Oxymoronic

I did actually give the Smart Points programme a whirl when it first came out a few years ago.  Back then it was slightly different in that daily and weekly point allowances were a bit higher but fewer foods were zero points (just fruit and veg as opposed to the fruit, veg, chicken, fish, eggs, pulses etc. of the current iteration).

 

I was against it from the start.  I lost weight very well on the Pro Points programme (this was the version of WW prior to Smart Points). In fact, when I was going to meetings in 2014, I lost a stone in my first four weeks of Pro Points, which is pretty impressive.  So I already had a natural resistance to the change. 

 

And I do stand by what I thought then which is – Smart Points is more restrictive than Pro Points and it does feel more like a “diet” if you try to eat in exactly the same way.  I remember that when I was doing Pro Points, I found it pretty easy to eat sensibly and still have a piece of chocolate after dinner or a mid-afternoon biscuit.  A daily treat.

 

But I think my mentality is slightly different now because my focus, my absolute priority at the moment is my health rather than weight loss (although no, I'm still not quite over my disappointing result - I'm only human!)  My poor old body has been rather through the wringer and I want to treat it well, to nourish it.  Coming at Smart Points from that angle has made me realise that the very phrase “daily treat” is a total oxymoron.  The dictionary definition of a treat is: an event or item that is out of the ordinary and gives great pleasure.  Out of the ordinary!  Which probably doesn’t – or shouldn’t – mean daily.

 

Realising this has made me far more receptive to Smart Points.  When I look back over my first week, I can see that the quality of my meals improved markedly, particularly with regards to vegetable and protein content, and snacks mainly consisted of fresh fruit.  There was a bag of salted popcorn on Friday evening (deliberately chosen and enjoyed) and that was it.  Other than the chocolate truffle I had to end my meal on Saturday evening, I don’t think that I had any sweet stuff (again, apart from fruit).

 

First week fervour obviously helps make this easier but I think that bearing this in mind will really help me get along better with the Smart Points programme.  It will be interesting to see whether or not the scales come round. 

All change at Weight Watchers HQ

So those little monkeys over at Weight Watchers have decided to change the plan again, just a few years on from the “Pro Points” re-vamp.  Instead of being professional, points are now smart.  Smart points.  SPs (not to be confused with the other SP – Sneaky Peak).

I haven’t looked at the new plan in vast amounts of details, but here are the headlines:

The calculator now seems to require a lot more information.  The points are initially calculated on calorie content but then can vary one way or the other based on the nutritional profile.  High protein content will bring the points down while high sugar and high saturated fat will shoot them up.

The points allowance has been recalculated – and the majority of people seem to have ended up with fewer points overall.

Some of the foods that I looked at – i.e. the ones that were saved in my favourites, hadn’t changed very much.  The most noticeable differences were the fact that skimmed milk has increased in points (presumably because of the natural sugars) and items of confectionary have also become higher – a KitKat, for example, used to be 6pps but is 9sps.  Foods high in saturated fat have also increased – butter has doubled, and olive oil also appears higher.  Which makes such treats much harder to build in to the plan.

All in all, I’m feeling rather ambivalent.  Change can, of course, be a good thing when it is done for the right reasons but WW has always been about flexibility and moderation and this feels like a bit of a move away from that.  And I always found that the pro point system yielded good results for me without feeling overly punitive.   A bit of chocolate after dinner, a knob of butter stirred through the mashed potatoes – these are the things that help me stick to a plan long term.  My current thinking is to pick up again with pro points in the new year, using a homemade, Excel based tracker and see how that goes which will have the added bonus of not costing me £5 a month to be an online subscriber.

If anyone out there has started on SP I’d be intrigued to know how you are finding it!

Playing fast and lose: WW versus 5:2

If I have to diet (and, sadly, I do) then I want to do so it a way that doesn't make me miserable.  Or, in a way that makes me as un-miserable as it is possible to be while restricting the delicious foodstuffs I can chuck down my neck.  I choose Weight Watchers because it allows me to have pretty much anything as long as I account for it.  Of course you can't do this without spending quite a large proportion of your time poring over trackers doing food maths.  This is one of the reasons that some people hate Weight Watchers.

The idea of 5:2 is seductive.  OK, for two days a week you have to do a bit of planning and counting to bring your food consumption down to the requisite calories (500 for a woman, 600 for a man) but the rest of the time you are freed from the shackles and you can eat anything!  Anything at all!  And you'll lose weight and live longer and be cleverer!  Hurrah!

D has been doing 5:2 recently.  We've been eating a lot of soup.  And, keen to maintain my run of good results on the scales, I have been tempted by the idea of doing some sort of WW / 5:2 hybrid.  Given that last weekend we were spending a couple of nights down in London, and on one of those nights we would be tucking away a ten course tasting menu, I decided to do an experiment.  I decided that I would do two fast days, two holi-days and then for the rest of the week would stick to my WW daily allowance, and see what the scales would say to that.

