Part 1: Getting Started with Weight Watchers

Oh, food – what a wonderful thing food is. It was pretty much my favorite thing until the scale crept up on me because of it.

In January, I found myself hopping on a scale for the first time in a year at a doctor’s appointment. Low and behold I had gained 9 pounds in less than a year and about 20 pounds since college. WOW. Seriously? What happened!

Enter: Weight Watchers

My company had been promoting Weight Watchers internally and was even holding meetings right in our building. I talked to some coworkers who had started the program and had lost 12, 15, even 30 pounds. I knew it was time to give it a try. Couldn’t hurt, right?

I knew NOTHING about the program before starting. Well, I did know one thing - that Oprah was the spokesperson - that's something, I guess? You get the picture. So, to start, I downloaded the app for $3.91 a week. I did some reading and realized that the NEW and improved Weight Watchers program promised 1-2 pounds of weight loss a week. That sounded too good to be true.

Enter: The Weight Watchers App

I immediately started entering everything I ate into the app (February 22, 2017). I was stunned to see that some of the foods I had previously considered “healthy” were eating up a half days’ worth of points.

Let me explain, quickly, how the app works:

You fill out a questionnaire to begin with so the app can determine how many points you get for each day (I get 30, for example). Before you eat or drink something, you search for it in the app (anything from cooked meals, items at restaurants to raw ingredients) which you then add to your day, for that meal. For example, if you are eating avocado and egg wheat toast for breakfast you would search for avocado, add the amount you are going to consume of it and then search for wheat toast and add the amount you are going to consume – these would both be added to “breakfast”. It will automatically deduct those points from your day (this is 6 points for the one I make, so it leaves me with 24 points for the rest of the day).

YUMMY, RIGHT?

Aside from your daily points, you get a set amount of weekly points which essentially are cheat points. These can be used a little bit per day or blow them all in one day!

What I learned very quickly were two things 1) that you must plug EVERYTHING IN - you are only cheating yourself if you lie to the app and 2) if you plug everything in and stick to the system, you are 100% going to lose weight.

The pounds really started shedding off in the beginning. My body was quickly adjusting to taking unnecessary items out of my day. WINNING! Some of the items that I wasn’t willing to “waste the points on” anymore:

-Coffee creamer (2 points)

-Starbucks breakfast sandwiches (8-15 points)

-Rice (6 points for a 1 cup)

-Overeating at dinner (Unlimited)

-Margaritas (17-25 points)

I was quickly finding ways to eat breakfast and lunch  low in points (while still feeling full) so that I would be able to enjoy a glass of wine when I got home. Yes, you can drink on Weight Watchers.

I would go into tips and tricks for low point meals, however, this is only Part 1 of this series! Here is what is up next:

Part 2: Eating Out on Weight Watchers

Part 3: General Tips and Tricks for Weight Watchers

Part 4: Go-To Meals for Weight Watchers Success

Please follow along with me on my journey to hitting my weight loss goals and keeping it off! My hope is that if you are reading this you have a goal of your own and Weight Watchers can help you get there.

To help further intrigue you to read Part 2, Part 3 and so on – take a peek at how far I have come in the past five months!

February 2017 – 144 pounds

July 2017 – 125 pounds

You can see it clearly in this log (below) that you can keep of your weight in the app. It shows where I started and how my weight loss journey has taken shape throughout the last five months. First step was getting a scale :) In addition, it helps me to track what my average "weekly" weight loss is - which is exactly 1 pound! They don't fudge the facts, folks.

As always, thanks for stopping in!