Tag Archives: weight watchers

More Soup and Yoghurt

8 Aug

That’s riiiiiight, more Progresso Soup and Yoplait yoghurt reviews! I know, I know, you are just soooo excited! lol 😉

Today’s soup was Progresso Light Chicken & Cheese Enchilada, it is 2 Weight Watchers points on the Points Plus program, one serving is 1 cup and the can has two servings in it.

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Chicken & Cheese Enchilada

Close Up!

Close Up!

So, the same as with the soup from yesterday the chicken was not good, it was dry and chewy but at least it was in large chunks. I like the colour of the broth in this soup more than the one from yesterday, I realized after my second spoonful that the colour reminds me a bit of the artificial cheese colour of Kraft Dinner Macaroni & Cheese which is a tad odd but since this soup is supposed to have a cheese flavour in it I guess it makes sense the colour seems similar lol. There was a decent amount of veggies in the soup, the tomato pieces were a good size (I like veggies in my soup to be cut in big chunks so the soup seems more substantial) but the rest of the veggies were super small pieces, probably so they could fit better in the can but ya know, I’d still rather the pieces be a bit bigger, shrug. There was a bit of a zing to the broth, my first spoonful I was all “wow! spicy!” but then the next however many spoonfuls were not spicy. It was odd lol Every now and then I’d have a spoonful that was spicy and the rest were not, they weren’t bland exactly, just not super flavourful.

All in all I would recommend this soup, the flavour was good (despite being inconsistent) and the tomato pieces were large enough you had to actually chew lol

Today’s Yoplait yoghurt was Pina Colada! Mmm! It is another 25% less sugar yoghurt but not a Weight Watchers affiliated one, which means for that tiny yoghurt cup I used 4 Weight Watchers Points Plus points.

Pina Colada!

Pina Colada!

Those 4 points were totally worth it my friend! All this yoghurt needs is a little splash of alcohol and it’d be perfect! lol 😉 I really enjoyed this one, just the right combo of flavours, nice smooth, thick texture, everything a yoghurt should be, imo.

So yay! This puts me at 2 yoghurts being good, 1 soup being good and 1 soup being not good – that’s pretty decent I’d say. Only 2 more soups to go and ummm…7 yoghurts? Yeah, 7 yoghurts! 🙂

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Soup and Yoghurt

7 Aug

I figured since I bought all that soup and yoghurt yesterday when in the States I might as well start eating it! 🙂

Today I chose the Progresso Light Zesty Santa Fe Style Chicken soup, it is 2 Weight Watchers Plus Points per serving (which is 1 cup) and there are 2 servings in a can.

Santa Fe Style Chicken

Zesty Santa Fe Style Chicken

Here is a close up of it…

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It is not a pretty looking soup, the broth is kind of a sludge type colour, not appetizing looking in person at all. The chicken pieces were nicely sized, I’d go as far as to call them chunks or cubes of chicken rather than pieces buuuuut the chicken was dry and chewy, sigh. There was one cube of chicken that was soft and tender and it was such an oddity compared to the other pieces I actually wondered what went wrong with that particular piece of chicken lol The rice, veggies and beans were excellent, Mmm! The first spoonful was a tad spicy but I like spicy food so I quickly adjusted and was fine with it.

For an overall review I would not recommend this soup, mostly because of the chicken being so dry and chewy. I feel that if a company is going to put meat of any form in to a can of soup they should make sure the meat is tender and tasty. Just sayin.

For the yoghurt I enjoyed a Yoplait Cherry Yoghurt that apparently has 25% Less Sugar.

Cherry!

Cherry!

It is 4 Weight Watchers Plus Points which seems a tad high considering it is just a yoghurt cup, shrug, but it did taste good! There were actual pieces of cherries in there which is always nice. 🙂

So far I am batting 50/50, one yah and one nay, and that’s alright, I mean I can’t expect everything I choose to taste good lol I expect most of the yoghurts to taste good but the soup is a total guessing game, shrug.

I’m picking randomly which soup and which yoghurt to eat so who knows which ones I’ll write about next! 😛

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Hello America!

6 Aug

Today I had a little jaunt in to the States, and when I say little I mean little, I was only there a couple of hours. Thank goodness the border is so close! 🙂

Why bother going for such a short visit? Simple, I had to ship my dragon boat paddle back to the company that made it (Burn Water) for repairs.

Why did I have to go across the border to ship my paddle you wonder? Simple, Canada and the States are weird and like to have random rules in play in regards to what can be shipped where and my paddle was a big no-no for going across the border in a box.

Makes no sense? Lemme explain!

I went to FedEx on the Canada side of the border to find out how much it would cost to ship my paddle, it had to go to Northern California. The guy took one look at it and said they can’t ship it, there are rules that prohibit them from shipping my paddle. I asked for clarification and his explanation was this:

The States has a policy that we can’t ship used personal items across the border in to the States. Apparently the American government is worried people will ship over all their personal items then drive or fly over as if on vacation and then be all “haha, I claim squatters rights! my stuff is all here and I’m not leaving!” Basically they are afraid Canadians are going to try to sneak move-in to the States.

