Okay, so here I am after a week of what I’d like to think is paddling in the world of Weight Watchers – I’ve (mostly) kept within my points, though it has revealed a lot about what I eat and what we do.

Firstly, when I’m at work I go over my points limit – yet when I’m at home I don’t. My drawers are full of what I thought were healthy snacks, but I’ve found out that oatcakes (while satisfying when you’ve eaten a pack of six individual ones) are actually quite high in points. So instead I have bananas.

Secondly, out of sheer tiredness and wanting to lie down I cannot prepare food for the following day at work – so I do the Sainsburys Meal Deal every day – yet one sandwich (gluten-free) takes 14 points! When I’ve got just 30 a day to use, it seems wasteful – so I need good ideas for lunches that if needs be, I could buy. Snack A Jacks are 3 points which weirdly could be improved if I had French Fries crisps instead!!

Thirdly, the one which got me was pizza. Most pizzas are 7 points per slice which means they’re special occasions only – fine as we don’t eat them weekly – however, WeightWatchers are now doing pizza, and low points too so I’m going to try one out when I can find someone who stocks them.

For this last week I’ve kept my eating to the same kind of pattern I would do pre-Weight Watchers, and as I suspected my portion sizes were way too much. As the week progressed it was less rice and even more veg which worked pretty well. We’re going to switch rice from basmati to brown as well, as that’s the lowest of points. Having the WeightWatchers scales has helped a lot – I’ve never measured portion sizes and just guessed up to now.

Fourthly, I use too much oil. We have a huge frying pan which I use to do stir fry which needs slightly more than four squirts of oil due to its hugeness, but even then it’s less than I would have used normally. The WeightWatchers Oil dispenser is good for this!

Anyway, the results are in – after one week of watching what I eat but not drastically changing things, I’ve lost a grand total of 1lb! So next week I’m going to follow more recipes and work on lunches at work as I’d like a few more points for my evening meals.

I also intend to look for as many WeightWatchers foods to see what makes them lower points than others – as for example, we make our own pizza, so if there are ways we can adapt our recipe then that’s a good thing – and how are WW bagels better than regular shop ones (they’re yummy by the way).

As far as the WW app goes, it’s doing all the hard work for me. I’m using it on my iPod Touch and keeping track of everything. Kathryn at work who had amazing results did say I’d maybe start thinking of it being a bit like a computer game, and I’d be trying to beat the points – and yes,  it’s happened…! I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to read instructions and prefers to get on with it – and so far the app has been straightforward and uncomplicated. In fact, the only thing that got me was when adding foods, and I couldn’t work out how to do portion  sizes. I ended up phoning Shaun, who helpfully suggested I weigh one… OH yes… oops!

If you’ve read this far and want to try WeightWatchers for yourself, then you can join for £1 and trial the app for free!

Disclosure – I have been given six months of free WeightWatchers membership. All opinions are my own.