Be warned. I have been on Weight Watchers for less than 8 hours and I am hungry and cranky. Really cranky. Probably because I am hungry. But I feel like I have made a horrible mistake. Either that, or I have bigger food issues than I thought I did.
So, like I said before, this is not my first time with Weight Watchers. Or diets in general. I have a good sense of what to eat and I thought I had a good sense of how to estimate my points. For those of you who aren't familiar with points, Weight Watchers assigns every food a number of points. You get a certain number of points to "spend" each day, and you just subtract as you go along your day. Fruits and veggies are "free" foods - you can eat as much as you want. Everything else will cost you. I have no idea how they figure the points. You put info into a calculator and it spits out what seems to now be a totally arbitrary number. Under the old system, points were loosely tied to calories; the points were based on calories, fat, and fiber in a food. Not a bad system. Now? Now you put fat, fiber, carbs, and protein into the magical calculator and it spits out a number that seems to punish people who like to eat.
Anyways, back to my day. So, I started my day with coffee (I am, of course, a Mom...what mom DOESN'T start her day with coffee?) and because I don't like breakfast foods (I don't eat eggs...it's a whole different story for a different time) a cup of Easy Mac. Yes, I eat those little cups of instant mac & cheese for breakfast. Don't judge me. They're only 220 calories, they're filling, and it's a nice mix of warm breakfast, carbs, protein, and easiness for my morning. I put my sugar free creamer in my coffee as usual (I use a lot of the stuff, but I measure it out so I do know exactly how much I use) and sat down to enter it all in my little online journal. Keep in mind, that my breakfast was exactly 310 calories. It's right around where you should be for breakfast - 300-400 calories is what most experts recommend - even though a chunk of them were for my coffee. Anyways, because I know that I should probably be eating 1500-1600 calories a day to lose weight, I figured that this would be about 1/5 of my points for the day. That makes sense, right? To a normal person. To the person who designed this program? This was nearly one THIRD of my points. Yes, you read that right. My measly little 310 calorie breakfast burned 9 points - ONE THIRD of my total for the day.
My first thought? "Well, that can't be right." So I soldiered on with my day. I went grocery shopping, celebrated because my daughter was remarkably well behaved (even in the produce department, which is usually the site of our meltdowns...way too much to try to touch...), and came home to make a salad for lunch. Not a crazy salad; a 400 calorie salad. And when I put her down for a nap, I went back to enter the points. 12 points. Apparently zero point vegetables aren't such a great deal if everything you put with them eats at your point budget like a hungry crocodile. This is ridiculous. How could I already have eaten 21 points? I did have two zero point snacks - a banana and a few handfuls of sugar snap peas - but I have still eaten barely 850 calories, and have 8 points left for the day. If you recall, my Easy Mac & coffee was 9 points. This does not bode well.
I am hungry. Probably because I have barely eaten anything today. And I am feeling some serious buyers remorse about this whole Weight Watchers thing. But I'm signed up for 3 months. I wonder how many points my furniture has in it.
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