Sunday, September 30, 2012

A scale..for food!

I think this is a must-buy for any Weight Watchers. If you are trying to follow a recipe that calls for 13oz of potatoes or 4oz of chicken you're going to find it difficult to do so without a food scale and we know portion control is pretty much what Weight Watchers is based on.
I didn't want to spend a crazy amount of money on a food scale so I searched through Bed Bath and Beyond online since they always have 20% off coupons (and also I didn't have time to have one shipped from Amazon). And I found a perfect one! The Biggest Loser Digital Food Scale So far it's worked wonderfully.
And also click here to sign up for Bed Bath & Beyond e-mail coupons.

Food Log - 9/29/2012

Breakfast: 6pts
SkinnyTaste's Skinny Green Smoothie (One of my favorite's on her site) - 6pts

Lunch: 10pts
Beef Pho - 6pts
2 Shrimp summer rolls - 4pts

Dinner: 10pts
Shrimp & Scallops with a curry sauce over broad rice noodles- 10pts


Snacks: 2pts
1 banana - 0pts
1 Yoplait light vanilla yogurt - 2pts


Overall a total of 28pts. My points for my lunch and dinner are an estimate from what I've found online. My boyfriend and I went out to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant, absolutely delicious, so I didn't know exactly how many points each item was. I think the estimates are pretty accurate and if they're a little bit higher then it's okay because I haven't used any of my weekly points and it's the last day of my week!

Friday, September 28, 2012

Food Log - 9/28/2012

Breakfast: 5pts
3 Egg Whites (cooked with 1tsp of butter) - 2pts
2 Tomato slices - 0pts
1 slice of whole wheat bread - 2pts
<1 tbsp Better 'n Peanut Butter - 1pt

Lunch: 7pts
1 serving of SkinnyTaste's Chicken Piccata (leftovers from last night) - 5pts
1/2 serving of SkinnyTaste's Spinach with Rice - 2pts

Dinner: 7pts
1 serving of SkinnyTaste's Chicken Sofrito Stew - 3pts
1 serving of SkinnyTaste's Spinach with Rice - 4pts

Snacks: 4pts
1 banana - 0pts
1 Yoplait light vanilla yogurt - 2pts
1tbsp of semi-sweet chocolate chips - 2pts

Overall a total of 23pts, I was aiming to keep it low because we were supposed to go out for a drink but that wound up falling through.
Also, as you can tell, I love SkinnyTaste and I make something of hers everyday..

Better 'n Peanut Butter

Although I've never been a HUGE fan of peanut butter as some are, I still think it's a necessity in my kitchen. It makes for a perfectly filling lunch when there is nothing else. As I started WW, I was looking through all of the nutrition labels and I found that the Peanut Butter that I had contained 5pts+ per serving(2tbsp), which was ABSOLUTELY insane to me!
So I started my search for a 'healthier' peanut butter and after much research, I decided to go with Better 'n Peanut Butter which contained only 2pts+ per serving(2tbsp).  And 1tbsp of PB is more than enough in my sandwiches, I thought it was a perfect 1pt addition!
The only downsides of Better 'n Peanut Butter are that it's fairly expensive (~$5.00 per jar) and you probably won't be able to find it in your grocery store. I found that the website Vitacost carries Better 'n Peanut Butter and they give a $10 credit for new members, which meant that I could buy 2 jars of peanut butter and only pay for shipping which cost me $4.99. So $2.50 for each jar, talk about a good deal! (And I love good deals!)
Sign up for Vitacost here and get your $10 credit!

I am giving you guys to my referral link which will also give me $10 for referring you, but if you would rather not do that, simply visit http://vitacost.com

Food Logs

I also want to start posting Food Logs, my hopes are that I'll be able to update them everyday.
I hope this is helpful to other people because as I was starting WW I was so curious as to what other people were using their points on for each meal.
Each food log will be split into a breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks category. Each item will contain a description [link to a recipe if available] and a corresponding point value. My daily point allowance is 26 and I will be following the PointsPlus system.

A scale

I can't begin to emphasize how important it is to own a scale if you are on Weight Watchers or any other diet plan. Or else you will not know the progress that you are making and eventually you'll feel discouraged. Also, remember if you are exercising that muscle weighs more than fat so you may not see a huge change on the scale but you will definitely feel better about yourself. The scale that I wound up buying can be found at Amazon, it had the best price for the ratings that it received and so far I am very happy with it!

Joining Weight Watchers

It was a couple of weeks from when I really discovered Weight Watchers, and read what it was all about to when I actually joined.
For the first 2 weeks I tried to do Weight Watchers without actually joining it, in all honesty I didn't really know if it would be worth the money. So I decided to use calculators that I found through a few Google searches in order to figure out what my Daily Point Allowance was and also to figure out what every food's point value was.
It was kind of difficult because I was never really sure if I should trust any of the numbers I got from those non-Weight Watchers calculators since some of them didn't agree with each other (I guess because of the Points program and the PointsPlus programs).. but I  did it anyways for 2 weeks.
Also, I came up with my own excel sheet in order to keep track of my own points -- which was kind of tedious but I worked through it.
Finally, when it came to calculating my Activity Points, I found nothing that described how to do it properly, I didn't want to be working out in vain so that was it!
I decided to suck it up and join Weight Watchers Online and pay the $56.85 for 3 months deal that they're offering right now. And so far, I love it -- I can use it on my iPhone when I'm not at home and they have MANY foods on their database that I can easily add. Also, one of my favorite features has to be the Recipe Builder, you can insert all of the ingredients going into your meal and WW will calculate the amount of points per serving.

Finally


I've been debating creating a blog about my path to a healthy / thinner me for a few weeks now but I always told myself why bother since there are so many blogs out there on the topic.
Today I realized that I needed to since I have not encountered any blogs that are about 20somethings that want to be healthy while enjoying their youth.
I graduated college this past May and although I enjoyed every moment of it, I realized that my eating and exercise habits [or lack thereof] were not leading me and my body anywhere that I wanted to be.
During my 4 years I definitely realized that I wasn't eating my best and definitely wasn't setting time aside to exercise. I always blamed it on the fact that I was swamped with schoolwork, and I was, but had I been aware of the things that I am aware now, I would've definitely made some changes here and there to be healthier.

When I had morning classes and didn't want to waste my time waking up early to make a hearty breakfast, I would rely on the quick & cheap bagel [that always came with way too much cream cheese] that I could buy on my way to class. This wound up being the norm on most weekday mornings.
Also, on the days that I had classes all day, there was no part of me that felt like going home and cooking, so the Chinese food or the carb-filled pasta [and meatballs and cheese and sauces] at the Food Court would be dinner.
When my friends and I went out to dinner I guess I also felt the need to enjoy the free bread as much as I could [and who doesn't?].
Don't even get me started on the way we all ate after a night of fun, it would either be straight to the diner for omelettes and bacon or to the bagel place for eggs and bacon.

Although it's only been 4 months since I was doing this, I cannot see myself eating like that and feeling semi-ok with it.
Don't get me wrong, I adore my tasty food and would never give it up but I have come to learn that tasty doesn't have to mean fattening.
Actually, the only reason why I decided to be a healthier me was because I found a 'healthy' recipe  blog, made one of their recipes and I found it to be both filling and tasty.
I figured since I don't know how to cook very many things, why not be healthier while learning?
The next few posts will be on what I've done to help myself started with my weight loss journey (buying a scale, healthier peanut butter, etc).