dieting for dummies {1.16}

it's been exactly one week since i joined weight watchers. it's been years since i have made any real attempt to lose weight, eat healthy, exercise...any of that stuff i should be doing everyday. regardless of my complete inexperience in this realm, i want to share my journey here. so, welcome to dieting for dummies. it will be a blog series that will allow me to document this path. i will share things i've learned, things i think...ya know, whatever!

so, after a week ... here's what is going on inside my little brain. keep in mind, at this point...there is nothing helpful here, but more my revelations and reflections. hopefully, as time passes i will be able to provide more useful information!

• it's amazing that i don't weigh a ton. the reality of my bad eating habits has really hit home. eating out a lot. fast food. pizza. snacking on whatever. all the bad stuff and none of the good.
• i need a digital scale.  i have had an 'old school' scale forever. it works fine, but when you are monitoring individual pounds, it's a bit hard to read. i need to invest in a nice, digital scale.
• ranch dressing breaks my heart. i don't crave sweet stuff (often). but homemade ranch dressing is a ridiculous weakness of mine. and it's bad. lots and lots of WW points.
• ww tip: use the points. weight watchers gives you daily points, then you get weekly points as 'extras' and then you can earn activity points from exercising. my type-a personality has me wanting to stay under those daily points and not diving into the others i'm allowed very often. relaxing a little on this will make things easier.
• nights out are OK. i was a little worried about going out for matt's birthday (dinner & drinks). i did exceed my daily allotment by a good bit, but because of the 'extra' points mentioned above, it was totally OK!
• veggies are yummy. the majority of fruits & veggies do not have any WW points. as a result, i stocked up on more than usual. what's interesting is that i don't personally have anything against most fruits & vegetables. many taste pretty good. but i rarely eat them...weird. this week, i've been able to create some tasty meals and snacks at very low point values.
• the first week is the hardest. even though i've only been doing WW for a week, i started watching what i was eating about a week before that. during that period, i felt very hungry and unsatisfied. this has improved greatly. i think it's an adjustment period that your body goes through. or it might be that i started doing a better job of finding healthy foods that are filling.
• exercise doesn't kill you.  in the past 5 days, i've gotten on the elliptical machine three times (30 minutes each). i'm pretty sure this is a record for me. and it really isn't that bad. lack of time is the biggest issue (the unplanned snow days are what helped this past week).
• start your day with breakfast. i get up at 5:00 and don't eat breakfast until after i get to work (3+ hours later). sometimes i never eat it. i've always heard you should eat breakfast early. so, one of the big changes i've made is that i now eat breakfast before i even have a cup of coffee. that is huge for me. it really makes a huge difference in how i feel (and has reduced the amount of coffee i drink).
• stocking my desk.  i made sure i brought in a bunch of healthy lunch and snack options to my office. i needed to make sure i didn't have an excuse to swing by mcdonald's.

some of my food favorites this week:

• black beans
• spinach (raw...can't stand it cooked)
• whole wheat tortillas
• avocado
• multi-grain cheerios
• special k cracker chips (sour cream & onion)

in conclusion...i'm pretty sure that my weight loss for the week was around THREE POUNDS (refer to my above comment about my scale as to why i don't have a more precise number).

note: i added a new label called "health/fitness" which is where i will put these sorts of posts.