My Weight Watchers is Not the Same as Your Weight Watchers

As some of you may remember, I have tried Weight Watchers several times.  I had success after my first two children on Weight Watchers, except I always got pregnant while doing the program and had to stop the program.  But when I joined again a few years ago after moving to Tennessee, I ran into some problems.  First, I was still new to town, and the group did not quite have that welcoming feel to it.  Second, we had already made the switch to more natural/organic foods.  So I included eating 'real foods' or 'whole foods' within my POINTS and I was ostracized at the meetings because I would not drink the diet drinks or eat the 'low-fat' and 'fat-free' versions of food.  And finally, when Weight Watchers switched to the POINTSPlus program, I began gaining weight.

I want to lose weight, but I don't want to do it by eating chemicals, processed foods, or genetically modified foods.  So this month when a group of my friends decided to join Weight Watchers online and be each other's accountability group, I finally decided to join them, but this time while eating 'real foods.'  This time I am with a group of ladies -- my friends -- who accept me as I am and will encourage me in my convictions, regardless if they feel the same.  I am going to try this program for three months, and if I do not see a change, I will stop and reassess the situation.

Now one may ask, as my well-meaning pragmatic husband did, if you gained weight last time on Weight Watchers, why would you try it again?  Well, someone told me they felt I gained last time because fruit changed from being counted to zero points instead, so maybe I was eating too many fruits.  This theory made sense to me, so instead of using my extra weekly allowed points, I am going to apply those points to the fruit I eat.  I figure if I don't eat those extra weekly points, and I do eat fruit, then it will all balance out.  And also, the big thing about Weight Watchers meetings is to have a support group.  They say people lose more weight when they attend meetings.  While I did not feel like I had a support group within my local meetings, I know I have one now among my friends; and I know they will ask me how I am doing and they will hold me accountable.

So my Weight Watchers plan looks different than my friends', and that is okay.  I am eating good foods, and making sure I don't eat too many of them.  And now the online tools include editable recipes (that means I can change the recipes to include butter, whole or low-fat milk, and real foods instead of diet versions - or take out ingredients my family doesn't like and add ones we do) and it will calculate my points without me having to enter the entire recipe in the recipe builder!  This is a huge advantage this time around!  And do you know what?  Changing the recipes to include real foods does not increase the points values all that much.  And when I change beef to venison - I get to watch the points value go down!

Now, not everyone needs to go on Weight Watchers, and not everyone is ready to dive into eating whole foods.  However, I have had quite a few questions from friends and acquaintances about how and where to make changes towards an all-natural or organic diet.  First, as those of you who know me can attest, you will not automatically lose weight by changing to an organic diet.  I can take organic flour, organic sugar, organic free-range eggs, organic Cocoa, and organic butter and make the best brownies you've tasted - but they still will not be healthy.  There is a difference in changing to an organic diet and changing to a healthy all-natural/organic diet.  The key: moderation.  That is something I battled for a long time, and I will probably still battle occasionally.  I am not too much into sweets and desserts these days, but my current vice is sweet tea.  Now on to how to change your way of eating!

I encourage you to make one change at a time.  For instance, stop eating fast food or stop drinking soft drinks with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).  Do you know when I quit eating fast food (which was already not that often anyway) and switched Dr. Pepper (the only source of HFCS in my diet) with all-natural root beer, I lost twenty - count them: 20 - pounds… without changing anything else in my diet?  And, no, I wasn't exercising, either.  It did not come off immediately.  I think my body waited a few weeks just to make sure I was serious, then over the course of one or two months those pounds came off without me even realizing or thinking about it.  (I will admit I was ill and not eating much for a period of time, but when I wouldn't eat for a few days I made up for it the over the next few days).  But more important than losing weight is being healthy.

I really encourage you to make one change at a time for four reasons, and I am telling you these from experience, because I jumped into the deep end instead of slowly wading in.

1.  Slowly making changes allows you to slowly adjust your budget.  It *will* go up -- count on it.  (Literally  ;-)  But as we watched our grocery budget go up, we noticed our prescription medicine budget going down and realized fewer visits to the pediatrician.
2.  You will not be overwhelmed if you make one change at a time.
3.  It is easier on your family if you slowly change what you are feeding them.
4.  Once your body gets used to eating whole foods, it will not want to turn back.  If you need to switch back to a 'Standard American Diet' (SAD) for financial or other reasons, you will not be able to once your body is used to eating only the good foods.  Processed foods with preservatives will literally make you sick after eating them for a few days.  Oy!  That is not the gastrointestinal experience your family wants to have!  But it is your body responding to the 'junk' you suddenly decided to reintroduce to it.  It is your body's way of saying, "Hey!  I want the real stuff - the stuff that was created for me!  Not that stuff made by engineers and scientists!"

If you already don't eat fast food or drink conventional soft drinks, eliminate all HFCS from your diet.  Or choose from one of the following things to change:

• Drink plenty of water!  Try it different ways: with real fruit flavor - the kind you get when YOU add fruit to the water, not flavor from a bottle or packet; ice cold water; warm or hot water (I enjoy a tea-like drink of just hot water with lemon); drink water with or without a straw; try keeping a pitcher in the refrigerator with the amount of water you want to drink daily so you can keep track of how much you actually drink (this is also the best way to have real fruit flavor water - just do not ruin it with sweeteners).

