On the path to a healthier me!

From the Weight Watchers website I saw this helpful article (click here for link):

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One of our Community users asked for advice on what to do after she comes home from work and waits for her significant other to arrive a few hours later so they can eat dinner together.

She hit a nerve on the boards: Wanting to eat as soon as we get home from work is something a lot of us can relate to. Read some of our favorite tips and strategies from the posts (seven pages!) on the Message Boards.

Grab a healthy snack!
“Have some no or low POINTS value snacks available, so you’re not famished when you finally eat dinner,” says BUSYBLONDE1. “Try fresh fruit or veggies, a half of a sandwich…the possibilities are endless. Stay in the comfort zone—don’t let yourself get to the point where you’re so hungry that you lose control of your eating.”

She hit a nerve on the boards: Wanting to eat as soon as we get home from work is something a lot of us can relate to. Read some of our favorite tips and strategies from the posts (seven pages!) on the Message Boards.

“Drink hot tea, eat a piece of 2-percent cheese, a single serving of raw almonds, yogurt, or go for a walk around your neighborhood,” suggests Community user JACMIC.

Community user ROBIN811 says, “One of my favorites is a Wasa cracker spread with a wedge of Light Laughing Cow [cheese]. You could spread on some hummus, too, or have some hummus with assorted veggies. I also love grape tomatoes as a snack. And the various 100-calorie packs, if you can eat them slowly, are also good. The Vitatops are good too.”

How about a steaming bowl of soup? Community user TINA@HOME enjoys a bowl of the Weight Watchers Zero POINTS value soup with one tablespoon of grated parmesan cheese to boost the flavor. TINA@HOME also said, “Another member suggested a thinly sliced Granny Smith apple sprinkled with sugar-free cherry Jell-O. It really does remind me of a candied apple.”

“My sister used to teach and said this was the worst time for her too. She always kept egg whites around and would make an egg-white omelet for a POINTS value of 1 to tide her over, and this was her favorite snack. I have also tried this and it really takes the edge off your hunger,” said BOGEY82.

Pack an afternoon pick-me-up.
A lot of Community users suggested a late-afternoon snack, either at work or on your commute home. User PSOYSAL said, “You sound just like me! After walking in the door after work, I was starving and would grab the first thing I saw—like cookies, an ice cream bar, etc. Now I bring a giant apple with me in the morning and keep it in the car. On my commute home, I eat my apple. It really has worked for me.”

“I take a bag of baby carrots with me to work, and eat them on the way home. At home, carrots never seem like they would [satisfy] my hunger, but when they’re all you have, you eat them and realize that they really do help,” said JESSWOO.

Engage in a non-food related activity.
How about doing something else to take your mind off of eating? Community user AIDYD67 suggests, “Take a long bubble bath, join a fitness class, surround yourself with non-food activities, read a book or crochet.”

“Since you have time, after work would be a great time to get some exercise in. Go to the gym, find a workout tape you enjoy or go for a walk. Then, have your tea and maybe some veggies, a salad a low POINTS value snack,” said UNADILLASC.

“Even though I am in my mid-30s and a female professional, I bought a Wii video game system which requires that you move around while playing it, and I placed it in my basement. I really don’t like to eat down there so that distraction helped a lot. No amount of willpower worked as long as I was sitting on the couch,” said Community user MILLS379.

Eat dinner right away!
It’s OK to eat a portion of your meal—or all of it—first and still spend quality time with your significant other at the dinner table later. Community user JOIELANE said, “I have the same issue. I get home at 5:30 p.m. and my husband doesn’t get home until 7 p.m. I go to the gym after work, but on the nights I don’t, I cut my dinner in half, eat half of it before he gets home and save the other half to sit and have dinner with him. Sometimes I walk the dog between my mini meals to help jump–start my metabolism! It’s worked so far, and I seem to eat less of the second half of my dinner because I’m not famished.”

“Frankly, I would have dinner. I am also up at 4:30 a.m. and we have dinner at 5:00 p.m. This isn’t a case of the boring munchies, this is hunger. There are very few meals that cannot be reheated for [your guy]. You can sit with him and have a cup of tea,” suggested OATMEALLUNCH.

Another great article I Found on the Weight Watchers site about making healthier food choices while at work… link to full article here.

Dieters who otherwise make healthy food choices can find themselves sabotaged at the office. You can strike back, says Milton Stokes, MPH, RD, chief dietician at New York City’s St. Barnabas Hospital and a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, by planning ahead and creating a strategy.

Here’s where office fat and calories hide out and how to avoid them.

