I’m currently doing Weight Watchers, and every week I blog a bit about what I’ve learned and experienced, and whether I’ve lost or gained weight for the week.

Update: I looked. I lost one pound this week. Figures!

Remember my 15 pound victory two weeks ago? The following week was a good week and I anticipated another success. Then the morning of last week’s weigh-in, I assisted with a food photo shoot. The client was a Brooklyn restaurant and the shoot featured their legendary fried chicken and to-die-for bourbon-Nutella milkshakes. (And yes, I will name-drop if you email me.)

If you ever wonder what happens on professional shoots to all the food that’s left over, I can tell you. It gets eaten by the photographers assistant who then goes to her Weight Watchers meeting that evening and discovers that she has gained 2.2 pounds.

I know that a good portion of that was just the food from that morning but it was still tough to take. Even worse, I had a horrible week this past week. I ate a lot and I went over Points – something I’ve never done before. I tried to curb my Point deficit by earning more activity Points than usual, but the week was still pretty much blown.

So where did this food-fest leave me on the scale this week? No idea. I made it to a meeting this Tuesday night – a victory after how discouraged I felt – and I made it onto the scale, but I asked the weigher-iner not to tell me. She slid over the sticker with my weight printed on it, and I folded it and stuffed it in my wallet. I’ll look later in the week when I’m feeling less bad. (I encourage you to do this if you need to. It is so much better than not having any information for the week, and everyone who manages the scales has been in your shoes – they won’t judge.)

Every experience in Weight Watchers can teach us something, though. This week I learned that I should drink a good amount of water (the cravings only stopped when I was hydrating properly), pickles satisfy a crunchy/salty craving for zero Points, and chocolate syrup squirted directly into ones mouth from the bottle is NOT the answer to anything (oh yes I did!), but a small piece of high quality dark chocolate just might be.

How you doin’?

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This recipe is zero Points on Weight Watchers and only has one ingredient.

You start with a banana. (Uh, you end with a banana, too. That’s how the whole “one ingredient” thing works.) Peel it and take out that weird blackish gray thing at the bottom. Freeze it until it’s rock solid. The first time I did this, I didn’t peel the banana first. Trying to get a frozen banana peel off of a frozen banana qualifies as one of the worst things ever.

Chop the frozen banana into chunks.

I’m doing two here because I’m making some for Rob, too, and found that one banana per person is a good ratio, but you can totally eat both bananas worth of ice cream yourself. Also, if you don’t have a good sharp knife, it might be helpful to freeze the banana already chunked. Me? I like the satisfying “chop-chop-chop” of dicing up a frozen banana. To each her own.

What is the verb for when you’re food processing something? I’ve sat here for a while thinking, and I don’t know. Do you say “food processor” it? Whip it? Whip it good? Can I “Devo” the banana in the food processor?

Ah, there we go.

At first it will look like this, and it’s gross:

Keep Devoing.

Then it starts to look like this:

Keep going.

Now is the time to add in anything else you want as a mix-in (this will probably bump up the Points, depending). You can try peanut butter, cocoa, coconut, jelly, vanilla… whatever.

Then, with little tiny angles singing in the background, it turns into this.

Creamy, custardy banana. You thought it would be gross and squishy! But it’s not! In fact, it is delicious.

I use a rubber spatula to put it into bowls.

It is fantastic all by itself, but it is even better with chocolate sauce.

P.S. Do yourself a favor and get all the parts to the food processor clean immediately – before the banana sets out too long.

I’m currently doing Weight Watchers, and every week I blog a bit about what I’ve learned and experienced, and whether I’ve lost or gained weight for the week.

Who has two thumbs and has lost 15 pounds? This chick! Actually, make that 15 point two!

This means that I hit my mini goal of weighing **5 pounds – actually I passed it and I’m down to **4.2 – and I feel SO GOOD! Like, “Oh, am I walking around in my underwear again… oopsie!” good. Pause in the mirror to dance around in my skinny pants like an obnoxious commercial good. It’s reached epic levels of cheesy up in here. I got a cute key chain at my meeting for hitting my goal, and Esther took it and rubbed some love and encouragement into it for me, because she is awesome.

