Week 5, Day 1: Slower progress

Sigh. A mere 1.2 pound weight loss this past week. On the other hand, that puts me over 20 pounds of weight loss, so I shouldn't complain. And a 1.2 pound weight loss beats a 1.2 pound weight gain...

I suspect that some of it was a water-retention problem. I ate out Wednesday, and although I carefully ordered a grilled salmon salad with fat-free dressing on the side, I suspect that both the fish and the dressing were pretty high in salt content. For the next two days, the tops of my feet swelled up like little pillows, and the pants that were loose earlier in the week were a bit snug.

Yesterday I was reminded that weight loss doesn't equal instant fitness. After a trip to the 'burbs on public transportation, I needed to walk half a mile to get a train home. Then I walked four or five blocks to a reception; spent 90 min on my feet at the reception; then decided to walk home, a distance of about a mile. About three blocks into the walk home I discovered that my knees and ankles had had all they wanted to take. I hadn't hit a money machine so a cab wasn't an option. The rest of the walk home was, let's just say, very slow and not very pleasant.

Coming up this week, I have the challenge of a road trip -- up at o'dark thirty to take the cattle cars, ooops, I mean the airplane, to Pittsburgh for a meeting. That means a catered lunch over which I have little control, and a flight at dinner time. I am planning my strategy -- take two hard-boiled eggs and a couple of small apples; eat the eggs at the airport for my breakfast, use the apples as snacks to ward off hunger if I can't find some kind of simple salad for dinner at the airport on the way home.

Week 4, Day 4: Reckoning, Exercise

Sunday morning I did the reckoning for my Saturday night binge and found I didn't do so awfully badly after all -- I used 4 points more than my daily total, or less than 5 of my 35 weekly bonus points. This is good.

But I am wondering about all my measures of food and points and exercise. I hacked off a slab of chicken breast that measured 2 oz on my little scale -- I would have thought it to be 3. And does four hours of ambling around town on my bike, stopping to photograph as I go, really count as low-intensity exercise at all?

And I have been exercising this Memorial Day weekend -- the aforementioned four hour bike ride/photoshoot on Sunday, a 6-8 mile bike ride yesterday plus a 1 mile walk. Oh, and Saturday we went to tour a historic house in Germantown, walked around the grounds, and then walked about a mile before hopping the bus to get home.

Yesterday I finally opened a package from Lane Bryant with two pairs of size 2XT leggings that I'd ordered a few months ago. I better hope they shrink. (Woot.) Up in 1X-2X land, it takes two dress sizes to equal a size drop, so I imagine it will still be a little while before I see 1X. But I'm not complaining. I'm 11 pounds away from my first big milestone -- a slightly more than 10% of body weight loss AND the "100 pounds to go" milestone. If I keep up my current rate of weight loss, I should see that milestone some time in the month of June. If the rate slows down, some time in July.

Week 4, Day 2: Steps forward and back

Total weight loss for weeks 2 and 3: 7.6 pounds. This is good. Total weight loss for three weeks: 19.6 pounds. I was expecting my advancing age to mean slower weight loss. Not as such...

But last night I had a serious lapse: the "sips" from my husband's Manhattans totaled, he tells me, two large Manhattans of my own, and I followed that up a bedtime binge of another serving of roast chicken, a pint of low-fat yogurt and a Cliff bar. Part of the problem was that I had skipped lunch (due to circumstances rather than conscious plan) and was metabolically vulnerable. However, I'd been thinking of allowing myself a drink as a treat and in retrospect it would have been better to have one of my own than sip at someone else's.

I haven't totted up the points yet, but I suspect last night's episode will have eaten into my bonus points in a big way.

Week Three, Day 6: Demon Rum, Exercise, Beans

My husband had a hankering for whiskey, so he went off and bought a bottle of bourbon yesterday.

I allowed myself four tiny (and I do mean tiny) sips from his glass, and didn't pour myself any. It was just enough, and I didn't go off program in the food department. Dinner last night was a portion of chuck roast, braised with onions, in chicken broth and whiskey, a small boiled potato, and a lot of steamed kale with Tabasco.