• Cook at home.  It is cheaper and healthier, and you actually know what is in your food.  While I enjoy eating out as much as everyone else (and much more than my husband), dining at a restaurant should be a special treat, not something you do several nights a week. You will never get healthy if you are eating out as often as you are eating at home.

• Read labels!  If the ingredient list contains something you cannot pronounce, don't buy it!  The fewer the ingredients, the better.

• Stop eating diet foods!  God provided us with the foods we need - and even some we want, like sweeteners.  Stop eating and drinking artificial sweeteners and other chemicals.  Despite what the manufacturers say and regardless of whether or not they decrease your waistline, they are not healthy.

• Eliminate artificial preservatives in your diet - this means buy all your processed or pre-made foods from the all-natural section in your grocery store, or stop by an all-natural grocery store such as Whole Foods, Wild Oats, or EarthFare.  Again I suggest changing one type of food at a time.  And I will warn you, cereal is where you will notice the most difference in taste - you have to watch your brands or you'll think you are eating cardboard.

• Bake your own bread or buy artisan or bakery bread - even bread from the grocery store bakery is better than what is shipped in from factories.  And try whole-wheat or multigrain breads (or flours for home baking)… stay away from enriched and bleached flours.  My favorite for bread baking is King Arthur flours.  However, some of my friends prefer to grind their own grain.

• Buy organic produce.  While it is not always feasible to find what you are looking for in your regular grocery store, if you go to an all-natural grocery or a farmer's market you can usually get in-season organic produce for the same price as conventional produce at the supermarket.  You may want to consider joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where you pay a set price for a share in the farmer's produce each week.  But check into what they grow, first!  It would be better to buy from a store than to waste food you've paid for because the farmer is growing a lot things you and your family will not eat.  And they usually require you to commit to a season or a year, often requiring payment up front, so you'd be wasting your money, too.

• Try Greek yogurt.  Better yet, try making your own yogurt and sweeten with fruit or honey, or just a little organic sugar and vanilla.  Frankly, I sometimes actually like plain yogurt when I make it at home, and you can even make a lovely Greek yogurt at home.  And while it does make it easier in my opinion to use a yogurt maker, you do not have to buy any special equipment to make your own yogurt.

• Switch to all-natural meat with no antibiotics, no growth hormones, and no fillers or solutions added.  This will be the biggest hit to the wallet (unless you already have a hunting license), so you may want to change one type of meat at a time.  Buy grass-fed beef, and if you can afford it and can find it, buy organic.  The cheapest way to purchase beef is straight from the farmer.  A side of beef (or half-beeve or half beef, all terms used for half the meat of one cow, only I do not know which one is grammatically and agriculturally correct) will provide enough beef for my family of five for around one year.  At my house, we have replaced most of our beef with wild game such as venison, elk, and antelope.  Stock up on the all-natural chicken when it goes on sale - and don't just go by the words 'all-natural' on the labels.  Read to see if there were any growth hormones used.  Was the chicken free-range?  And even if there is nothing stated on the label, if those chicken breasts are bigger than yours, chances are it is not all-natural.

• Only purchase wild-caught fish and seafood.

• Buy farm fresh eggs from cage-free chickens.  Chickens kept in a chicken house/hen house all day or kept in a small outdoor confinement are not getting their natural diet.  Several of my friends keep their own chickens for their eggs.

• Buy locally and get to know your farmer.  Know his farming practices, visit the farm - look for cleanliness.  If a farmer will not tell you how he grows the food he's selling, he is hiding something.  Move on to the next farmer.

• If you live in a state where it is legal, consider raw milk from a dairy farmer who follows organic practices with grass-fed cows (preferably Jersey or Guernsey cows because their A2 beta casein is reportedly easier to digest).  But visit the farm and know the farmer!  The cows should not be crowded and should have plenty of pasture with good quality grass.  The equipment should be in good repair and should be cleaned with extremely hot water.  They should allow you to watch their feeding and milking practices.

• Join a natural foods co-op, like Azure Standard.  Not only will you save by buying in bulk, but you meet like-minded people and gain insight from them.  It is not uncommon to try each other's purchases or to share what products or brands are liked or disliked.

• Adopt a new saying:  You are what you eat eats.  When I was breastfeeding my babies, the food, drinks, and medicines I ingested and the hormones from my body were transferred through my milk to my nursing babies. So why would the milk we drink or the cheese, yogurt, and meat we eat be any different?  We eat to sustain our bodies - and in biology we learn that our digestive system takes the nutrition from our food and sends it to every cell in our body.  Think of the food as the animal it once was - everything it ate or was treated with passes on to you through its milk or through the cells in its muscle that we call meat.  Think of the produce as it was growing - was it fed pesticides and chemicals?  Plants get their nutrition through their roots, and like humans and animals, what they 'eat' is taken throughout the entire body.

Now I need to make the next change - reduce my sugar intake some more and watch my carbs while making sure I am eating enough, but not too much.  I cannot promise that I will keep you updated regularly on how I am doing - you can see my track record with my previous posts - but I will try to jump in here and let you know how things are going (often my updates are after someone asks me about my blog or about my diet, etc… it's an accountability issue as much as a time issue).  What about you?  Are you willing to take a challenge?  Will you make just one change in your diet and see what kind of difference that can make in your life?

Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. 

- Genesis 9:3