This brings me to my advice for the week: make some weight loss friends. This gets tough sometimes, and having people to talk you down off a ledge (or a milkshake) is awesome. Even more awesome? Having someone to high five you when you reach a goal.

Can I talk about why I’m using stars instead of real numbers? Because I feel like that’s weird without explanation. I don’t give a CRAP if you know how much I weigh, but I don’t want to be difficult to relate to. I started writing about my Weight Watchers … uh, “journey”? … because I hoped it would encourage other people who are trying to loose weight, too. This way, if you weigh much more than I do, or much less, you can still read these posts, be encouraged, and not feel like my situation is very different from yours. It’s not, of course; in the end, it’s all calories in vs. calories out, but that can be hard to remember on frustrating days.

Later this week, I’m bringing you a killer dessert recipe that is has ZERO PointsPlus and DOESN’T SUCK. Stay tuned.

I’m currently doing Weight Watchers, and every week I blog a bit about what I’ve learned and experienced, and whether I’ve lost or gained weight for the week.

Rob was away all last week, so I took the opportunity to stay up late eating popcorn for dinner, going out with friends to restaurants he finds too fancy (aka French restaurants that serve everything butter-laden and gobbed with cheese), and lounging around the living room with girl friends polishing off bottles of wine. Oh, and I had a photoshoot with about eight different kinds of cookies, which I was NOT going to let go to waste! (They mostly got passed out to excited friends, but I def. chowed down on a few.)

Remember last week when I was optimistic because I had fruit in the house? That optimism had dissipated by the time I got on the scale, but, even with the pitfalls of this week, I’m down one pound, and I owe it to the bananas and oranges I’ve been having every day. I’m now hovering right above my mini-goal of **5.0 pounds. Next week, if I concentrate, I’ll hit it!

You guys, my advice for the week: eat fruit. The oranges are particularly lovely right now.

I’m currently doing Weight Watchers, and every week I blog a bit about what I’ve learned and experienced, and whether I’ve lost or gained weight for the week.

I walked into my meeting last night, plopped my coat down, and shook my head at my friend Esther. “I don’t want to weigh in.” She smirked and gave me my own typical answer right back: It’s just information.

I dutifully got on the scale. Sometimes, to save my sanity, I skip it, but more often than not it is important to me that I know where I am, rather than guess and stew about a likely gain. Between vacation, Christmas, a steady stream of holiday cocktails and New Years Eve where I spent the night making out with a cheese platter, I expected to be half-way to ruining my progress in the past several months, but I was only up .6 pounds.

My goal was to have my first weigh in of January to match my first weigh in of December, and I almost got there. This week will almost certainly be a loss – I can feel it in my bones (also, I have fruit in the house, which practically guarantees a loss for that week.) My new mini goal is to hit that delicious mid-”decade” (where I’ll weigh **5 pounds), a benchmark that means if I go any lower, I’ll be suddenly closer to one decade than another. So exciting!

It is my opinion that starting the New Year by suddenly living your life very differently is akin to flinging open the door to failure, BUT, based on the fact that the holidays are over, I’m very optimistic that loosing weight will be an easier endeavor than before.

So… how you doin’?

Ok, so, it’s Christmas. Basically. And before that, it was Hanukkah. And who wants to talk about healthful eating now? You know?

I’d been having a tough time navigating healthful food with the crazy holiday schedule I’ve been maintaining. Eventually I hit a place where I said, “I want to weigh the same on January 1 that I do on December 1. That is my only goal: to break even.”

I’m not skilled enough to loose weight over the holidays this year, and I had to think hard for a while before I made peace with this decision.

“It’s ok.” said my WW leader. “Because you’re owning it.” The decision is the victory, but it took me a few more days of wrestling to come to that conclusion, and now I feel secure.

