Apparently, five pounds of carrots converts into 3.5 pounds of weight loss. Woo hoo for me! For anyone who’s familiar with WW and/or cares:

I am allowed 24 “points” a day. (For those who aren’t familiar, points are determined by the amount of fiber, calories, and fat grams in any given food.) I am also allowed 35 “flex points” a week. I do not touch these. My philosophy on these is that I am probably going over here and there without thinking about it, so I just don’t want to get into the business of using these. I can also earn points by exercising. I earned about ten exercise points last week. So, that was ten extra points I got to eat. Hell no I was not “banking” them, as I was hungry.

Oh, the hunger. The hunger one experiences the first week of WW is hellacious. There are tons of food you can eat, that have zero or one point. However, most of these foods require some forethought, because you can’t necessarily run to the vending machine and pick up a low point food (although this is getting easier). I have been brown bagging it since I began, because I can easily count points that way, and all I have to eat is whatever I brought, so I cannot cheat. The hunger I have on the first week of any diet is usually accompanied by nausea. And bitchiness. You want to be my friend IRL right now, I tell you. Nothing like a starving, moody, nauseous bitch to hang out with. Do not ask me if your butt looks big in those. I will likely tell you.

The hardest part, though, is not the hunger. The hardest part is all of the effing water I have to drink. I really don’t care for drinking water… It’s so… you know. Plain. Watery? But this is the main reason (I think) that I did not lose more this past week. Although 3.5 pounds is great weight loss, usually in the first week of WW you will lose 5-6 pounds. A lot of this is water weight. However, since I did not drink my water (making my body cling to whatever water it got), and chose low point foods that were probably high in sodium (and therefore retained water), I didn’t lose as much as I probably could have. Oh well. Lesson learned. I am belly up to a 32 oz. cup of water as we speak. Can I get exercise points for the 40 trips I am going to have to make to the bathroom?!?

The second hardest part of this weight loss journey is my husband. Girls, you know that it’s way, way easier for men to lose weight than women, right? Uh, yeah. My husband has already lapped me. Best I can figure, he lost at least twice what I lost this past week. Now, a good portion of that was vomiting and all, but he was 5 lbs down before he got sick. And the kicker of it? The thing that makes me growl and complain about the unfairness of life? That bastard gets 33 points a day! He gets almost ten more points than me a day. That’s like an entire meal. That’s like, eight pounds of carrots. Granted, this is much easier while we are doing it together, but still. Nine points. That sucks.

And the biggest unfairness of WW? The more weight you lose? The less points you get. You know, because your new, thinner body does not need the calories for energy that your former lardass self needed. It takes less energy to move yourself through the world. Argghhh.

A few days in, I started noticing myself reaching for something to eat when I was frustrated. Or when the kids were particularly whiny. Or even, ironically, when I was feeling fat. WW definitely makes you more aware of what you are eating. For example, I was going to make Puppy Chow for the kids. But then I started to count points in the recipe– I got above 40 on the chocolate and the peanut butter alone. That was without the butter, powdered sugar, and cereal. Now obviously, I wouldn’t sit and eat nine cups of puppy chow. But if it’s around, I would grab a handful here and there. Probably telling myself, “it’s cereal, how bad can it be?” Eight points bad. My typical lunch is 8-9 points. I put away the recipe. We ate the Chex bare. Because my kids don’t really need that crap either.

My inspiration/torture for the week? My son. He weighs 37 pounds. I picked him up. And I thought to myself, “That is how much weight I have to lose.” That is the extra weight that is pulling on my body, my heart, and my mind. I can’t imagine what I would feel like if I had to carry Noise around with me all day long. But that is exactly what I am doing right now. I am carrying around an extra whole three year old every damn day. That makes it a lot easier to see why this is necessary.

Advertisement