Betrayal?

Those of you in the UK may or may not be aware that a couple of weeks ago WeightWatchers launched a completely new plan. This isn’t one of the two-yearly revamps, which generally gave you the same system with a different name; it’s a total shake-up. Points are now calculated in a different way, using protein, carbohydrate, fat and fibre content. You get 29 of these new ‘ProPoints’ per day, plus 49 weekly points which you can use or not as you like. There’s been a lot of stories in the crappier sections of the British press about ‘the diet which lets you have wine and chocolate!’ (Because of course, that’s all women are interested in, isn’t it?)


In two weeks on the new plan (following it closely) I’ve gained 2.5 pounds.

Hmm.

I’m understandably not pleased with this.

While I’m all for updating the plan to match modern scientific thinking, I think it’s in need of serious refinement. When I started it I weighed ten stone and half a pound. I’m on 29 points a day. If I weighed fourteen stone (14 stone 2 (or 198lb) was my starting weight in 2002), I’d be on… 30 points a day.

You see the problem? A point is roughly 40 calories. There is no way that the food intake which allowed the 14-stone me to lose 2lb a week (the maximum that WW recommended) is going to let then 10-stone me lose weight. It’s not just me, either – while I’ve seen some good losses (3, 4, 5, even 6lb) reported in the first week of the plan, they’re coming from larger members. The WW message boards show a disturbing number of small, relatively light women for whom the new system really isn’t working.
This would be almost excusable if the plan were brand new – but it’s not. It’s been operating in Europe for some time now.

I suspect that pretty soon – after Christmas, to coincide with the public launch? – we’ll see the ProPoints allowances changed so that nine-stone members and 14-stone members aren’t eating the same amount. But meanwhile, I feel rather betrayed.

I know there’s a plan revamp coming in the US this week. If it’s ProPoints – and why wouldn’t it be – my advice to members, particularly those under 150lb, is be very, very careful, and don’t assume it’ll work.

Meanwhile I’m giving the plan one more week to come up with the goods. And then? I really don’t know…

Some things go wrong, others go very very right, and I still can't write good titles

I’m sure that my few readers have abandoned me in disgust long since, but just in case anybody would like to know, here’s the story of the not-quite three months since my last post.

Eleven days after it, on the 29th of July 2010, I drove to the Big City where I used to live after work, to go to the dentist. I was a bit miffed when I got there to discover that they hadn’t bothered to tell me in advance that they were no longer offering NHS treatment. NHS dentists are at such a premium in this part of the world that I would happily drive 40 miles to get to one, but private dentistry I can get round the corner. I haven’t been back.

Anyway, I was in a bit of a mood when I left. Since the Boy had previously said that he’d make dinner, I phoned him to tell him I was coming back. “Call me when you get to junction 12 of the motorway” was his response. This was unusual, but since it’s about ten minutes away I figured that he was trying to time dinner to be ready when I walked through the door (I have given up on doing that – there’s always a traffic jam and then something ends up overcooked or cold. But I digress…). So I did.

When I got home, the house was immaculate, there were candles burning, and the Boy was clutching a little square box.

Oh. My. God.

We’d talked about marriage, so the question wasn’t totally out of the blue, but the timing was a beautiful surprise.

I said yes.

Then we went for dinner at our favourite restaurant. I had mozzarella salad, he had seared tuna, we shared a rare chateaubriand and a huge bucket of chips. We drank champagne and Languedoc and babbled about the future like excited children.

The next day, Friday, we went to a wedding and told his family. The day after, we went to another wedding and told mine. On Sunday we had 1st of August raclette with my mum and dad (it’s the day we conveniently remember that we’re Swiss in order to eat too much cheese). On Monday we drove home after enjoying fish and chips at a favourite haunt in Glasgow, where I was very touched that the waitress remembered and congratulated me, despite my not having been there for about five years.

I didn’t lose any weight that week, somewhat unsurprisingly, nor really for the next four or five. August brought a new set of people to see every weekend, each of whom wanted to celebrate with us. Which on the one hand is lovely, but on the other does lead to excesses. The month culminated with a three-day weekend where we invited everybody over for a six-mile country walk during the day followed by a party in the evening. Both events were lovely, and we were incredibly touched to see so many of our friends – 21 over the course of the day – turn out to celebrate with and congratulate us.

Looking at my spreadsheet I can see that I gained half a pound that week, bringing me back to half a pound down from the weight I was that day I went to the dentist. September was supposed to be the ‘getting back on it’ month – the partying was over and real life (and wedding planning) were back. Plus there was the 10K coming up.

Ah. I didn’t mention the 10K, did I? After running one in mid-July, I got all excited about running again and persuaded the Boy that we should enter another, on September 12th. It was 8 weeks away, plenty of time to train!

Or, as it turns out, plenty of time to, er, not run for seven weeks. I had been doing plenty of other exercise (just not quite enough to do more than hold steady against August’s excesses) but was still feeling pretty apprehensive.

Anyway, I digress. September. Back on it. Nose to the grindstone. Etc.

Yeah, not so much. Lose, gain, lose, same, same. Net loss for five weeks – 1lb. Net loss since P-day – 1.5lb.

Gah.