*rolls eyes*

Listen, I may be happy you have ObamaCare now but don’t think it sounds good enough for me to leave my healthcare system behind…even if I do desperately want to live in LA and pursue my acting career there *big epic sigh*

Oh, and on top of all that, if they could legally ship it, it would have cost me in the high $200’s! That’s just crazy!

It is cheaper to drive the paddle over the border and ship it from within the country, which is exactly what I did. 🙂

The wait at the border crossing looked like this…

And I didn't bring a book, sigh.

And I didn’t bring a book, sigh.

I thought mid-day on a Thursday would be nice and quiet, don’t any of these people work?? Eesh. 😛

While sitting in the traffic that closely resembled a parking lot two border guards started walking down between the cars, I did my best to look innocent but I guess it didn’t work because they stopped at my suv and said they were doing a “spot check”.

Those are never good words to hear from someone with a badge and a gun.

While I sat super still in my vehicle, with the engine turned off, they searched and questioned, and searched a bit more. When the one guard asked the reason for my trip today I explained about the paddle and having to take it to FedEx on the American side of the border and they both looked at me like I was crazy. I wanted to point out that if I was up to something I would have come up with a far less odd sounding story but figured they wouldn’t appreciate hearing that, shrug.

Eventually they left me and my vehicle alone and I continued to slowly inch my way up to that little booth thing the border guards chill in while asking questions of those of us trying to pass through. The guard in the little booth asked a lot of similar questions, to which I provided the same answers and he also looked suspicious and unimpressed.

I should have just said I was going shopping, sigh.

The guard in the booth let me go and zoom! Off I went, in to America!

I am navigationally challenged and seriously doubted my ability to find the FedEx without getting lost but my directions were perfect and I got there quite quickly.

The poor guy at the FedEx though, I made his day harder, not intentionally though! Apparently if I had an American PO Box the amount of effort he would have to do is diminished by quite a bit but I don’t have one so he had to get me to fill out a form and he had to manually enter information in to his computer – oh the horrors! 😉 Luckily FedEx has a box that is perfectly sized to fit a dragon boat paddle, so yay! But the FedEx guy didn’t let me put packing peanuts or bubble wrap or anything in there so I am now paranoid about my paddle and how well it will endure transit. I got insurance for it though soooooo if they mess it up even more than it already is I guess I can file a claim, now doesn’t that sound like fun? lol

I finished at FedEx way sooner than expected so I went to Fred Meyer (that is a grocery store) and bought some super delish, Weight Watcher friendly, yoghurt that we don’t get in Canada. I have bought them twice before, once on a trip to the States for shopping and once when I was visiting a friend in LA and both times my taste buds have been super happy. 🙂 I didn’t only buy the ones marked with the Weight Watcher symbol because they didn’t have that large of a selection so I branched out to some of the non-Weight Watcher ones, they are all low sugar options though.

Why oh why can't you be in Canada?

Why oh why can’t you be in Canada?

Ok, fine, I lied, I bought one that is not low sugar, non aspartame, Weight Watcher approved, heck, it isn’t even a yoghurt lol

Chocolate Whip? Yes please!

Chocolate Whip? Yes please!

The yoghurts were on sale, 10 for $5 and I was trying to not duplicate flavours so I was forced to pick up a Chocolate Whip, it is such a hard life, teehee. 😉 I ate it this evening and it was…ok…not as good as say a chocolate pudding but hey, it could be worse.

I also took a look at these soups I always see ads for that I’ve never been able to find over here either, yup, they are Weight Watchers also, well, affiliated with WW.

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The ads make these soups seem like the most delicious healthy option ever, they are only 4 points for the entire can! Not every Progresso soup is a Weight Watcher friendly one but I took one of each of the flavours that don’t contain pork so I could give them a try.

After the grocery store, which fyi, uses paper bags! That was different…Anyways! After the grocery store I hit up a frozen yoghurt place, mostly it was because I needed a washroom and if I was going to have to buy something in order to use a washroom they were the best option out of what was around lol

The place is called Menchie’s and it was cute. 🙂 It is a serve yourself type of place and you are charged 0.51 cents per kg. Seems a weird amount to me, I mean, why not fifty cents? You pick up a bowl, walk through a selection of soft serve machines that have all sorts of flavours and then choose your toppings.

I swear I wasn't the only one there!

I swear I wasn’t the only one there!

You can combine any amount of flavours you want as well as sample as many flavours as you want before you commit to what you buy. I ended up with peach and red velvet cake, Mmm! I topped the peach with sliced banana and the red velvet cake with broken up pieces of waffle bowl.

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Ok, so obviously making frozen yoghurt look pretty is not something I excel at but hey, it tasted good and that’s all that really matters!

