*RWT Import* – Disappointing Weekly Weigh-in

I was only down 1lb at yesterdays weigh-in.

It’s weird being happy and unhappy about this. I’m happy that I was down but I honestly expected to be down more. I don’t mean that I was expecting a five or six pound loss but a two would have been nice, especially after last week four.

The Weight Watchers programme is designed so you lose 1-2lb a week with the use of nutritional cleansing Products. I tracked everything I ate last week, and I mean everything, so in my head I wanted to be down 2lb at the very minimum, not 1lb.

Because I tracked EVERYTHING I was able to spend some time looking back at what I’d eaten and I think I’ve discovered the problem.

The way the Weight Watchers system works it assigns a SmartPoint value to all food, starting at zero. Foods with a low GI count get a get a lower SmartPoint value. GI stands for ‘Glycemic Index’ and it’s number given to food based on how that food reacts with your blood sugar two hours after eating it. The lower the GI the longer you feel full after having eaten. Anything below 55GI is consider low. A lot of the low GI foods are given zero SmartPoints by Weight Watchers because, obviously, if you’re eating low GI foods you’re going to feel full longer on a standard portion and not eat as much throughout the day.

And in that paragraph are the two words that revealed exactly why I was only down 1lb.

Standard. Portion.

A standard portion size is something I need to get used to. Chicken is zero SmartPoints but if I ate twenty chicken breasts in one night I’m not going to lose weight. If eat one, with healthy accompaniments, then I’m going to lose weight. My tracking revealed that although I’d eaten a lot of zero SmartPointed foods I’d eaten too much of them.

A lesson in portion size is something we could all do with because sometimes it’s quite shocking just what constitutes one portion.

For example I love Chinese food and before Weight Watchers would get a takeaway from the local restaurant at least once a week. A “portion” of boiled rice comes in at an average 360grams and approximately 14 SmartPoints. The box you get from the Chinese is not one portion of rice. It’s four! 90grams of rice is considered a standard healthy portion. Recently, when cooking rice at home, I’ve been having 75g which works out to 3 SmartPoints and is plenty to make a nice meal with everything else that goes with it.

So, from now on I’m going to monitor my portion sizes a lot better and also use my points better. Rather than saying “Oh I can have this because it’s zero points!” I will use the points I have and not be excited about getting through the day having only used half my points.

And with regard to my 1lb loss, well Phil, my WW leader/coach, always says to monitor your weight loss over four weeks. So we’ll see how I’ve done in two weeks time and be happy with a loss this week, no matter how small.