So far, I’m up .8 pounds (the latkes weren’t so disastrous after all!) I weigh in tomorrow, a cringe-worthy event, I’m sure, because I’ve been to parties all week. It’s ok, though, because then I’m going on a Christmas vacation to a tropical resort where the included breakfast spread includes a ton of cut fresh fruit, a make-your-own-omelet bar with egg whites and veggies, and mercifully unappetizing assortment of pastries (I’m looking forward to breakfast there almost as much as swimming in the ocean!) I also plan on doing some hiking, and the fact that I’ll be bikini-clad 90% of the time means I’ll be hyper-focused on making good choices at dinner. Nothing like vanity.

Given all this, breaking even sounds like an attainable goal, and I’m so glad I made this sensible choice for myself. And hey, if I drop a pound, I’m not complaining!

Merry Christmas, Weight Watchers!

I’ve been singing this all week.

You might have heard: Weight Watchers totally revamped their entire system and the new program was launched Monday. There are more points in a day (they’re called PointsPlus now, but really, we’re just going to keep calling them points, ok?) and more “overdraft” points every week, but the catch is that some of the points values for foods are higher (some are lower).  The program takes into account fat, fiber, carbs and protein now instead of just fat and fiber.

There’s more info on WeightWatchers.com, but the bottom line is that it’s doing a better job nudging you towards eating more healthful foods.

The BIGGEST change, and the reason I have the biggest bunch of bananas I could find at the grocery store in my kitchen right now, is that all fruits and most vegetables are ZERO POINTS! Gaaahhh! We were all beside ourselves when we found out, thinking of all the fruit to be eaten with abandon, but it was the previously-two-point bananas that were the most celebrated.

Stuff like broccoli or spinach was always zero unless you ate A TON of it, and then maybe you’d get to .5 points. Oranges were one point, and bananas weighed in at two, meaning that if I was having one of those “Must! Have! Dessert! Now!” moments and I had a choice between a two point banana and a two point cookie, I was so picking the cookie. Now, I’ll pick the banana. (Usually).

If you’ve been thinking about joining Weight Watchers but haven’t wanted to make the plunge, now is the time to do it! And don’t worry about waiting until January to start – start now so you have a tool in your pocket to get you through the Christmas cookies and crazy awesome party foods coming up this month. It’s even just helpful for mitigating damage (which, in this Hanukkah week filled with latkes, is all I’m hoping for.  Can it be a mitzvah to gain a pound if I’m eating latkes in celebration of triumph of the Maccabees?  I think so.)

Speaking of which – Thanksgiving! Thank you for the encouragement and tips. I got though the holiday by being helpful until I got yelled at to “sit down already!”, playing with my new baby cousin when I was supposed to be eating, and only eating my favorite things.

Two days before Thanksgiving was weigh in, and I was down 1.2. This is awesome in and of itself, but doubly awesome because it was the second week in a row with a good, solid weigh loss. (The week before was 2.8) This week I was down .8 and I’m excited to go to a meeting tomorrow to hear how everyone did with week one of the new program.  I have a feeling I won’t fare too well with my latke eating, but nu?!  There’s always next week.

We interrupt this gift guide to bring you updated Weight Watchers information.

When we last talked WW I had gained from my weekend away and was trying to get back on track. I have, even though it was two weeks of struggling, and now, overall, I’m down 12 pounds.

I have to admit, this is not going as quickly as I’d hoped. It’s good that it’s gradual because everyone always says that if you loose weight slowly, it sticks, but I’d really like to be peeling the pounds off faster. The obvious answer is exercise which is something I haven’t really embraced yet. I’m not a gym person, but I might be a yoga studio person, and I have three dogs who are over-eager walking buddies. It’s just… ugh! It’s so cold out there! And sweating! Ew!

Also, I’m bracing for the holidays. I’m determined not to let Thanksgiving derail me for the week. (Although my leader made a good point in the meeting: it’s a holiDAY – you can recover tomorrow.) I already have plans to save all of my overdraft points for Thanksgiving day, and I bought the dogs new, easier to manage collars so I have no excuses not to clip on their leashes and head out the door for a good long walk around the neighborhood.