So after all of that I came back to my side of the border, the line was way shorter on the way home and the guard was less suspicious lol When I told them why I went over (the FedEx issue) he just shook his head a little, gave a small smile and waved me through. He was a cutie so I wouldn’t have minded being questioned more by him! 😉

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Big Boned

10 Jul

Here is a conversation that happened this evening at work:

Him: Yeah, I’m from around here, well, now I live in Sechelt but I grew up in this area, went to such-n-such school, blah blah blah

Me: Oh, hmm, that’s nice.

Him: So are you from this area? Where did you go to school?

Me: No, I moved here from Edmonton.

Him: Oooooh! An Albertan girl! I could tell you are from Alberta because you’re so big boned. Yup, a big boned girl from Alberta.

Me: *stares in shock* What?

Lady who over heard convo: You should stomp on his foot, while wearing heels.

you said what

I excuse myself from the situation and go do something else. He follows about 5 minutes later and laughingly apologizes, but the kind of apology that means diddly squat because you know he doesn’t actually mean it, he doesn’t think he did anything wrong and while pretending to apologize he infringes on my personal space by trying to put his arm around me and be all chummy.

What. The. Hell?!?!?!

youre mean

I’d like to say I responded with a scathing remark but I was at work and had to stay professional so I had to appear to shrug it off and go about my business. I’d also like to say I promptly forgot about the insensitive jerky comment and it didn’t bother me but that’d be a big fat lie. It is still bothering me now and it has been hours, not a couple of hours, more like 9 hours. *sigh*.

I know that only I can give permission for other people to affect me but ya know what, what he said affected me and I don’t care if it is me giving him permission to affect me, or low self-esteem, or deeply buried anger because I couldn’t respond, or years of learned responses to how men treat me but whatever it is, it is affecting me, and I don’t like it.

What gives this guy, this guy that I met for the first time this evening the right to not only comment on what I look like but to comment in a negative way? Since when do our social norms allow anybody to do that without some sort of consequence? Oh wait, it’s been ok for, well…as long as I have been alive. *double sigh*

What the hell does “big boned” even mean? Is that another way of saying “fat”? Or is it a specialized way of saying “fat”, is it supposed to be more politically correct? Maybe it is the female version of “husky”, I’ve heard guys described like that, “oh he has a husky build” like he is a breed of dog or something!

I just don’t get it.

The whole situation makes me so angry. Angry that this guy seemed to think what he did was perfectly ok, angry at myself for not responding in a stronger way, angry at men in general because I can only aim so much anger at myself before I have to deflect it elsewhere and well, men in general are an easy target if I pretend they are all like this guy.

Ok, calming down now…

After work I was restless, I wanted to do something to work off my annoyance but on my drive home I found myself a bit teary eyed which is so not like me. That stupid little man had made one comment and it had me questioning all kinds of things about myself, what I look like, how I was dressed, what I ate today, how active I have been, am I bigger than I thought, am I big boned? Even though I don’t really know what big boned is supposed to mean I couldn’t stop wondering if I am that, is that what people see when they look at me, someone big boned? A big boned Albertan girl?

Since I finished work at 9:30pm and there really wasn’t much to do I came home, cuddled with the cat and made the conscious decision to not let how I was feeling affect my eating plan. I am doing Weight Watchers and the last thing I want is for some bump in the road to derail my weight loss. Normally when I am upset I either (1) eat everything! or (2) eat absolutely nothing, even if I am legit hungry. What can I say, I go to extremes. If I didn’t eat anything when I got home I’d be under eating for the day, if I ate the entire tub of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream that was calling my name I’d be waaaaay over my food budget for the day so I stuck to the plan, I made a healthy-ish snack, ate my points for the day (that is a Weight Watchers thing, if you count calories it would be like me saying I ate my calories for the day) and well, that was it. I didn’t let my emotions control my eating (or not eating), I didn’t derail my weight loss plan thereby making myself feel even worse about myself because of this comment and I will hopefully wake up tomorrow feeling better about things, cause time is supposed to heal wounds right?

Does time also heal anger because I still want to punch that guy in the face, or put on a pair of pointy heels and stomp on his foot, better yet steel toed boots!

kill you

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My Own Recipe

17 Jun

Normally when I cook I use a recipe, I tend to follow the recipe quite diligently because I suck at cooking and I am not good at winging it, at least not when it comes to cooking.

Well for some reason I decided to create my own dish, mostly because I was sick of googling recipes lol but also because I had some random things in the fridge I wanted to use up.

When I was growing up my mom would make this thing called Mom’s Amazing Mixed Up Mess…basically it was her version of what I did, or I should say what I did was my version of what she perfected. My mom can look at a bunch of random ingredients and somehow make something that tastes good. I look at a bunch of ingredients and see nothing except the individual ingredients, sigh.

The only thing I bought was some ground turkey, which I proceeded to brown in a frying pan along with some garlic and chopped up white onion. I then added a whole lot of mixed frozen veggies, they are from a stir fry blend that I have had in my freezer for over a year, yes, I know that is ridiculous. They were starting to not taste as good as they used to, I’m thinking because of the freezer burn, so I wanted a way to cook a lot of them at one time. I then moved everything in to a large pot, added 1 cup of pasta sauce (it was how much I had left over in the jar), 1/2 cup of salsa (it was how much I had left over in the jar), 1/2 a jalapeno chopped up (because it was how much I had left…detecting a theme yet? lol). Once it was all mixed together and cooked I put it in to a casserole dish, spread it out, sprinkled some shredded cheese on top and tossed it in the oven until the cheese melted.

