Heather's Handmade Life: Choosing to live, work and parent with happiness + creativity

One week down, a lifetime to go

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Heather Laura Clarke

The verdict is in!

On our first week using Weight Watchers Online, I lost a pound! Oh, and Darling Husband? That adorable bastard lost FOUR pounds. It’s not fair being a woman, let me tell you.

I can’t believe how much I have learned in just a week. By looking up recipes and restaurant items and snacks in their point-calculator thingy, I learned exactly how crappy I was eating before joining — and now I know exactly how much BETTER I’m eating now.

So far I’ve made six Weight Watchers recipes (and made one of them twice, because it was such a hit). I’ve enjoyed every single one, which is a huge feat for The World’s Pickiest Adult. Darling Husband has liked them all except one, which is also majorly awesome.

Little D has disliked every single one, but that’s toddlers for you. Although he doesn’t care for much, except pancakes, fruit, cheese, crackers, and pasta. Oh, and junk food, which — as I mentioned — is one of the reasons we’re doing this (to be all role model-y and such).

Here’s a quick rundown on surviving the first week of Weight Watchers Online, in case I inspire any of my fellow potato-chip-addicts to join:

It takes a few days to get used to your Points … For the first two days, Darling Husband and I were both so nervous about using all of our daily Points that we were both hangry a lot. We weren’t eating enough in the way of healthy snacks, for fear that we would burn through our points and be left starving all evening. Then we ended up with tons of points left at the end of the night. Oops!
… But make sure you don’t hoard them! After the first few days, we both started “spending” more points on healthy snacks — like pita chips and hummus, peanut butter on a rice cake, apple slices and cheese, etc. And we felt a helluva lot better. And we STILL didn’t go over our point counts for the day. Moral of the story? As my lovely Weight Watchers mentor, Molly, told me: If you’re hungry, you’re not doing it right.
You will never starve. Really. You see, there are more than just Daily Points. You get an allotment of Weekly Points (usually around the same number as one days’ worth). If you use up all of your Dailies, this gives you some wiggle room. Or you can save them up for a big blowout meal once a week — totally up to you. Of course, Darling Husband and I hoarded them, so we used them for a fast-food lunch on our final day of the first week. But get this — we didn’t even use them all! Wonders never cease, as Ma Ingalls would say.
“More” healthy food is more filling than “less” junk food. One of the great things about the Points system is it encourages you to eat foods that give you more bang for your buck (er, points). I ate a tiny portion of Shepherd’s Pie for lunch one day (10 freaking points!) and was still starving. The next day I had a really healthy lunch — salad, pita pizza, baby carrots — and was way more satisfied for far fewer points. Sad it took me 28 years to realize this genius?
You naturally start thinking about good food versus bad food. When I offer something to Darling Husband now, his usual response is, “No, can’t spare the points.” He says it constantly as a joke, no matter how healthy the item I’m offering is, but there is truth to it. We think harder about what we eat, based on how many points it is. I find myself considering something — like a Rice Krispie treat — then looking up the point value, and saying to myself, “Nah, not worth my points.” It’s kind of like dating. Food dating. Sometimes you just have to say ~~he’s~~ that Fudgsicle is just not worth my ~~time~~ points.
You realize that eating is brief, but the results are lasting. I once read a book where one of the characters had a fridge magnet that said “Just a minute on the lips, wear it forever on the hips.” And when Perez Hilton lost all his weight, I remember him blogging “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” I never actually DID anything about these nice inspiring quotes before, but I thought of them a lot over the last week. I ate one of my homemade chocolate chip cookies last night — hadn’t made them since before C was born, and wowwww they are good … where was I? Oh right. So I ate the cookie, and it was divine. But the second I was done it, I was like “I feel exactly the same as I did two minutes ago, so what was the point?” I didn’t wake up this morning thinking “Mannnn that cookie was good. Excellent decision eating that!” I didn’t think about it at all, until I started writing about it. It’s just nothing. So I am reminding myself that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. And damnit, I really want to see what it’s like to be thin. That awesome feeling of knowing I have a rockin’ body? Definitely will be worth the work.
You can still eat potato chips! Yes, really! Before I started the program, I figured I would only get them once a week or something. But nope. I could technically still eat them daily, because I always have enough points left for them. Not gonna lie — I still eat them allllmost daily, BUT I eat a very tiny amount of them. And that is the key. Portion control, yadda yadda yadda. Now where are my skinny jeans? I deserve them now, right?

Not Me Monday

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Heather Laura Clarke

Five things about salads

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Heather Laura Clarke

A weighty issue

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Heather Laura Clarke

5 Comments

Tomorrow, Darling Husband and I will celebrate four years of marriage and exactly 12 YEARS of being a couple.