Avoiding Food Landmines
Every workplace has them: a dish of chocolate kisses, a reappearing plate of doughnuts or bagels, or an ever-present box of leftover pizza. Research published by Brian Wansink, Cornell University food psychologist and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think (Bantam, 2006), shows just how dangerous those little treats are: Indulging in the office candy bowl can pack on the calories and ultimately cause a weight gain.

What to do: Make a stash of your own. “Make sure you have healthy snacks on hand so you can avoid the temptation,” says Stokes. Stokes suggests homemade trail mix tossed with a few nuts and dried fruits, or cookies such as gingersnaps, graham crackers or animal crackers.

Eating Out, Ordering In
Another weight-gain pitfall is the endless stream of work lunches, either eaten out or ordered in. Such meals often leave you with few healthy choices and thousands of calories gained from mayonnaise and salad dressing alone. A typical fast food lunch often contains enough calories to blow a person’s POINTS® values allotment for an entire day.

What to do: Plan ahead to avoid the most fattening fare. You can eat with the pack, but keep your portion sizes small and order condiments on the side, using them sparingly. Stokes recommends snacking on something filling and nutritious beforehand to cut your hunger. Try a handful of almonds or a low-fat yogurt. Never show up to work without fueling first: People who skip breakfast are more likely to overdo it at lunch.

Soft Drink, Big Belly
Soft drinks and energy drinks can soak up your daily POINTS Target quickly. “They are just empty, wasted calories being racked up,” says Stokes. With a soda, energy or sports drink, it’s easy to consume more than 200 calories.

What to do: Buy a sporty water bottle and keep it filled with H2O on your desk. “A glass of water and a quick munch on a high-fiber, whole-grain cereal bar with a fruit filling is much better [than a sports or energy drink],” says Stokes.

Fuggedaboutit
You can stand there and stare through the glass panel for an hour, but you’ll be lucky to find one item in a vending machine that is worth the calories and fat it delivers.

What to do: Avoid the vending machine altogether. Or, Stokes suggests looking for whole-wheat pretzels, whole-grain low-fat crackers or low-fat microwave popcorn.

About the Writer
Joe McGurk is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Stuff magazine, The New York Times, and The New York Post.

In Texas it’s hard to give up Mexican food – well, it’s impossible – so I thought I’d share this article I found on the Weight Watchers website by Hungry Girl, a regular contributor at the site – here is the link to the original article.

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¡Ay, caramba! Mexican food can be loaded with calories and POINTS® values if you aren’t careful with how you order. HG serves up restaurant survival tips.

HG’s Mexican Food Tip Sheet

Two ‘Fer Tacos
Order two soft tacos, but eat only one tortilla. Stuff the insides from the second taco into your first one (ignoring the extra tortilla). You’ll save dozens of calories and get to eat a big fat taco.

Side Step Strategies
Avoid sides like rice, cheesy beans, and fatty tortilla chips. Instead, balance your meal with veggies, a green salad, or black beans.

Oil-Free Zone
Order your shrimp or chicken fajitas cooked without oil. Swap all the fatty sides (like sour cream, guac, etc.) for a bowl of lettuce, tomatoes and a side of salsa. The end result is a fajita salad complete with grilled veggies and more.

Shell Shock
Just say no to those infamous taco salad shells. A small to medium-sized shell can easily pack more than 370 calories and 21 grams of fat. Order your salad shell-free and pile on the salsa and pico de gallo instead of fatty dressing.

Fresco-Rama
When ordering at Taco Bell, ask for your food “fresco style” and magically your order will come with chopped tomatoes, onions and cilantro (a.k.a. fiesta salsa) instead of The Bell’s usual cheese and sauce toppings. Feel free to use this trick at your favorite Mexican haunts. Just ask them for pico de gallo on the side instead of smothering your dish in cheese and sauce.

HG’s Mexican Hot List
Salsa/pico de gallo
Lettuce
Taco sauce
Black beans
Grilled chicken
Jalapenos and cilantro

HG’s Mexican Not List
Guacamole
Cheese
Sour cream
Tortilla chips/strips/shells
Mexican rice
Con Queso Dip

More About Hungry Girl
Hungry Girl, aka Lisa Lillien, distributes her tips, tricks and takes on new food products through her daily emails and Web site. Check out Hungry-Girl.com.

This article is straight off the Weight Watchers site and I wanted to post it here to share… (link to article)

“People struggling to lose weight often talk about their lack of willpower, as if willpower is something that you are either born with, or not,” says Palma Posillico, vice president of training and development for Weight Watchers International. “Losing weight is all about ‘wantpower’—about recognizing that you already have all the resources you need to get what you want.”