It was originally meant to be a sort of stew/casserole type of thing but there wasn’t that much liquid in it so I don’t know what I should label it as, not a stew though…

Whatever it is called, I liked it! It was a good ratio of meat to veggie, it was just spicy enough, the veggies cooked up well and bonus points because it is healthy! Woohoo!

When it was still in the pot

When it was still in the pot

Just out of the oven with the cheese melted on top.

Just out of the oven with the cheese melted on top.

My first bowlful.

My first bowlful.

In the land of Weight Watchers Points Plus, if you split the entire dish in to 8 portions each portion is 3 points, if you split it in to 6 portions each portion is 4 points.

Even if I wanted to I don’t think I’d be able to recreate it perfectly since it was basically a dish I created specifically to use up what I had in the fridge and freezer lol Oh! I forgot! I put in a bunch of Mrs. Dash Seasoning as well, I didn’t measure it though, just shook the shaker thing until what came out looked about right…something else I won’t be able to duplicate.

I know it is a ridiculously easy meal to make, not fancy, not all that inspired or impressive, but I am proud of it anyways. It is the first time I cooked without either following a recipe or the instructions on the packaging my food came in. This is, weirdly enough, a big step for me cooking wise. 🙂

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Southwest Vegetarian Bake

31 May

I cooked! Again! This is becoming a habit that I am not sure I am comfortable with lol

Since I had success last week with making the Vegetarian Lasagna, mostly to be used as meals for work, I thought I would try again. I don’t mean try the lasagna again, I mean try making something in a large quantity that I could use for meals at work again and voila! I did it! 🙂

I found a recipe on food.com called Southwest Vegetarian Bake that looked like it might be good. I then read a variation on the recipe and liked parts of that version also. So, I combined the parts of both that I liked and made my own version – always good to customize!

My biggest problem is that the recipe is from the States so measurements sucked. It was all “use a 15 ounce can of black beans” and I’m all “canned goods in Canada are in milliliters!” sigh. Even when I converted the can sizes used in the recipe I was still screwed because apparently the size of cans used in the States is different than in Canada, lovely. double sigh.

If you want to see the original recipes I stole from click here.

I did attempt to get the correct amount, which involved way too much math in my opinion and in the end I’m pretty sure I ended up using wrong numbers according to the recipe, but right numbers for me since it turned out ok. 🙂

My Ingredients:

2 Cups Black Beans (canned)

1 Cup Corn (canned)

3 Cups Diced Tomatoes (canned)

1 Cup Salsa

1 Cup Shredded Cheese (I used Cheddar and Part Skim Mozzarella)

1 Cup Light Sour Cream

1 Can (114ml) Green Chilies

5 tbls Black Olives

1/2 Cup Red Onion (diced)

1 microwaveable Minute Rice – Whole Grain Brown (125g)

Mix everything except the black olives and the brown rice in a large bowl. Cook the rice, once cooked add it in to the bowl. Mix well. Pour in to a 3 Quart baking dish. Sprinkle the black olives on top. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Sprinkle extra shredded cheese on top (if you want), put back in to oven for 10 additional minutes. Take out of oven and let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

Easy peasy!

It looks a funny colour in the middle but that is because of lighting, in person the middle looked the same as the edges.

It looks a funny colour in the middle but that is because of lighting, in person the middle looked the same as the edges.

Fairly runny looking here...

Fairly runny looking here…

Mmm, dinner!

Mmm, dinner!

Some explanations though…

The original recipes said to use 3/4 Cup uncooked brown rice. I only buy the single serving brown rice cups from Minute Rice, the ones you stick in the microwave for, you guessed it, a minute. I wasn’t about to go buy more rice just so I could measure out 3/4 of a Cup and cook it. Instead I cooked one of my rice cups (each serving is 125g), added it to the rest of the ingredients and gauged how I felt the rice to other ingredients ratio was. See, I didn’t want to use a lot of rice because I am on Weight Watchers and rice is high in points, I would rather have less rice and more veggies, heck, even more beans since they have protein. I tend to view rice as nice but a waste of food, which is too bad because I actually really like rice. Ah well, the sacrifices a girl makes to get thin! lol

This recipe is a vegetarian recipe but I had intended to brown some ground turkey and throw that in there, however, my memory failed me when I was at the store and I forgot to buy any, oops! I think some ground meat would be a nice addition to the dish, especially since it would soak up all the flavours but I am still happy with it being vegetarian.