And the day after that?
We’re changing our lives.

Seriously! We are!

On Sunday morning, Darling Husband and I are following in Jessica Simpson’s footsteps and officially starting the Weight Watchers Online program.

I KNOW, RIGHT? Believe me, we are as shocked as you are that Mr. and Mrs. McNugget are changing their ways.

Weight Watchers Online is something that I started thinking about a few weeks ago, and couldn’t get out of my head. I got absolutely hooked on Molly’s blog (and her old blog), and went nuts reading all of the archives. Molly joined the program and had incredible success, and she basically became my bloggie heroine overnight. In a fit of I-want-to-be-like-Molly-ness, I decided it was exactly what I (well, we) needed.

Because, well:

I am the queen of junk food. I really and truly am. Some people say they couldn’t eat much fast food because it’s so greasy, etc., but if McDonalds wouldn’t kill me and make me weight 1,300 lbs., I would go absolutely berserk with it. It’s delicious (to me). Darling Husband loves it just as much as I do, so we probably just drag each other down the evil french-fry-lined path.
I think I have a genuine potato chip addiction, too. Having chips and a nighttime glass of Diet Coke while watching TV or reading is kind of the BEST THING EVER to me. (Sidenote: God, this is going to be hard, isn’t it?) Darling Husband = same way (except replace Diet Coke with beer)
I am a really boring, crappy cook, and I can never think of new, healthy ideas to make for dinner. We eat the same things over and over again, and those things probably aren’t too healthy. I honestly feel like I don’t know how to change that, so getting ideas from the program is going to be really helpful.
I know we don’t eat enough vegetables, and when we do, we never, ever like them. We buy bags of frozen vegetables, and I just cook them in plain water, and serve them … well, nude … alongside our chicken or whatever else we are eating. They taste dull, they are dull, and yet I don’t know what else to do. If I had some kind of recipe with vegetables in it? That would be, like, good.
I want us to be good examples for D and C — especially D, since he’s the only one eating real food so far. Darling Husband grew up in a house where people put sugar and salt on everything, drank regular pop, ate dessert nightly, and BUTTERED STORE-BOUGHT GARLIC BREAD OMG. I grew up with a nanny who made pretty healthy dinners every night, and then existed on frozen fries and Lunchables and other quickie junk once we were too old for the nanny. I want to crack down on our unhealthy eating habits now, so the kids grow up in a house where this kind of good, healthy eating is NATURAL.
I want to lose the baby weight. Although, I must say — if I’m being 100% honest — I’m probably not too much bigger right now than I was before getting pregnant with C. I have not weighed myself since having her, so I have no idea how many pounds I have lost in the last six weeks. This is mostly about the fact that I wasn’t happy with my weight BEFORE I got pregnant with C — or even D — or even for years before that. I haven’t been happy with my weight since high school. I want to get to a place that I haven’t been in more than a decade. Now that, my friends, is scary stuff.
I want to feel better. I’ve had a few health concerns since this last C-section. I’ve been feeling horribly dizzy, faint, and weak all the time. I went for bloodwork and was told my iron was low (shocker … not), and I have to take 300mg three times a day (sucks). I started that yesterday, but it will take a few weeks before I might see improvement. I do think that I’m also (A) not eating enough, and (B) not eating healthy enough. Changing my eating habits could make a big difference in my energy.
Darling Husband wants to go skydiving. Yes, this is somehow related to weight loss. He is dreaming of jumping out of a plane (crazy fool), and you have to be under a certain weight in order to do it (I forget the exact number). So that is a huge part of Darling Husband’s motivation. He also, of course, wants to look better, feel better, be healthier, look better in clothes, etc.
We don’t get enough exercise. Darling Husband hasn’t been sporty since high school — when he was a strikingly handsome rugby player, mmmmmm — and I haven’t been sporty since … um, ever? We were both members of a gym a zillion years ago, LOVED it, and both lost weight (I actually went four mornings a week at 6 a.m., because I was part of a special womens’ trial program). But then we moved out of the area, and our one-car/three-job problem prevented us from going anywhere else. When D was a baby, we were really great about going on long walks in the evenings, but since I got pregnant with C, we haven’t done much of anything. Now that I’m officially allowed to exercise after the C-section, I’m determined to get my sweat on. Joining a gym isn’t a possibility, unfortunately — since we still only have one car, and Darling Husband works so much — but we’re going to walk and do home workouts to start.

So follow along, dear readers, as Darling Husband and I tackle this massive change. We’re both nervous about how we’re going to like it, but the thought of looking — and feeling — ~~hotter~~ better by our fifth wedding anniversary has us both very excited.