Yesterday I biked eight miles and did some squats and my creaky old fat-lady knees were really complaining. I also boiled up two pounds of pink beans, twice, and they're about done. I'm boiling one more time this morning and will rinse, drain, and package for the freezer.

Week 3, Day 5 -- Pork, More than I could eat!

We had had about enough chicken for awhile, so Sunday we set out a small pork roast (the end of a $1.88/lb boneless pork loin) to roast on Monday.

The end of the day Monday rolled around, and we went for a 2-mile walk at a botanical garden and park and came back close to 7:00 -- no time for a roast. So we cut the roast into five chops (or cutlets, if you prefer). Monday night we each had a slab o' pork, a boiled potato, and steamed broccoli. I am constantly amazed at how good steamed broccoli is. I actually don't want a single thing interfering with the taste, not even salt and pepper. Who knew that properly cooked broccoli is so sweet?

Last night I thought it might be time to finish up the beans that I had defrosted a few days ago, along with a few other things. So we cut up the three remaining chops into cubes. Here's a recipe for the stuff we made:

About 2" worth of pork loin, cut into 1" cubes (I'm guessing 3/4 lb to 1 lb)
One medium onion, coarsely chopped
One T olive oil
One carrot, coarsely chopped
2 stalks celery, ditto
2 T tomato paste
1-1/2 cups beans
water for consistency
1 T currants (what was left in the container)
Really really good curry powder from the Essene
Cayenne and black pepper to taste

Pre-cooked brown rice

Sauté the pork and the onions in the olive oil until the pork is brown and the onions translucent. Add everything else but the curry powder and cook, covered, over extremely low heat for a little while (20 min, we think -- we were drinking tea and fulminating about the current political scene). Add the curry powder and turn off heat.

Reheat brown rice in the microwave. Serve mixture over rice.

Yield: dinner for two, two lunches for me

I awarded myself a full cup of brown rice and 1-1/2 cups of the pork stuff on the theory that I'd been good and deserved it. I was startled to discover, about 3/4 of the way through dinner, that I was starting to feel full and unwilling to feel stuffed. I gave the rest of my dinner to my husband. Go me!

Pride goeth before a fall, of course, but I can't help preening over the fact that I've gone almost 3 weeks without a misstep.

Week 3, Day 3 -- chicken, broccoli raab

I missed my weigh-in Saturday morning -- we had guests arriving at 10:30. But I happened to be at a health care establishment the day before, so I weighed myself there and it appears I lost another 3-1/2 pounds. I'm feeling pretty good about my ability to stay on program this week. I made my own little tracker in a small spiral-bound notebook, and actually enjoyed ruling the lines, filling out the column heads, and making little square checkoff boxes for my water, fruits/vegetables, dairy, and oils.

Last Monday's chicken made its final appearance as an entree last night. I believe we got 13 servings out of that $5 chicken. It's not completely done yet, though. I stripped the flesh on Friday and we put the bones on to boil. They ultimately reduced to a little over a pint of rich concentrated broth, which will be part of our flavorings for the coming week. Several of the chicken meals were eked out with beans.

With all the money I'm saving on meat, I splurged on a bunch of broccoli raab. We got two meals (2 servings each) out of it. I don't think I particularly like it as a vegetable, but as an ingredient it's not bad. Here's my recipe for chicken and broccoli raab over grits (something I made up, inspired by a recipe I read somewhere on teh intarwebs)

For the chicken/broccoli raab mixture:

Meat from one side of an oven-stuffer roaster breast, cubed
One onion, coarsely chopped
1 T olive oil
2 T tomato paste
1/2 cup concentrated chicken broth
4 cups broccoli raab (I removed the fat stems), coarsely chopped
Water as needed for consistency
Seasonings to taste: oregano, marjoram, cayenne, black pepper

The polenta substitute: In a saucepan, combine 2 c liquid (I used chicken broth), 1/2 c grits, 2 t fine cornmeal. (yes, we had no polenta...). Bring to boil, turn down to simmer and cook to taste, stirring almost regularly (about 15 min), until mixture holds some shape. Add 1/4 c grated parmesan or romano, black pepper, salt if desired.