The original recipes wanted me to use Mexican Blend Cheese. When I went cheese shopping (which fyi, the cheese was the most expensive ingredient! What’s with that??) there was no Mexican Blend, or anything similar sounding so I opted for a Cheddar & Mozzarella Blend. Why did I pick that blend? Because it was on sale. 🙂

The final result ended up a bit runnier than I anticipated, I think because my ingredient ratios were all wonky. I wish I had put in the kidney beans I had bought, they would have tasted great in the dish, added protein and helped make it a little less runny. I suppose I could have also added more rice but we all know how I feel about that lol. 😛

This was a ridiculously easy dish to make since it mostly consisted of opening cans, dumping everything in to a bowl, mixing and cooking lol I did measure everything as I poured it out of the can so I would know exactly how much I was putting in, I did this mostly because I needed to be able to calculate the points per serving for Weight Watchers but I think its a good idea in general, otherwise you might put in more of a higher calorie ingredient than you realized and inadvertently make the dish not as healthy as you wanted.

I was super upset about the Light Sour Cream, even with it being Light it was crazy high in points for the quantity used, not cool! It tastes good, obviously, I mean c’mon, it is Sour Cream, of course it tastes good lol but I think I’d have rather saved some of it and used it as a topping, you’d taste it more and would have the option of saying no and saving the points (or calories, or whatever you track).

If you are following the Weight Watchers Points Plus Program your point information is as follows:

If you divide it up in to 8 portions, each portion is 8.125 points (so 8 points)

If you divide it up in to 6 portions, each portion is 10.833 points (so 11 points)

I chose to divvy it up in to 8 portions. Each portion is a fairly decent size, I find it is not quite enough to be a stand alone meal so I add some toast on the side or have some fruit for dessert afterwards, just a little something to help top me up. 🙂

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Back To What Worked

6 Dec

Waaaaay back, like 4 years ago, I started Weight Watchers. I didn’t go to meetings, I didn’t officially join, I got the books from my mother, the slider to calculate food points, a small notebook I could take everywhere and I started the program. If you really want to know how it went go to the very first post in this blog because that is when I started blogging. (First Post) I used this blog to hold myself accountable, since I wasn’t going to meetings or being an online member. I also blogged on an almost daily basis and listed each day what I ate, how many points it was, and if I was over, under or right on the dot with my daily points. Once I started exercising I also started blogging about that.

It was slow progress, as in suuuuper slow, my body did not want to lose the weight. I was hoping for losing two pounds a week and found I was lucky to lose one a week. Not because I was cheating, I was actually pretty good at following the plan, it was just how my body chose to be, shrug.

Well, after following Weight Watchers for hmm, a year and a bit I think, it stopped working for me. I hit a plateau and nothing I did would get my body to budge. It drove me nuts! And if staying at the same weight wasn’t bad enough, I started gaining weight! I wasn’t sure if what I was actually gaining was muscle since I was working out more, or if it was fat, all I knew was the number on the scale was freaking me out and I was having issues dealing with it.

That was when I realized Weight Watchers left me ill equipped to deal with eating healthy on my own. I didn’t really understand calories or fat grams since everything got converted to Weight Watchers points, I had no idea how many calories I should be eating, what I should be doing to get over the plateau, how or even if I should incorporate going no carb, or gluten free or any of the other fads out there. I felt adrift, with no rules to follow, no program to cling to and no idea how to continue on.

I know, I’m soooo dramatic! 😛 lol

Sooooooo dramatic!

Sooooooo dramatic!

I tried a variety of things once I stopped following Weight Watchers, none of them amazing. Mostly I focused on eating less, but ended up eating way under what I should be eating on a daily basis, and not really getting the right variety of food groups in my daily food, oops! A friend put me on a super strict eating plan, designed to get me lean, because the agent I had at the time wanted me 10-15lbs underweight even though I was at the low end of the weight range I am supposed to be at for my height. The problem with that plan was it is not possible to maintain long term. It was high protein, low carb, high healthy fat, which sounds great but the quantity I was allowed a day was quite small and left me hungry all the time.

When I started the job I am at now I fell off the wagon and fell hard. The plan is also strict about timing, timing between meals and timing of meals to when you exercise and my work schedule impeded that greatly. Combine that with being oh so amazingly strict and I’ve never been able to manage to get back on that plan.

Well, obviously the various things I have tried since falling off that plan didn’t really work. I am not as large as I was when I first started Weight Watchers all those years ago, but I am larger than I want to be, and I am pissed off at myself that I let myself gain some of that weight back. I worked so hard to lose that weight, and it took so freakin long to come off and what do I do? I let myself gain some of it back?? Idiot!