There are snappy phrases under my belt to whip out when nosy, well-meaning relatives eyeball my plate and ask, “Is that all you’re having?!”, and I’m mentally rehearsing what I will and won’t eat so I’m not overwhelmed. I plan on sticking to special, Thanksgiving-only foods and avoiding the things that I don’t like that much, or that I see every day.

Any good Thanksgiving tips you want to share?

I’m currently doing Weight Watchers, and every week I blog a bit about what I’ve learned and experienced, and whether I’ve lost or gained weight for the week.

Last week was another “Matty out of the tub” week.  I blame going out of town which always throws me off – especially since we were on a little road trip (to DC).  At least in an airport I have a decent shot of snagging a veggie-laden slice of pizza or a tuna sandwich (I don’t eat meat out of the house), but on the road it’s all fast food.  I didn’t weigh in this week since voting day was Tuesday and I had to drive to Connecticut, but I felt like I gained this week from all of the on-the-road and away-from-home food.

The week before that I was up 1.5 pounds – I’m still well below where I started, but I began to get really nervous and vowed to rein it in.  Since this Tuesday I’ve been buckling down, and it feels pretty good.  I think next Tuesday is going to be a victorious one.

Fun thing: my winter coat from last year, the one I ordered online and loved even though it was a little tight, fit beautifully this year when I took it out of storage.  It fit so well, in fact, that I didn’t notice that it was fitting me perfectly for a while.  I used to have to have someone help me into it, so shrugging it on myself feels AMAZING.

By the way, have you heard of Hungry Girl?  Lisa Lillien is the mastermind behind this website/daily newsletter, and she is constantly coming up with brilliant ideas for eating in a way that saves you a TON of calories without sacrificing flavor or squelching the urge to bake fun desserts.  I was firmly in the camp of “eat whatever delicious things you want in smaller portions”, but she’s converting me with low-cal homemade cupcakes that are so delicious you can eat a whole one without taking one bite and passing off the rest to your spouse.  That always sucks.

I’m currently doing Weight Watchers, and every week I blog a bit about what I’ve learned and experienced, and whether I’ve lost or gained weight for the week.

Weight Watchers for me is a little like washing Matty. You have to get totally prepared first with all the materials needed for the massive undertaking at hand, and then you have to do the hardest part of all: get started.

Matty will stand there, resigned to his fate and fairly still. So you go along, scrubbing and suddsing. It’s tough because his stumpy legs make him so low and his fur is thick, and these bad habits of eating “whatever whenever” have been ingrained for so long and you need to break them. It’s WORK, but it’s not impossible; it’s doable and not totally unpleasant.

Then all of a sudden, you drop your guard for half a second and he’s half out of the tub covered in suds and shaking them all over and you have to gather up sixty pounds of upset, squirmy, sopping wet tube-shaped dog and stuff him back into the tub again.

It’s TOTALLY Weight Watchers. I’m cruising, going along, going to meetings, rockin’ it out, and then all of a sudden I need to wrestle this gigantic soapy fur monster of a craving down again and I’m shouting, “Woah, woah, hang on there buddy! NO!” while it busts out of the bathroom, knocking me over backwards, flinging soap suds everywhere, shaking dirty dog water on the couch, and I’m chewing the cookie, chewing the cookie, chewing, chewing, swallowing… and reaching for another.

The dog was mostly in the tub this week, but he was wiggly, and I’m up .2 pounds. I think this week will be better, but the dog is still squirmy. I don’t know what it is… the cold I think. Wearing sweaters makes it easier to feel a little less motivated because of the voice that goes, “Who cares about a pound or two? That thick knit will cover EVERYTHING!” but if I ignore it, this will continue until the dog sopping wet, hiding from his bath in a ball on my side of the bed, getting stinky water all over my pillow, which is the worst, and I’m up again on the scale.

Nobody wants that.