. This stuff ain’t cheap!

When you first sign in to the website you get asked a bunch of questions, the answers are apparently used to personalize not only the program to me but also the information that will be sent to me. So like, recipes, exercise ideas, food tips, and other such things. I’m thinking the more personalized the program is the better it will work for people…I hope!

I’ve gotta say, so far I have been kind of sucking at the whole Weight Watchers lifestyle, sigh. Which was not what I was expecting! Although, I did cook a healthy dinner yesterday instead of just eating some toast and a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter after I looked at my points tally for the day and realized I couldn’t just eat willy-nilly and not go over my daily points. So I guess that is something…a teeny tiny baby step towards progress perhaps? 😉

Today at my meeting I got given 4 different booklets:

  • a mini journal, I take it each week to meetings and use it to track my official weigh ins. It also has a section for you to write your reasons why you are starting this journey, what your final weight goal is and even a section to write down ideas on how I can be good to myself.
  • the next booklet is the Pocket Guide, this booklet has a food list with corresponding points, a portion estimate guide and FitPoints charts. Oh, there is also a note section at the back.
  • the third, and I think most important booklet is the “Your Plan Guide” which has everything in it. It is basically the how-to book for the entire program, it explains how the program works, how the points work, suggestions for how to distribute your points throughout the day, goal setting, fitness, and being kind to yourself. There are also recipes, meal plans, no-count option list, different fitness / exercise ideas meant to fit in to different increments of time (1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes and 15 minutes) and a bunch of other stuff – I’ll go in to more detail another day, after I’ve had a chance to read the whole thing.
  • the fourth and final booklet is a weekly booklet, I guess I get a new one each week. From what I can tell each week covers a new topic and the leader has a more in-depth version that she uses to direct the meeting. This weeks topic was about self-talk, how we think of ourselves and others and how it can affect your weight loss. A stat shared this evening said that a study showed that people experience 75% more weight loss when they have improved self-image, partly because they tend to treat themselves better and make better choices.

So I wanted to show you what the books look like but as soon as I put them down the cat decided he haaaaad to check them out lol I eventually managed to convince him to move – by plucking him up and holding him in a death grip while rearranging the books and taking the picture lol

The overall theme to this weeks meeting was: Be Positive!

Some ways to do that are to remember to give myself credit for putting effort in to changing. Be positive about how I think about myself. Remember that no matter how slow the progress or how many times I stumble I am ahead of those who are not trying.

Some ways to work on being more successful are to really question myself when I feel hungry. I might actually be bored, or thirsty, or emotional, or who knows what. By questioning myself before heading in to the kitchen I should be able to decrease my mindless eating which can only lead to good things. 🙂

Even though I am keeping track of everything using the app I bought the tracking journal when at the meeting this evening. I really like writing things down, something about being able to flip through the pages of the book to see what I did a week ago vs hitting the previous page button on my phone, I dunno, it is a tactile thing, shrug, just go with it, ok? The book cost me $12 and is good for three months. It is an unfortunate brown colour, ugh, but otherwise I like it.

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The actual tracking page (on the left) is pretty simplistic, you put the date at the top, write down your foods and their corresponding point values, then tally everything at the bottom. There is a line for putting how many of your weekly points you used, in case you went over your daily points. There is also a section for writing down your exercise and corresponding FitPoints earned. At the end of each week there is a 20:20 Hindsight page (on the right), where you can write down all kinds of things. Then there are a couple of pages for notes. Each week is the same, the only thing that changes is the weekly quote, this weeks is:

Some days you just have to create your own sunshine.

At the end of the book are a bunch of pages for notes. I am using one page to remember how many daily and weekly points I get as well as my weight. I know I have the little booklet to keep track of my weight loss but I figure I’ll write it in this book also since this book is only for three months and the little one I take to meetings goes for 16 weeks and well, I dunno, I figure one day the two books will get separated but I’ll probably keep the journal so if I check it out one day a long time from now it might be nice to see the progress I made…or depressing, depending on how this goes… 😉

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