Calling myself names, and feeling bad about what I let happen will not create change. A friend and I have decided that instead of just talking about how we want to look different we are going to actually start working towards creating that change, novel idea huh? 😉

For me, this means going back to what once worked for me, that’s riiiiight, I am going to once again be Weight Watchering it! I know I said the program didn’t teach me how to lose or maintain weight or be healthy when not following the program, and I stick by that, however, when following Weight Watchers before it did work for a time. I am hoping it will work for me again and help me get a little more control over my eating plan and from there, well, I’ll have to figure something out lol 😛

So, I have dug out of the drawer my Weight Watchers books and also found the Points Calculator. I won’t be following the same Weight Watchers program I followed last time because there is a new program out, called Weight Watchers Points Plus and it works a little differently than the program I followed. There is a different way to calculate points, both the amount of points you get in a day and how many points a food is. I can use the calculator to track my points for the day and for the week, eliminating the need for the notebook, but I like being able to flip back and see my progress so I am sticking with using a notebook for tracking. Also, calculating how many points a food is will be a bit more complicated, in the old program you just needed the calories, fat and fiber but now you need more information, so its looking like the points calculator will become my new best friend lol

My Weight Watchers Stuff

My Weight Watchers Stuff

Don’t mind the cat’s leg in the picture, I couldn’t convince him to move, lol.

Today was my first day following the program, I can’t say for sure if I ate the right amount of points as some of the food didn’t have nutritional information so I had to estimate, but I figure it’s better to track and estimate and be close to my points than not be tracking or checking the food’s points values and leaving it all up to chance, right?

That being said, it is the end of the day and omg I am crazy hungry! *rolls eyes* I have a feeling I’m in for a rough first week…

im-so-hungry

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Halloween Candy Can Be Your Friend, Honest!

30 Oct

I know a lot of people who get all “omg keep the halloween candy away from me! danger! danger! ack!” but it doesn’t have to be like that, honest! 🙂

Unless you have the most amazing willpower ever you will, at some point, have a treat. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you aren’t over indulging and in general are eating in a healthy manor, treats can be your friend. If you don’t feel deprived, or like you aren’t allowed anything treat like, you’ll be less likely to ditch the diet or healthy eating plan (or whatever you want to call it) so that you can plow your way through a cake or a tub of ice cream.

The trick is to find ways to give yourself little treats that don’t completely derail your eating plan. There are lots of ways to do this! Think of small, portion packaged treats. 🙂

Weight Watchers makes all sorts of portion packaged treats, from chocolates to mini cakes to ice cream to, well, almost anything. I used to buy these…

So yummy. So hard to find.

So yummy. So hard to find.

They are by Whitman’s and it says right on the bag how many points per chocolate, within the bag each chocolate is individually wrapped so you don’t have to worry about the chocolates going stale if you don’t eat them quickly. They have a wide variety of flavours (as you can see from the above picture) and they are goooooood. Mmm! However, they are hard to find, at least where I live, sigh. There are a lot of Weight Watchers foods out there, but most of them are not in Canada. Why? I’m going with the world is a cruel place. 😉 lol  Really, I have no idea why every other country seems to have a wider variety of Weight Watcher’s foods in the stores than mine. When I would come across these I would stock up because there was no telling how long it would be before I would find them again.

Another option are these cute little mini ice creams. Ben & Jerry’s, Haagen-Daz and even Magnum all do mini sizes. I haven’t tried any of them because I have never seen them in stores. There is however a mini ice cream I have tried and really liked. It is by Nestle and looks like…

nestle sundae

Most of the flavours shown in that picture have not been in the stores when I’ve seen the Nestle ice creams lol and I can’t recall right now which of the flavours I have tried but they were good, and the perfect size. I would lean towards trying the ice creams that don’t have smarties or oreos or rolo etc in them as the added candy will just make it that much worse for you lol the ones I’ve eaten were more traditional flavoured ice creams.

Something I discovered at my friend’s place was a Costco find. I absolutely love the Brookside chocolate covered fruit, well, let’s be honest here, “fruit” pieces lol But whatever, they are so good! I have tried the pomegranate and the acai berry.

brookside

Only problem is they come in a fairly large bag and if you have problems with mindless eating, or aren’t good at portioning your food, or just kinda go over board, you could very easily eat waaaaaay too many of them. Well, my friend was at Costco and discovered Brookside sells their chocolate covered “fruit” in packages sized to put in lunch boxes. So you can grab one small package and have yourself a little treat while watching tv, or sneak it in to a movie theatre or have it as a snack at work.

I could go on with all these awesome mini food finds that are available year round but the point I am wanting to get to is this. Halloween candy is mini. It is perfect. If you are someone who likes chocolate bars, or tootsie rolls, or really, almost any type of candy, halloween can so be your friend. Think about it. Instead of indulging in a full sized Twix bar you can eat a mini one from the halloween candy stash, get the same yummy taste and enjoyment as the full sized bar but none of the guilt and nowhere near the same amount of calories. I know for a fact halloween candy can last an entire year. I don’t mean because of rationing it, I mean it will still be ok to eat in a year…which if you think about it, is kinda freaky…anything that lasts that long is unnatural, but hey, like that’s gonna stop any of us from occasionally eating it? Ha! 😛

So why not wait until the day after halloween, buy a big ol box of discounted halloween candy and use it throughout the year as your treat to yourself every now and then? When you really want that Kit-Kat, or Skittles or some other candy you can easily grab a mini version, enjoy, and not have any worries afterwards…just make sure to not eat it all at once! 😉

halloween candy

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Admitting The Truth

6 Jun

I didn’t think I was that person who lost weight, then gained it back. After all, I’m nowhere near the size I was at the beginning of my weight loss journey buuuut…I’m also not the smallest I have been on this journey.