Fast day 1
Calories consumed: 497 (13 Pro Points)
Moments I have spent cursing my bright idea: most of them

Here's the thing.  500 calories is not many.  And WW gets one so used to the idea of "free" fruit and veg, relying on it to add volume to the plate and to take the edge off one's appetite, it felt like a complete and utter affront to have to account for a portion of raspberries, a side salad, a satsuma.  And these are all things that I enjoy.  But I find myself weighing up whether I was willing to "spend" the calories on them.

What is abundantly clear is that fasting does not improve my mood.  In fact it turns me into a complete and utter cow.  D insists on an early supper, hoping a bowl of soup would have a restorative effect.  But it was like chucking pennies into the Grand Canyon.  I am HUNGRY.  I don't want soup.  I resent the soup.  I resent D.  I resent the stupid diet.  And, what's more, I was full of steely resolve to eat until I could eat no more the following day. 

Morning after fast day 1
Calories consumed (at 8am): more than yesterday
Moments I have spent praising the utter delicousness of food: legion

I expected to wake up having consumed half my pillow in the night.  As it was, slightly more hunger pangs than usual (I don't generally do breakfast and seldom fancy solid food before at least ten o clock).  We are travelling down to London today so decided a decent breakfast was in order - D was despatched to the Sainsbury's Local for sausages and bread and sandwiches were inhaled.

Bliss. 

Today is the day of the ten course tasting menu, so hopefully will banish all the scary memories of yesterday.  Interestingly enough, despite yesterday's resolve, after I have eaten breakfast I am sated and eat little until dinner.  I do not notice being any hungrier than usual. 

Fast day 2
Calories consumed: 413 (11 Pro Points)
Moments spent awake: few

New approach to today.  I spend most of it asleep as a distraction.  I sleep late, I doze in the car travelling back to Leeds and when we get home I have a substantial afternoon nap.  When I wake up it is past four.  I feel physically quite weak (this could well be psychological - I doubt very much sixteen hours without food can have that much of an impact) and, although hungry, can't immediately be bothered to make myself food. I drink tea, and sit listlessly on the sofa like a Victorian consumptive.

WW day 1

35 pro points is such.  A.  Lot.  In fact, I catch myself hoarding them like a miser and then get to the end of the day with some left in the bank.  Still in fasting mentality it would seem.  I force myself to eat a Dairy Milk Snowman (5 pro points of sickly seasonal bliss).

And the scores on the doors...

Two and a half pounds off which is a sterling result given the weekend.  But, but, but.  The misery of fasting.  To all of you out there who do this week in, week out, I salute you.  It is not for me.  Still, it has given me a renewed appreciation for the luxury of my daily points allowance and, y'know, food.

The skinny on...Warburtons sandwich thins

The older I get, the less likely you are to find ostensibly diet products in my kitchen. One of the lessons that I have learned over my years of Weight Watching, of which I still need to remind myself on a regular basis is, I never need as much food as I think I do (i.e. I am fundamentally greedy) and another is that quality is almost always better than quantity. It is for this reason that I have stopped buying low fat plastic spreads – I eat real butter, just in a measured way. And, much as I am a fan of their eating plan, I very seldom purchase Weight Watchers branded products. I just don’t like them that much.

Of course there are exceptions. While my aim is that the recipes and products that I talk about on this blog are healthy-living friendly rather than expressly designed for us slaves to the calorie counting, I do sometimes have to bend my own rules, especially when it comes to dairy. Take the asparagus cream pasta I made last week for example – I used Elmlea, a cream alternative, which, the website tells me, is made of buttermilk and vegetable oils. I sometimes choose reduced fat cheese for cooking with and I almost always eat reduced fat yoghurts rather than the real deal. You pick your battles, depending on your taste.  And I don't think that there is anything wrong with a bit of compromise.

The actual point of this post was to enthuse about a new product I have stumbled across, after years of reading about them on American food and dieting blogs – sandwich thins ( and I should add at this point that I pretty sure that no one in the Warburtons marketing department knows I exist, particularly as that last line sounds a bit like marketeer speak.)

As far as I can see it, the point of the sandwich thin, which is basically…a square, flattish, slimmish bread roll type thing but without a crust (er, am I selling it yet?  See, definitely not in the employ of Warburtons!) is that it minimises the points (calories, grams of carb etc. etc.) that you spend on the receptacle which you are using to convey your sandwich filling to your mouth. Don’t get me wrong. I am a massive fan of bread – proper, yummy, warm, crusty bread. But when I eat a sandwich, I’m more bothered about what is in the middle of the bread. Otherwise I’d just be eating the bread on its own. Well, thickly smeared with butter anyway.

The thins are 3 pro points each and, I think, around 100 calories. And, as I discovered at breakfast time on Sunday, they are just about the right size to accommodate a fried egg (done in just the merest teaspoon of oil). Hurrah.

Snow time like the present...

...for a little review.
Pro Points has now been up and running for 3 weeks, and this little blogger has lost three and a half pounds. Not a stellar rate of loss by any means, more of a slow, steady crawl down the scales – certainly nowhere near the dress size that WW suggested I could drop for Christmas.

