Bad Day #1

So today was my first "bad" day of Weight Watchers. Every day since I have started I have managed to stay under my daily limit on points. (Except for Monday, I went five over. So I exercised five points off. *You get extra points for exercising.*) But today I didn't. I went WAY over.

Let my explain some... Before I started my diet, I was a fast food queen. I ate out for lunch every day at work, and sometimes I would eat out for dinner, too. Plus, since I am such a social butterfly ;P, I ate out for almost every meal on the weekends. One of my habits included eating Chinese for lunch once a week with 2 or 3 of my co-workers. I love Chinese food. But my favorite thing to get is chicken lo mein. Even though I am on Weight Watchers, I am not prepared to 100% give up all of the things I love, including chicken lo mein. But I do plan on practicing moderation and portion control. I want to be healthier, and skinnier, but I don't want to do it at the expense of my complete happiness and if I can't ever have McDonald's or Chinese again, I won't be a happy camper. So I plan on indulging myself, just not as often and by cutting my portions down quite a lot.

Anyway, so we go to this one Chinese take-out place called King Garden, and this is what I used to get: Lunch special of chicken lo mein (no mushrooms) with a "side" of fried rice and an order of crab ragoon. So today I decided I wanted to indulge in some Chinese, but I was going to be good. Well then I looked up the point values for what I get. Here's what it said:

1) One cup of chicken lo mein = 9 points
2) One cup of fried rice = 10 points
3) 1 crab ragoon = 5 points

That totals 24 points. Keep in mind that I only get 37 for the day.

So I decided not to get crab ragoons, even though that sucks, because King Garden has delicious crab ragoon. So that meant that if I only ate one cup of rice and one cup of lo mein, I would be eating 19 points -- which is more than half of my daily allowance. I had only eaten a banana for breakfast, because it is 0 points and I wanted to save up for my Chinese.

Now, my plan was to eat about half of what I got. Because usually I ate ALL of it, including five crab ragoons. So I figured half of it would be alright... even though it was "bad" food, points wise, I was still significantly cutting down what I WOULD have ate two weeks ago. So I got out a measuring cup and measured out one cup of rice and one cup of lo mein. And let me tell you, 1) It was a small portion, 2) It barely made a dent in what was in the box, and 3) I plowed through those first two cups like it was nothing, because I was so hungry.

So I had 2 more cups of lo mein and 1 more cup of rice. That means that for LUNCH I ate 47 points. FORTY-SEVEN points! That's 10 more than what I get DAILY. And that's what I ate for lunch. NOW... let's think of it THIS way...

Two weeks ago I would have ate that whole box. Since I ate about half of it, let's double 47. That means I would have ate 94 points of rice & noodles. Then I would have ate 5 crab ragoons... so let's add 25... That means that I would have ate 119 points for lunch. If this was two weeks ago. Now, think about that in terms of my day... I would have ate 5 for breakfast, so 124... And then my dinner... I would say I probably averaged about 30 points for dinner each night, unless I went out to eat again, which God knows how much it would have been then. So on a typical weekday two weeks ago, I would have ate a total of 154 points... in one day.

Now I eat 37 or less... It sounds super crazy, but the reality is... I am not hungry. I am not starving myself. I am simply eating better food in smaller portions. Instead of an 11 point double cheeseburger from McDonald's, I'm eating a 9 point piece of baked chicken breast. (Most of the time. Not including my indulgences.)

It's just... it's no wonder I lost 4.6 pounds in a week. I went from eating 154 points in one day, to eating 37 (or less) in one day. (Points are calculated up from grams of fat, protein, fiber, and carbs, by the way. But not calories.) For one thing, I think that's awesome. For another, it puts things into perspective for me. Because I was wondering how many points I would have ate before on a typical day. Granted, I didn't eat Chinese every day, so I would have not had 150 points per day... but I probably was averaging around 100, and more on the days I ate at sit-down restaurants.

It's just crazy!

But anyway... so today I went over my points with just lunch. And I think that would've made me crazy a few days ago, I would have felt so guilty. But what I feel is this... I ate LESS than half of what I would have two weeks ago. PLUS, afterwards I felt sick to my stomach, because I ate so much oil. I don't want to feel like that, so I won't do it very often. AND I told my co-worker that I was NOT going to throw away the leftovers, that I just could not do that. So I put it in the fridge at work. 4 hours later when I left work, I said to myself, "Girl, you do NOT need this." And I trashed it. And walked away. I am so proud of myself for that.

And I am proud of myself because even though I was 10 points over on the day, I didn't give up... I went downstairs and walked on the treadmill and earned 5 of those points back. So right now I am only 5 points over. And now... I am going to go make myself an egg sandwich, made from egg whites, on a whole-wheat English muffin, with a slice of reduced fat cheese. YEAH!