I haven’t wanted to admit this to myself, let alone to anyone else, but it is time I faced the truth…I rebounded a bit. Does this mean I am now a yo-yo dieter? I dunno. Does it mean I am doomed to gain back all the weight I lost? I dunno. Does this mean I am destined to gain and lose and gain and lose for the rest of my life? I don’t know that either…sigh.

Seems there is a lot I don’t know.

I know that I have to get back on track, but I feel lost and not sure how to do that. I keep thinking I am not going to go back to Weight Watchers because I plateaued so badly on that program. Don’t get me wrong, I am super grateful for Weight Watchers, I lost 35 pounds with them, I learned about proper portion sizes with them, I learned I can happily swap out junk food for fresh fruit and enjoy healthy eating but I also feel there are limitations to that program and that I outgrew it. I don’t feel like going back to Weight Watchers is the right choice for me but that doesn’t mean that I know what the right choice for me is.

I also know I am not good at extreme programs. I can only maintain eating paleo, or the bodybeach program, or super restrictive low calorie eating plans for so long before I cave. Even if I like the food and am getting good portion sizes it is more about all the foods I am not allowed to eat. Knowing that on an extreme program having even one spoonful of peanut butter could be considered cheating messes with me. I need a bit of wiggle room, space so I don’t get all down on myself when I step outside of the food rules that I am following.

I need something realistic, and affordable!

My scale has been tucked away for over a year and I am scared to pull it back out, I am scared to see what the number will be when I step on it. I’d rather be back in boxing class getting hit during sparring than stand on that scale again. How pathetic is that?? I originally put it away because I was building muscle and the scale number was no longer an accurate way to measure my progress. It was sloooowly going up as I was getting more trim and it was messing with my head. For so long I relied solely on the number it gave me every week to know if I was doing well and to see it go up, even though I knew it was because of muscle gain, made me feel like a failure. I started gauging my success/failure by other means, how my clothes fit, what size I could now buy, every now and then I would check my size with a measuring tape. For a while these methods of tracking worked but then they didn’t work so well anymore and I was left with no solid way to hold myself accountable.

I’m thinking that is around the time I started to slowly go up in size. For a while it was easy to ignore, my clothes still fit, just maybe a bit tighter, I could still reach the same levels at the gym, even though I wasn’t at the gym as often, I was eating roughly the same amount calorie wise but the calories were coming from more processed foods than fresh healthy foods.  The pounds snuck up on me and now I have to face reality that I have gone up an entire size, so that’s what, ten pounds? That’s depressing. All that work I did to lose weight and I have gone and gained some of it back. What was I thinking?! 

What’s twisted is that even with the weight gain I am more active then before, just in different ways. Instead of going to the gym daily I will swap out gym visits for a hike, or a run or my dragon boat practice. I am still active just not in a regimented gym equipment kind of way, and I guess the activities I am doing now aren’t as good for weight loss or weight maintenance as following a gym program is. Kinda sucks cause I enjoy the hikes an such but if I have to choose between enjoying the activity and getting results from the activity I will choose results every time…well, except for dragon boating, I will always choose dragon boating lol.

I don’t want to be writing this, I don’t want to be that person that gained weight back. But ya know, I follow a lot of other blogs that deal with weight loss, healthy lifestyles etc and I’ve noticed over the years I don’t seem to be the only one this happens to. It seems a lot of people, before they reach their goal weight have a slip up and gain some of the weight back. Most take a while to admit it to themselves and the longer you take to admit it the more weight you have gained back. I know with me part of it was the way I was thinking about food, I started getting cocky, thinking I didn’t have to be as strict cause I’d lost so much, I could let down my guard a bit. Well, proved that idea wrong! I let down my guard and look what happened! 😛

Even though I’m feeling down because I am facing the truth about my weight gain I am glad I am facing this truth now rather than a couple more months down the road when I will have possibly gained back even more weight.

I don’t have a solution for this, I wish I was concluding this post with some great awesome plan that would get me back on track but I don’t have one…yet! For now I am going to aim to get a new battery for my scale (mine died) and I plan to stand on that scale Tuesday morning. I also have a 4 week eating plan that I am going to research a bit more, see if it is doable on my budget, and I am going to schedule exercise into my days instead of leaving it as an up-in-the-air thing that happens more sporadically then it should. Hopefully I can get myself back on track within 5 days or so and huh, look at that, I may not have a solution yet but it seems like I actually do have a bit of a plan, at least a plan in the making…I’ll cross my fingers it works!…Uh, anybody wanna step on that scale for me? 😉 lol

Must remember this

Must remember this

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Run Turtle! Run!