But let’s look closer…

Week 1 – Monday to Friday
Pro Points rock! Hurrah! And then…

Week 1 – Saturday and Sunday
…D and I discovered the B52. By which I do not mean the late 90s pop group who invited us to join them in their love shack, but a shooter made up of coffee liqueur, Baileys and Cointreau. I could explain the complex emotional reasons for us deciding it was a good idea to start drinking shots at lunchtime, but it is probably easier if you just assume that we both like a drink. I would recommend the B52 – however, it comes with a health warning; three of these, washed down with a few pints of cider and it is quite likely that you will buy a box of mince pies on the way home, inhale two of them and fall asleep on the sofa at seven in the evening with pastry crumbs round your mouth.

Week 2 – Monday to Friday
Mostly spent sulking, refusing to exercise and eating cheese. See self indulgent post here.

Week 2 – Saturday and Sunday
Made a ten hour round trip on a bus in order to attend a friend’s thirtieth birthday party. Such are the lengths that I will go in order to see my dearest contemporaries and also to get plenty of cheap vodka. Consumed copious quantities of Smirnoff – and was mostly undeterred when the mixers started running out (“No more Diet Coke…? No problem, we’ll just use this wine that’s lying about instead! Hic!”) A good time was had by all – although the pain of five hours on a National Express bus with a hangover is not to be underestimated. I fed my poor, beleaguered system plastic sandwiches to try and perk it up.

Week 3 – Monday to Friday
Let’s haul ourselves back up on that Pro Points wagon! Free fruit – eat your fill of seasonal satsumas! Marvel at your own smugness.

Week 3 – Saturday and Sunday
My parents come round for dinner on Saturday night. Between us, D and I have created seven, delicious courses. The theme of the evening is “An Extravaganza of Cheese” in honour of my father’s fervent appreciation of the stuff. No one around the table succumbs to the cheese sweats – but it is a close run thing. Sunday finds D and I suffering from post dinner party ennui – possibly occasioned by the fact that each of the courses was accompanied by a different bottle of wine. At seven o clock we dive head first into a bucket of chicken and “special” coleslaw. My foodie credentials, slim to start off with, take a further battering.

I think, from this little round up, we can take the following points.

1)  Pro Points would appear to work. Over three weeks I probably pointed 10 out of 21 days, and made six gym visits. This has been enough to not only counteract all the fervent eating and drinking that has gone on during the other 11 days, but also to make a three and a half pound dent in my existing paunch.

2)  I definitely drink too much. And, as my thirtieth birthday fast approaches, I no longer fall into the category of debauched, “mad for it”* yoof. As a teenager, I did not spend Saturday evenings drinking White Lightening cider behind Romford library – preferring instead to stay in and watch Gladiators. But that appears to be the last time I adopted a sensible approach to alcohol consumption. If I have any hope of fitting into a size 10 wedding dress, the shots, the cider, the vodka and the wine all have to go…or, at least, have to become a less prevalent part of my weekend.

On a final note, can I just say how disproportionately excited I am about my lunch? M&S Turkey and vegetable soup with sage and onion stuffing balls – it’s Christmas Dinner soup! It’s 7 points for what looks to be a generous portion! And there are snowflakes on the packaging! Can you imagine a more comforting lunch for an extremely snowy November day?

*I suspect the fact that I have used this expression dates me even more than the admission that I’m fast approaching thirty. I don’t suppose even Liam Gallagher says “Mad for it!” anymore. Sigh.

Going Pro

Massive excitement on Monday morning when Weight Watchers launched its brand new plan, “Pro Points” to existing members (with a roll out to non members in January). It seemed to spark a bit of interest in the mainstream press, as the new system moves away from assigning food a value based on its calorie and saturated fat content to some kind of jiggery pokery where you have to think about protein and carbs and speed of digestion or something. I’m no scientist (unless having a Double Science GCSE counts for anything, which I’m pretty sure it doesn’t) so I just tend to adopt a “nod and smile” policy when people try to explain any sort of scientific theory to me. All I heard, during the explanations of the new plan, was that fruit was henceforth to be zero points. Bring on the bananas!

My instinct tells me that a well established company like Weight Watchers does not rock the boat, particularly the popular, money spinning boat, unless it thinks it is on to something. Yes, the cynical amongst us may point out that by forcing people to pay out for an entirely new set of equipment, the tills will be set ringing. But actually, a massive re-branding exercise like this costs a great deal of money, and they run the risk of alienating their core customer base. So I’m going to assume there is method to all of this and embrace it wholeheartedly.

Zero point fruit is wonderful. And has also made me realise how many times in the past I eschewed an apple or a satsuma in order to squeeze in an extra biscuit. I’m not even sure why because I like fruit. I think dieting tends to bring out the rebellious child in me to a certain extent – why waste two points on a banana when for two and a half I can have a Kit Kat. Never mind that I might have actually wanted the banana more than the chocolate. And going back to basics is kind of fun as well. I’ve been recalculating favourite food items, getting a feel for how I can make best use of my allotted allowance while still enjoying gorgeous, fit-for-a-foodie food. Stay tuned for some Pro Point recipes as I begin to get a bit more au fait with it all…