Thursday, February 26, 2009

Sorry, been away...

Sorry it's been awhile. I was sick last week, and I've had a sick animal that I've had to hand-feed the past two weeks, which takes up a lot of my time in the morning and evening. So I really haven't had any time to make bentos, nor have I been very good at even planning my meals for the last two weeks either.

The good news, is that I've made my goal Weight Watchers weight! Which is really exciting. When I did Weight Watchers a few years ago before my wedding I didn't come close to my goal weight, but I was happy to lose 15 pounds none-the-less. This time around, I therefore thought it would take a lot longer and be extremely difficult to get even withing five pounds of my goal weight. But that didn't turn out to be true. Mainly because of a few things I did differently:

1) I planned, planned, planned this time. I would sit down every Saturday or Sunday and plan out ALL my meals (snacks too) for the week. I would usually leave dinner on Friday open because my husband and I usually go out that night. But even then I would have an idea of a restaurant we would go to and look up points values of potential dishes I could get so I would be prepared.

2) I didn't try to obsessively stay within my allotted daily points value every day. I did that the first time around (I'm sure if I went to meetings they would have told me this, but I only do the online version). Instead, for the most part my daily points was usually 20, so I usually used about 21-23 points a day.

3) I paid attention to the Momentum plan's filling foods list (this wasn't available my first time around, but it really helped this time). The snacks I planned for the day were always filling foods instead of just any low points food. So instead of the Hershey's 100 calorie snack bars (2 points), I would have 10 baby carrots, 1 cup of edamame, and 1 Babybel cheese (3 points) which would fill me up for a much longer period of time.

4) I packed bento lunches almost everyday. Because I planned everything, it made it very easy to quickly pack bentos and to make sure I had a packed lunch available to me everyday to prevent eating out. The last time I did Weight Watchers I rarely packed my lunch and still ate out a lot. No matter how healthy I would try to eat out, I would still get tempted and cave into a sandwich special instead of a salad.

All of these things helped me lose 24 pounds in 4 months. Which is something I never thought I would be able to do. Of course, since I never thought I would get close to my goal weight, I set my goal weight a little high. I would like to actually lose another 5-10 pounds, so I will continue on my weight loss plan. I do need to figure out how to maintain the weight I have lost, though. Has anyone done this? Do you stay on plan? Or just stay observant of what you eat?

What has helped you lose weight? What have you learned from trial and error? :)

4 comments:

TheWantonSeedStitch said...

Hey, congratulations! :) I've lost 12 pounds since starting Weight Watchers. I'm actually 37 pounds under my highest weight. I don't actually belong to WW, but I use their food plan with the help of some resources from a friend who used to do WW and those that are available online. What's helped me has been:

1) Bento! If I have an awesome lunch already made, I don't feel the urge to hit the cafe or a nearby restaurant when lunchtime comes around.

2) Eating TONS of veggies. I love veggies, and I'm sure the amount I eat is enough to add a point or two to my day even when I'm eating zero point per serving veggies. Still, you don't get fat eating spinach and red pepper! It keeps me full so I don't eat other stuff.

3) I don't have the "filling foods" list (not being really on plan), but I do know that stuff with protein and fiber in it tends to fill me up a lot more than stuff that doesn't. As a result, I make sure and get a decent amount of both in every meal. I snack on things like whole-grain crackers, veggies, light cheese, etc.

4) Hungry Girl! Yeah, she uses a lot of prepared foods, but sometimes, it's exactly what I need. Tofu Shirataki alfredo for one point? Amazing! It's like a full meal, for the points value of a light snack!

5) I haven't killed myself over stuff like eating out. I've mostly stuck to sushi, fat-free tofu dogs, and shabu-shabu (Japanese hot pot, with fish and veggies cooked in broth), but have gone for more fattening stuff a couple times. That hasn't been more than once a week, though, at most, and I keep to 20 points on all other days.

Flying Lily said...

Congrats and well done! Bento really do help don't they?

eilismaura said...

I am going to (re)try WW to refine some of my bento and general meal planning.

Congrats on reaching goal!!!

How is maintenance going???

Will you be continuing your blog?

ebundri said...

Well, I was going to have a bento all ready for today and start posting again this week...but it didn't happen. I do hope to get a couple up this week though and get back into the swing of things.

My maintenance has been going well, but I do think I am going to try to drop the last extra 5 to 10 or so pounds. So stay tuned!