Just. Breathe.

What it is, ain't exactly clear... [If you're old enough to get the song reference, congratulations!] Let's just do a list. It goes nicely with my complete lack of focus. A. Is fall really going to show up? I am so excited! The windows are open, it's supposed to rain occasionally, and we might not get out of the seventies all week. Given that it's October, bring it on! 2. This family is on Weight Watchers. If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know it's been a couple of years. Sadly, the weight came back on when I lost focus and allowed a stressful job to stop me from doing what I knew to do. It's been a week, and I'm probably down a couple of pounds. We're also going to boot camp three times a week -- so I can safely say there's a little competitive spirit in the house. Everyone is tracking for themselves and so far no one is admitting to really falling off the points wagon. Just tonight, the comment was heard that...

I am not a nutritionist. I am not a dietitian. I am just someone who's been overweight to varying degrees most of her life, who has tried most types of eating plans, and who continues to try to get to a healthy weight. At the moment, tracking my food on Weight Watchers tells me I get somewhere around 1000 and 1200 calories a day. What does that look like in food? A few notes first: I don't drink soft drinks. I used to drink Diet Coke, but I've cut that out, too. I drink water, and I have two mugs (which equates to 4 cups) of coffee in the morning, before 11am. I've added a cup of green tea most afternoons, with one packet of splenda and some lemon. Basically, my liquid is water, since I've eliminated wine from the menu for the foreseeable future. (*sob) I measure out my half-gallon of water every morning and refill my water bottle from that. If you're familiar with WW points, there's a bank of points for the week to be used for splurges. I try to avoid ...

What I've never understand about the Weight Watchers program (in any version, and I've done them all) is that it does not count calories. Anyone who has ever dieted has memorized the "calories in/calories out" mantra, but here's a hugely popular and successful program that completely ignores the calorie count of food. How can that even work? [For anyone who has not tried or read about WW, the current system counts fat, carbs, fiber, and protein, and assigns a point value to the serving of food. You're given a set number of points to use per day, with additional ones for activity minutes, and a bonus bank for the week. Stay within your points, and you'll lose weight.] So I tried an experiment. For about a week, I tracked my food on WW and on sparkpeople (dot) com -- an awesome FREE site that I highly recommend. I entered the same foods, the same quantities in order to see what, if any, correlation there might be. WW gives 26 points a day. Sparkpeople ...