4 Mar

I am not a runner. People think I should be good at it cause I have long legs. That’s like saying I should be good at basketball because I am tall. Neither of those presumptions makes any sense! *rolls eyes*

Despite this I decided to sign up for the BMO Run in May…I should not be allowed on the internet after midnight! lol So, due to a deep rooted fear I will either (1) not be able to complete the run, (2) be the slooooowest person in the run, (3) die while attempting the run or (4) a combo of all three, I figure I should do some sort of training. Ya know, run a bit, work my way up to the distance I will be running in May.

run meme

Of course there is the side benefit of (hopefully) losing weight while I take on this whole running thing. I may hate running but even I know it is wicked awesome cardio. 🙂

Tuesdays are my Saturdays and I usually spend them doing an amazing imitation of a sloth until I meet up with friends at night but this Tuesday I made no plans with friends for the night and gave myself a whopping two goals to accomplish.

(1) Eat healthy

(2) Exercise

Seems pretty simple right? I mean, it’s only two freakin things to accomplish in one day, who can’t manage that??

I feel that for the most part I ate in a healthy way, I’m not very good at judging if food is healthy or not due to the fact that I have so many “food rules” floating in my brain, some of them contradict each other, and I’m never sure which rules to follow. sigh. Why do there have to be so many rules?

My first meal of the day was a whole wheat wrap filled with two slices of turkey bacon, sauteed mushrooms, two scrambled eggs (seasoned with dill) and about 6 sweet pickles. Oh, and I spread two triangles of Light Laughing Cow cheese on the inside of the wrap. Soooo yummy! I also had a banana. I know I should have used only one egg but it was a big wrap and I accidentally added too much water to the first egg so when I poured it in to the pan it looked not-so-great, it seemed a wise decision to add a second egg…even if it is gluttonous. sigh.

I then procrastinated on the going for exercise part of my day, of course! lol 😛

I originally thought I’d digest for a half hour or so then either go for a run or go for a session at the gym. I was good with either and actually kinda wanted to do both. I wanted to run because of needing to train for the run in May but I wanted to go to the gym because I feel I have lost some of my upper body strength and I want to build it back up, what with it being dragon boat season an all.

It was sleeting so that made the decision for me, I’d jog to the gym, work out, jog home and feel righteous lol Well…I slacked, as is my way lol I watched tv, played games on my iPad, cuddled with the cat, thought about how I should get up and exercise but didn’t actually move from my seat lol convinced myself it was ok if I didn’t go right away cause my gym is open till 11pm today so I can always go later evening if I want.

The slacking lasted so long I got hungry, oops! I didn’t want a meal though so I made some toast with peanut butter and honey on it. Bad I know! CarbsCarbsCarbs, ugh, why do I have to love you so much?? I decided that if I was going to continue slacking then I had to increase my fluid intake, at least do something good for my body, so I made more tea lol and drank a couple big glasses of water. I used to drink water like it was going out of style but I somehow got out of that habit – I should really fix that…note to self, drink more water!…maybe that can be my goal for tomorrow? 😛

Eventually I got off my ass and got ready to go work out, it had stopped sleeting so I decided to go running, I wanted to use the MapMyRun App I had installed the day prior and I really wanted to use the ArmPocket I bought a bit ago. It didn’t occur to me until I was outside locking my door that it was pitch black outside, way past sunset. Did this deter me from running? Nope.

The MapMyRun had a route starting near me that was a bit over 5km, I thought that’d be a good place to start. If I’d gone in daylight the route would have been way better lol It took me on a non-lit, deserted path that had river on one side and forest on the other, I felt like I was in an episode of Criminal Minds and was half convinced I was going to die due to my stupidity but obviously nothing happened. The map route however, was flawed, erg. I got to this one section and it wanted me to cross the street to go do a loop through a park, well, the street it wanted me to cross was the highway, at a section there is nowhere to cross and I’m sorry but I may do a lot of stupid things but jaywalking across a highway is not one of them! Also, signs for the park the map said I would find across the street indicated it was actually on the side of the street I was on but farther down. I was mightily confused because oh man do I have seriously lacking navigation skills. I opted for turning around and heading home, not through the deserted scary trail section though, phew! I was around the 4km mark at that point and figured for sure I’d hit 5km by the time I got home, turns out I ran 6.80km. Which I am aware is super short for most people but I’m happy with it. At the end I felt like I could have kept going which I take as a good sign for my next run, and the run in May!

My dinner was a chicken breast stuffed with cheese and broccoli, sliced pan cooked yam, roasted yellow peppers, vermicelli noodles with a bit of sweet and sour sauce mixed in and some sweet pickles. Why the pickles? Cause I like em. 🙂 I think it was healthy, but again, not certain because while I can argue that it is, I can also find ways to argue that it isn’t, sigh. It was tasty though…if that counts? 😛

dinner - healthy? not healthy? who knows!

dinner – healthy? not healthy? who knows!

A couple hours after dinner I ate a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich, man those are good. In the world of Weight Watchers they are 2 points which makes it seem like not such a bad snack? I’m still feeling kinda hungry but no more food for me today, instead lots more water. Mmm water!…said no one ever! lol 😉

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