Weight Watching

I love food.  Reading about it, shopping for it, finding new places to eat, reading restaurant reviews, planning meals, cooking, baking, and especially eating.  I subscribe to and read all of the major food magazines and collect cookbooks.  I watch Food Network and love Top Chef. When I cook, I usually try to buy the best quality, most flavorful and freshest ingredients. I love trying new restaurants and enjoy nothing more than a tasting menu for sampling what the chef thinks are the best things to put out. I like to think of myself as a foodie. 

Recently, I have had to temper my inner foodie.  In the past few months, I have successfully lost all of my baby weight plus twenty five pounds, and I have never felt better.  I have not and will not give up my passion for food.  Mostly, I have trained myself to make better food choices, to have small portions of the things I love, and to splurge when something is really splurge worthy (hello, recent meals at Feast and Da Marco) or when on vacation (I'm looking at you Eric Ripert).  I have done all of this successfully by following the weight watchers plan.  Without going to a single meeting, I have access to all of the tools available.  

Basically, though, the keys to my "success" have been:

1.  Write down what I eat and don't cheat.  If I have three m&m's from my son's "potty prizes", I write it down.  I am accountable to myself and so I have learned that bites here and there add up.

2.  The more fiber the better.  Higher fiber content makes foods lower in points values and more filling.  So, I try to choose whole foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grain breads and pastas.  Vegetables (for the most part) have no points, so I have learned to snack on them more than anything else.

3.  Steel cut oatmeal every morning.  Every day for breakfast I have a bowl of steel cut oatmeal and a large latte that I make on my beloved nespresso machine. This fills me up all morning.

4.  Save some points for a small treat every night.  I have a sweet tooth and must have dessert. (If I have baked something fabulous, like the Paula Deen's caramel cake that I made for MrRuckus's birthday, I will, of course choose a tiny sliver of this. )  Otherwise it is a skinny cow ice cream sandwich or a jell-o sugar free dulce de leche pudding.  If I am out of points, I drink cup after cup of naturally sweet Aveda Comforting Tea. MrRuckus thinks that this makes my breath smell like I have been partaking in some marijuana inhalation.  No wonder I like it so much!

5.  Sriracha, or thai hot sauce, is the greatest condiment ever.   I put this on everything that is not sweet and it adds so much flavor with no calories.

6.  Water water water.  I drink at least a gallon a day, two if I am going to go to Bikram.

7.  Pilates Reformer works.  I am so much stronger, leaner and faster thanks to my twice weekly training on the reformer.  

8.  Breastfeeding burns a lot of calories each day.  Thank goodness for, as my friend "K" puts it, my "little calorie sucker".  I guess the little ladybug will be nursing for a while.