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Sunday, August 07, 2005

Your love is better than ice cream

Well, I completed an entire week sticking to the Weight Watchers plan! This is quite an accomplishment for me since I usually get bored somewhere around Day 2 and blow it quite spectacularly.

A quick summary for those of you not familiar with Weight Watchers - rather than counting calories, every food has a certain number of "points" which are based on the calories, fat, and fiber. So it's an easier calculation - rather than worrying about 1300 calories, I get 22 points a day, plus an extra 35 per week. After a while you memorize the number of points in things you eat frequently so it's not too complicated and easy to keep track in your head. I find it much easier and far less annoying than counting calories. In addition, most veggies are 0 points, so eating them has the double bonus of being good for me, and I don't have to "count" them.

TJ and I went to Claim Jumper tonight since I had 21 points left for the week at dinner time. Perhaps not a smart decision since I weigh in tomorrow morning but we'll see how it goes. I may have to adjust this next week and do the big dinner out on Saturday night instead, to give me time to "recover" before weighing myself.

My goal for this week is to work out at the gym for 30 minutes each morning. Oprah has said she really doesn't like working out, but she thinks of it like bathing or brushing her teeth - it's just something she does every day. Nathalie and I also plan to walk a couple of evenings a week, so this should be a good way for me to get back on the exercise wagon.

In the interest of being accountable and all that, I'll tell you that my goal is to lose about 19 pounds by the end of the year. That will put me in the healthy range for my height and then I'll figure out if I want to lose some more. It's not an especially aggressive goal, but one I think I can stick to. Wish me luck!

4 comments:

  1. Hey An, how do you figure what the healthy weight for your height is? The only formula I know puts me at 10 pounds overweight, and I'm on the thin side. (The formula is 100 pounds for 5 feet, and 5 pounds for each additional inch.) I've always been suspect of these formulas; besides they don't seem to take into account the fact that muscle weighs more than fat, and that muscle isn't actually bad.

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  3. p.s. I love ice cream, and I love that song.

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  4. Suz -

    Do a search for "BMI" calculator - BMI between 20 and 25 will give you your healthy weight range.

    The 100 + 5lbs/in is crap, according to my dietitian and doesn't account for muscle. I think the healthy weight range for me at 5'3" is something like 110-137, which is a pretty big range. But it accounts for people with small builds and not a lot of muscle, and people w/ large builds and muscle.

    Getting your body fat measured is another good way to go but the only truly accurate method is the water displacement, and that's expensive/hard to find.

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