I’m getting pretty damn frustrated. This week I did everything right - ate my points, exercised five days out of seven - and was really expecting to lose. When I got on the scales and saw 10 stone 5 again, I’m afraid I cried.

At a WeightWatchers meeting.

In public.

Crap.

My Leader, possibly in an attempt to get me to stop bloody crying, decided that the solution is to ‘take the pressure off’. She’s moved my goal weight to 10 stone 4, the very highest it can be (and, by my maths, actually just outside the healthy BMI range, but never mind). I have mixed feelings about this. I originally set my goal at 9 stone 7 because I wanted getting there to be a genuine achievement, and for it to be a weight where I would be happy. If I got to 9 stone 9 or so and felt that I needed to lose more than another couple of pounds, I would have dropped it. As it is, getting to Goal will be a bit of an anticlimax, because I know that 10.4 will not be a happy weight for me. I have a very small frame and should probably be nearer nine stone than ten, but won’t know until I get there. All I know is that I am not comfortable with the amount of excess flab I am currently toting around.

On the other hand, Goal = free meetings = £20 per month to spend on something else, and there is no reason why I can’t keep losing weight.

So, my resolutions for this week:

• Exercise every day. I aim to do some kind of workout every day in October, and have bought the 30-Day Shred DVD to facilitate this.
• Track properly and fully (ie without strange cryptic notes), so that if I get on the scales next week and it’s all gone wrong again I have something I can show my Leader and discuss.
• Not go nuts on Saturday, when we are going to a wedding fair (free samples) or Sunday, when we have a tasting booked with our caterer (free whole meals).
• Drink 2l of water a day.

I am also aiming to blog at least once a week, on Wednesdays. There may also be other posts on an ad-hoc basis, but I need a minimum structure to work to.

I hope you all have good, successful weeks.

A long, long time ago...

... I wrote a post about goals for April, before merrily jetting off on a two-week holiday.

Which, thanks to that bloody volcano, turned into a three-and-a-half-week holiday. As somebody pointed out, some people are in the Big Brother house for less time than that. And with 10 of us together sometimes it felt a bit like Big Brother. But I've finally made it back to soggy green Britain, so let's see how those goals shaped up (warning: contains excuses):

Early April goals

• Try to exercise 3 times a week for at least half an hour.  Yeah... not so much. There was always a good reason not to go for a run. Like "I'm sleepy: I need sleep." "I just ate breakfast.:" "It's 2pm. It's too hot." "I'm already drunk." Verdict: entirely own-fault FAIL.

• Improve my swimming. It was not actually that hot, at least in the first part of the holiday, and at the beginning of April the pools hadn't had a chance to warm up properly. My non-mobile breaststroke didn't keep me warm enough and I can't swim at all when I'm shivering. Verdict: partially climate-imposed FAIL.
• Get some serious R&R. Sat in the sun, drank about 2831457 brandy sours and generally did some hardcore relaxing. Verdict: WIN. 
• Eat reasonably.  Er, yeah. About that. Cypriot restaurants believe that a vastly overfed customer is a happy customer. We kept eating Meze, which at times felt like the steak-eating contest Homer Simpson got into with a trucker. Most of the party put on an appreciable amount of weight after being there for nearly a month. Verdict: OH DEAR.

Late April goals

• Gym/other exercise 3 times a week. I managed to break my big toe on the day we were supposed to come home, in a manner so boring I won't repeat it here. I'm yet to find any exercise other than swimming that doesn't hurt, and my issues with swimming are well-documented. Verdict: excusable FAIL.
• WeightWatchers.  Wasn't in the country.
• Blog 4 times a week. Didn't have a computer.
• Get 8 hours' sleep a night. Well, I certainly managed that one.

So, in short, the only goals achieved were, er, the ones that involved not doing much. Still, the circumstances were exceptional. May will be a month of achievement!

I would highly recommend Cyprus as a holiday destination, though, although perhaps not for 25 days... And if you do go, I can give you some truly wondrous restaurant recommendations!

FAIL

So, I had loads to do at work today and planned to stay late. But about 5 I just wasn't feeling the office as a place to get work done, so I thought "Sod it, I'll get the normal train and work at home. Maybe I'll go to the gym, as well" (because of course I didn't go last night). So I tidied up the bombsite that was my hotdesk (seriously, how do I mess them up so much in three days?) and bagged up my laptop and all my files and dragged them to the station and got on the train.

You know how sometimes you're running through what you've just done in your head, and you realise that there's something that wasn't there that should have been? Well, about halfway home I realised that I remembered taking my house keys out of my handbag to unchain my laptop from the desk, but not putting them back in... one phonecall to a late-working colleague confirms that they are, indeed, marooned on my desk. And of course the Boy is in France. The only other spare set are with his parents sixty miles away.

Typically I realised this just after the big station with lots of trains back into town. I rejected getting off at Nowheresville 1 to wait up to an hour for a train back in favour of going on to Nowheresville 2 (my stop) to collect my car and drive back. So I drove an extra 65 miles and got home two and a half hours later than I should have done. And then I ate a load of granola out of the box

Work FAIL. Exercise FAIl. General not-being-a-disorganised-fool FAIL. Slight diet FAIL (slight because hey, it wasn't the whole packet).

Oh well, we live and learn. I hope.