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.

I’m taking the Weight Watchers Back 2 Best challenge with BritMums!

I remember growing up in the seventies, my mum tried several diets – but it was always just her doing whichever diet she felt she needed to do while we ate normally. They didn’t seem like much fun back then, and I remember my mum being miserable about being on a diet – none of them really working and having any kind of lasting effect.

When I was pregnant I developed Gestational Diabetes and we followed the GI Diet – eating low GI foods to keep my blood sugars down. It helped and I lost weight – but I resented not being able to have the occasional pizza or higher GI food, and when the diabetes went, my good eating habits did too.

I’ve also recently found out that the white spots under my eyes are due to cholesterol – I’m due to be tested to find out more on this, and have since found out it can be linked to diabetes, but that’s set off alarm bells again – I need to be looking after myself, we all need to look after ourselves – and we need to promote a healthy lifestyle to H so it’s second nature to her.

I work with K who did Weight Watchers with her husband (this article is worth a read – warning – contains lots of swearing), who has lost an incredible amount of weight who has promised me she’ll give me loads of tips to help (and already has) – diets are about a lifestyle change, or adapting what you already do to make it healthier. I know I can do this.

I think we’ve kept some elements of the GI diet, though we’re not losing weight. We don’t have takeaways very often, though I do snack badly at work. I’m doing the Thinking Slimmer SlimPod which is helping the way I think about bad food (it’s really working with chocolate) – it’s working in changing how I think.

So. Weightwatchers. Here we go. A change of lifestyle which will hopefully make us change how we eat as a family – including H – without her getting those thoughts of us ‘being on a diet’. I’m looking forward to it, and want to lose at least a stone – plus being able to track it on my iPod Touch will be easy as I’ve always got it with me, so now it’s just controlling portion sizes and being even more aware of what we’re eating as a family. I know we can adapt and change and make it work – bring it on!

There’s a Twitter Party this lunchtime – more info over here – where you can win Weight Watchers things – 1-2pm #wwback2best – Tuesday 18th September 2012