In a large skillet, saute the onion in the olive oil until translucent. Add tomato paste, broth, water. Bring to boil, turn down to simmer. Add chicken. When the chicken is simmering again, add the broccoli raab. Cover, cook on low heat, removing cover to stir frequently.

Spoon a serving (2/3 c - 1 c) of the polenta/grits into a shallow plate; top with 1 to 2 cups chicken mixture, and serve.

Yield: one dieter's serving, one he-man serving.

Cooked this way, the broccoli raab added some bite to the meal. We'll have it again when it's on sale.

Week 2, Day Four: Sweet Potatoes, Chicken

Ooooh, for lunch I had.....dessert!

When I finished my paperwork and settled in for my first meeting, Phyllis was extolling the virtues of the sweet potato as a wonder food -- sweet, satisfying, low point value.

So I picked up a couple at the PathMark on Saturday. While I was roasting an oven-stuffer roaster last night ($.79/lb, on sale, a couple of weeks ago), I popped a couple of sweet potatoes into a Corning Ware casserole and cooked them until they lost their structural integrity.

Today I took half a large cold sweet potato (2 points), topped it with a half a cup of full-fat cottage cheese (2.5 points), sprinkled all with nutmeg and called it lunch. I do believe I died and went to heaven, savoring it in small slow bites. Imagine that: a 4.5 point lunch that tasted for all the world like a rich dessert and had a total prep time of 30 seconds (plus another minute to wash the potatoes and put in the corning ware dish yesterday). It's all about working ahead.

About chicken: it's great stuff. And periodically it's laughably cheap at the PathMark. This past weekend, boneless chicken breasts were $1.88/lb, so I bought about six pounds of them -- separated them into ten individual half-breasts, slid each into a plastic baggie, put five each in two larger zip-lock baggies, and I'm good to go for 30 servings of boneless chicken breasts for about fourteen bucks. Go me.

Week 2, Day 2: Low appetite / Tex Mex beef stew

It's useful to start a diet at the same time a cold is blooming. With my taste buds coated with crud, and my appetite depressed by general malaise, it's not hard to stay on program.

Speaking of the program, my husband is being very supportive and is trying to cook to program, as it were. Last night we made a Tex Mex-inspired beef stew from cubes of the $1.49/lb bone-in chuck I bought in vast quantity at the Pathmark a few weeks ago, plus beans that I also bought on sale and cooked in a monster two-pound batch over two days. "Can you have olive oil?" he asked. Sure, I can have olive oil, just not too much of it. Can you have onions? check. Can you have tomatoes? check. Can you have cumin? I can have any seasoning except salt and salt-heavy blends such as soy sauce.

So here's the Tex Mex inspired beef stew -- I think we'll get five or six total servings out of it at a cost-per-serving, including the rice, of about a buck. (Nutritional info per Weight-Watcher serving -- 1 cup stew, 3/4 c rice -- 387 calories, 9 g fat, 6.5 g fiber -- 8 points.)

• 3/4 lb chuck steak, trimmed and cubed
• 1 T olive oil
• 1 medium onion
• 2 cups canned crushed tomatoes
• 2 cups pink beans
• seasonings: they included cumin, oregano, chipotle powder, cayenne, and some Tex Mex blend a house guest brought us
• one green pepper, julienned
• cooked brown rice
  

Brown the chuck and the onion in the olive oil. Add everything else except the green pepper, adjusting seasonings to taste. Bring to boil, simmer a bit, then transfer to a 250F oven so that it doesn't need babysitting. Five minutes before serving, add green pepper and stir in. Serve over brown rice (which I had cooked in bulk last week).

It was so fiery I thought I'd burned my mouth, but once my tongue went numb it was really good. We had steamed whole green beans with it and I used the stew as a dip. A dessert of plain yogurt was wonderfully soothing.

Week 2, Day 1: First dinner out

I think I did fairly well.

