Weight Watchers (Updated)

UPDATED 11/28/2010: I no longer follow Weight Watchers. When I was on weight watchers, I did lose weight, but I was tired a lot and hungry even more of the time. I lusted after food. I would fight for a bite of chocolate and reluctantly count the points for it. I was frustrated that no matter how hard I stuck to the diet I was miserable, hungry and could never keep it off. I joined weight watchers about 3 times officially and did it from home even more than that.

Then I started reading about the REAL food movement. I found the Weston A. Price Foundation that talked about eating healthy, REAL fats. Fat from butter, lard, coconut oil, bacon, olive oil, etc. They talk about NO processed foods, chemicals, nitrates or pesticides. Everyone I've talked to is happy, healthy, full of energy and enthusiasm. They eat great food full of calories, but also FULL of nutrition. Then I met a friend who lost 40+ pounds by following this lifestyle and I decided to try it out. As of this update, I'm down 17 lbs in about two months. I still love cooking but I am not craving chocolate and soda with an intensity that used to drive me crazy. Instead of spending energy on counting points and worrying about starving myself to stay in my limit for the day, I'm sitting down to a meal that was cooked with cream and butter. My stomach is full, my taste buds are tantalized. It sounds too good to be true, right? There are some sacrifices for the diet, but they aren't too bad and I don't miss them too much. I'm on a very low carb diet right now. No pasta, rice, potatoes, etc. No sugar. I do use a bit of honey or molasses if needed, but very small amounts. When I'm at my goal weight, I can reintroduce whole grains that are prepared properly and even desserts. Right now, I'm excited to be satiated and see weight come off so those carbs can wait!

So back to Weight Watchers, I'm not knocking the program completely. You can do Weight Watchers and REAL food. But if you can lose weight and not count points then that seems ideal to me personally. Weight Watchers DOES work for some people. And if you are overweight, it is healthier to be at a normal weight than carry the extra weight. That doesn't mean all skinny people are healthy. Some skinny people are nutritionally void, not having enough vitamins, minerals and even fat to build healthy cells. I plan on recreating a lot of my old WW recipes into real food recipes on this blog. If you are on Weight Watchers and it is working for you, then great! If you want to find out more about the Weston A. Price Foundation and eating REAL food, feel free to send me an email!

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Previous entry:
You may have noticed that I have included Weight Watchers points on several of my recipes. I have been on and off Weight Watchers several times over the past few years; currently I am in the ON position again. 



I wanted to explain the way that I am posting POINTS to my recipes.

A lot of Weight Watcher sites out there give the total points for the final recipe.The problem I have with this is that if you want to substitute an ingredient or you aren't sure that your ingredient is the exact same one that the recipe uses, it becomes difficult to make modifications. Therefore, at the end of my recipes I am trying to do a breakdown of the points by ingredient . For example, I found some 1 pt tortillas, so at the end of my recipe I'll say tortilla (1pt) but if you only have 2 pt tortillas in your house, then you know to add a point to the total of your meal. In addition, sometimes I exclude the points for toppings or optionals. If you are familiar with the Weight Watcher program it is easy to figure out which toppings you want and how many points that topping will add to your dish. (Is your cheese fat free, two percent or the tasty, yet high point whole milk variety?)

Not all the recipes on this blog will be Weight Watchers Recipes. For those that I figure out the points for, I'll post them. For recipes that I don’t calculate points on, you are welcome to post the points in a comment for the rest of us. And if I do a total points at the end of the recipe it is because I'm doing a WW recipe that I found already calculated.