Oh woe, oh woe, back to WW we go

So, thoroughly disenchanted with WW, especially after the change to Smart Points, I decided that I needed to find an alternative plan.  A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was trying something but wanted to give it a fair shot before writing about it.

Cue hollow laugh.

The thing was, I was sick to the back teeth of counting.  I wanted to do something else and what I came up with was the 5:2 plan, which involves having two fast days a week and eating normally the rest of the time.  My reasoning was that, OK, the fast days would be thoroughly miserable and would involve some form of counting to ensure that I came in under 500 cals, but the rest of the time would be "normal" eating - exactly what I craved.

The fundamental problem was that it turns out I am RUBBISH at fast days.  I think I managed one properly - perhaps two - and hated them.  And I struggled with choosing the days.  It couldn't be the weekend.  It couldn't be on a Monday because that's tutorial day and I can't concentrate on seven hours of tax legislation on an empty stomach.  So that left Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  But Tuesday and Thursday are the good exercise class days - Tuesday is Body Combat followed by Aqua Aerobics, and Thursday is Clubbercise and I was nervous about exercising on 500 calories. I messed around and, basically, didn't achieve anything.

So I'm accepting the inevitable and dragging myself back to WW.  I am going to give Smart Points a good go - my gym buddy A has lost a stone and a half in the last few weeks so it clearly works.  I have bought a Fitbit and linked it to my account so that I can rack up Fit Points which I will probably swap for food, accepting that this will mean a slower loss.

As far as I can gather, Smart Points is pushing people towards a high protein, low fat, low sugar diet.  Which sounds rather joyless but, as ever, I will be trying to bend it to my tastes as much as possible and report back here as to the results.  I'm not necessarily going to publish Smart Points on the recipes that I post though, because I really like the freedom of just sharing stuff that I like without having to write a "Sorry, this is so high in points..." precursor.  As ever, if you want the Smart Points then please just drop me an email.

D also wants to drop some weight and has decided to do a month of Dukan - which is also geared towards high protein and low fat, so the two should mesh fairly well, although I am far too greedy to give up carbs altogether, which is pretty much what he is intending to do.  Again, I'll let you know how that goes.  Once he is in "Cruise" phase, which allows some vegetables, I can see the spiraliser getting a LOT of use which will be interesting.

Wish me luck my loves.  For the fifty one billionth time.