I drank water with lemon.

I did not touch the rolls.

I ordered a salad that came with all its high-cal garnishes on the side -- bacon, blue cheese, walnuts. I had one small taste of each and ate all the greens.

For an entree, I had a small piece of salmon (I'm guessing 3 oz cooked) over chantarelles and some kind of beans. I suspect the sauce may have had some butter.

For dessert, I had a baked apple.

That's about as good as I'm likely to get. I'll figure out all the points tomorrow.

Week 2, Day 1 -- 12 pound loss

My first weigh-in after a week on program yielded a satisfying 12-pound weight loss.

Phyllis wasn't there to react, though -- her granddaughter was making her first Holy Communion. Well, there's next week. My next door neighbor was there, though -- we now have a standing date to go together, and that's nice.

Today's curriculum was cost savings. Much of it was more like cost justification -- think of how much you're saving by not going out as much, etc. Some tips were solid but things I'm already doing, such as buying produce in season, buying meat in quantity when on sale. Some tips were things I flat out won't do, such as drive to the suburbs to go to Produce Junction. And there's still the issue of that low-fat cheese...

The Week 2 program book is about exercise. It makes perfect sense that if you exercise you can add some points to your total, to take or not to take depending on how quickly you want to lose weight. And the points do add up -- the hour I spent pushing a broom for our block cleanup brought be a nice three points. I am beginning to realize just how much my few little bits of exercise -- bike a mile here, walk a couple blocks there -- are adding up.

My 12-pound loss means I should sacrifice one point per day now -- not at all a problem.


I thought my stretch pants weren't stretching quite so far today...

Week 1, Day 7: Lessons Learned

Lesson the First: Calculating and tallying points isn't as bad as it seems. I am learning the point values of my regular foods pretty quickly, now, and can jauntily write down that my morning omelet is 8 points.

Lesson the Second: Eating to Your Comfort Zone. There's a sweet spot between being ravenous and being stuffed to the gills. Slowing down and savoring my food gives me a chance to reach that sweet spot before I've cleaned my plate. It has turned out to be easier than I thought, just like flipping a switch. (We'll see if this persists after Week One Euphoria dies off.)

Lesson the Third: Small Change = Big Results. The Week 1 booklet gave a list of small substitutions that add up to big savings with minimal sacrifice in satisfaction level. I've done one: in the evening, it had been my custom to eat some plain yogurt to encourage the propagation of beneficial intestinal flora. I had been liberally applying granola, sunflower seeds, and occasionally a tablespoon of apricot preserves. Now, I've found the yogurt tastes every bit as good with a couple tablespoons of raisins on it. [Edit: or a sprinking of nutmeg for that matter]

I've also moved everything edible out of my third floor kitchen, except for big slabs of meat or huge bags of frozen vegetables in the freezer. It was too easy to wander next door from my home office and grab some cheese. (I work at home.) Now if I want something to eat I have to go down two flights of stairs. It hardly seems worth it.

Lesson the Fourth: Fight Clutter. Phyllis made that a topic at Saturday's meeting, especially with reference to clutter in the kitchen. I think it may have been in the materials, too. My husband is an inveterate clutter-buster and so the kitchen is fine, but my office is woefully messy. I've been working on it all week, and I'm slowly beginning to feel more in control of my surroundings and thus of my workflow.

All this week I've been cheating a little to boost initial weight gain-- I set my point total a little lower than it should be, and I haven't been using all my points. I want some instant gratification in the early weeks, and especially I want my knees and ankles to feel better and my blood pressure and cholesterol levels to go down before I see my doctor next month. I'm hoping for a respectable weight loss, but realize that because of my cold my activity level hasn't been especially high and that, with my next birthday being my sixtieth, I am likely to lose more slowly. Still...

Tomorrow I'll know how well I've actually done and whether I deserve to be patting myself on the back so enthusiastically.

Week 1, Day 6: First post

Twenty years ago I achieved lifetime member status in Weight Watchers. As of my first weigh-in twenty years later (Saturday, May 3), I'd gained back all that I'd lost plus an equal amount. I don't want to talk about how much that is.

My next door neighbor told me I'd have a blast if I went to her meeting with her on a Saturday morning. Weight Watchers meetings at the center in South Philly are hilarious, and I had a wonderful time. They're a gloriously mixed bag of ages, races, genders (five guys at the meeting!) and girth. I had tried another meeting about a decade ago, but they were all so serious -- I got depressed just sitting in the poorly lighted church meeting room. But South Philly is variegated insanity of the best kind -- a raucous, happy, nonjudgmental, welcoming bunch.

Our leader, Phyllis, is an older woman, birdlike, who'd lost more than 100 pounds some years ago.

This is all great. But I note that the program and the support, so far, seems to be based on a lot of special (expensive) foods: low fat this, single portion that. If I'm going to spend $14 per week to go to Weight Watchers until I reach an appropriate age-modified goal, I'd dearly love to recoup some of that cost from my food bill. I also want to be able to cook one meal for my husband and me, allowing him larger portions, butter on his rice, etc. And I don't especially want to spend hours in the kitchen either.

So I've started this modest blog to chronicle my attempts to be miserly while following Weight Watchers. I wanted to call this blog "The Frugal Weight Watcher," but that is taken by someone who did a couple postings and then quit. Sigh... There will be comments on other body-management issues as well -- motivation, exercise, etc.

First frugalities right out of the box:

1. Cook large batches of whole grains and beans. Why pay $1 for a 15-oz can of beans when you can have four times as many beans -- no salt added! -- for the same price?

The trick: Buy dry beans on sale. If you keep a sharp eye, even at today's inflated prices, you can still find beans for 79 cents a pound. But who has time to cook beans? Anybody. Here's how. Don't cook the beans for the specific meal. Cook them for the freezer. My own method is to dump 2 lb of beans into a big pot of water, bring to a boil, turn off heat, and go away. When I come back I drain, rinse, refill, and boil again. Lather, rinse, repeat till the beans are done. Package some in 1 pint containers, some in 1 quart containers, and freeze.

Same thing for brown rice -- 3 cups brown rice, 6 cups water, bring to boil, simmer 10 minutes, covered, on low heat. Turn off. Come back at least 30 min later and check. If there's still water in the pot, cover again, heat on high flame for 60 seconds, turn off again. (Turning off the heat is important and you may have to adjust the technique on this step if you don't have a gas stove.) Come back later and check. Barley, at least the hulled kind I buy, is a little trickier but not much. Bring one measure of barley to boil in a 2 measures of water. Bring more water to boil in a teakettle or pot and dump a scant measure in a Crock Pot set on high. When the barley comes to a boil, dump it and its water in the Crock Pot, too. Peek at it every so often, and stir so the grains on top have a chance at the moisture down lower. When most of the water is absorbed (2 hours or so), reduce Crock Pot to low and continue process as long as your nerve holds out. I do this in good-sized batches -- 3 cups of barley and 8 cups of water.

At dinner time, I can pull some grains and/or beans from the freezer, nuke, and move on.

I confess that I've invested about $10 in square freezer containers to conserve space in my frozen foods compartment, but that was awhile ago. I've been doing this for ages, and I'm sure I've recouped my investment several times over.

2. Forget low fat cheeses. Full fat cheeses are the light and the way. They taste better and their mouth-feel is better. Just dial way back on the quantity. Who knew 1/4 cup of shredded cheddar could taste so good on an omelet?

3. Forget egg whites, egg beaters, and other faux eggs. This may not work for everyone, but I come from a long line of long-lived egg eaters.

4. Forget prepared foods. They cost a ton of money, they don't save that much time, they don't taste very good, and they take up valuable freezer space that could be used for your own packaged foods -- small portions of cheap meats, containers of cooked rice, barley, grains, and huge bags of frozen vegetables from the PathMark.

So far, I've been pretty happy modifying my usual dietary habits to count points and cut out the excess. The proof of my approach will be tomorrow when I step on the scale.