These resources include knowing what you want, knowing how to get it and knowing how to keep yourself motivated along the way. Here are some strategies to help you discover all three.

1. Plot out your goals.
It helps to have an action plan to keep you on track. “Storyboarding” is a technique used by movie directors to sketch out a plotline, frame by frame, before they start filming. In a similar way, you can make a blueprint for success by breaking your goal down into parts. Say you’ve given yourself three months to lose 10 pounds. Make a chart of the timeline and build it up, week by week, with details of shopping strategies, exercise tips and so forth—anything that helps make your goal concrete and achievable.

2. Envision your success.
Athletes mentally rehearse every step of their winning routine to make it feel attainable. In the same way, you can make your own goals as real as possible by visualizing yourself succeeding in particular scenarios, like making the right choices when dining out. Revisit these scenarios often, and think about how good you’ll feel about achieving your goals.

3. Don’t sabotage yourself.
Many of us unconsciously sabotage ourselves with self-destructive thoughts such as “I’ll never lose weight.” Whenever you catch yourself thinking this way, try to substitute more constructive statements; for example, “I haven’t lost as much weight as I would like, but I can change that. I’m going to start by setting aside time to exercise three times each week.”

4. Be your own cheerleader.
Some people believe it’s modest to put themselves down. But you wouldn’t call a friend “fat” or “ugly,” would you? You deserve the same respect, so try becoming your own best friend. Celebrate your progress, and try not to obsess about setbacks.

One way to do this is to make a list of your accomplishments in every area of your life (personal, professional and physical). List the talents and skills that enabled you to achieve them, and look at this list often. Adds Posillico, “Begin a daily journal of everything you did ‘right’ today.” You’ll be surprised how quickly it adds up!

5. Avoid being a perfectionist.
Try not to think in all-or-nothing terms—that you’ve blown your diet, for example, simply because you’ve overdone it at one meal. “We need to be kinder to ourselves, and learn to regard setbacks as learning opportunities,” says Posillico.

6. Follow through with your goals.
Believing you can achieve your weight-loss goals is important, but you have to act too, by changing your eating habits, increasing your physical activity and so on. You can’t just think yourself slim, but you can think yourself into the right frame of mind to optimize your prospects.

7. Affirm your self-belief.
Feel your confidence wavering? One way to reinforce your self-belief is with positive affirmations: simple, self-validating statements repeated as often as possible, preferably daily. Try coming up with one or two of your own, and remember to keep them positive. You can—and you will—succeed, as long as you believe you can do it!

Found this great article on the Weight Watchers site about eating sushi while on a diet…

1. The Roll Truth
Fewer rolls = a better idea. Why? Because rolls are loaded with rice. And rice is loaded with calories. Also, avoid anything deep-fried or mixed with mayo at all costs. And feel free to split your roll(s) with a pal!

2. Miso Hungry
Afraid you’ll gobble up too much sushi? Start your meal with a cup of miso soup. It’s super-low in calories (around 50, for a POINTS® value 1), typically fat-free, and it fills you up. Studies show that people who start their meals with a broth-based soup end up eating 20 percent fewer calories at that meal. Awesome!

3. What’s your number, cucumber?
Ever hear of sunomono salad? It’s thinly sliced cucumbers in rice vinegar, it’s sooooo good, and extremely low in calories. Ask your sushi chef to make you one of these salads and ask him to toss in some shrimp and crab—you’ll have a completely guilt-free, filling addition to your meal. Sometimes I’ll just get a ginormous shellfish-packed sunomono and a cup of miso soup for lunch. Mmmmmm!

4. Sushi Dictionary at a Glance
Words to avoid at all costs—”tempura” (a batter-fried fat fest), “dynamite” (baked in a glob of mayo), “crunch” (another cute way of saying something is fried) and “spider” (typically a greasy, fried crab item).

5. Be a sucker for sashimi.
When I eat sushi out I tend to stick with sashimi. Sashimi is basically just sushi without rice (or raw fish on a plate!). Sashimi is often pricier than sushi because you get more pieces in an order. So if you want to have more variety, or save a little money, order sushi pieces, and only eat half of the rice. See below for more rice tips.

6. Get the rice right.
If brown rice is available, stick with that. And don’t be shy, whatever rice you order, feel free to ask your sushi chef to serve your meal with less rice. Typically sushi chefs are happy to accommodate this request. It’s a neat little trick that really helps.

7. Whassup, Wasabi?
Mixing a little wasabi into your soy sauce (or add a dollop to your sushi if you’re brave!) can be great. Spicy food is good for you, and it helps fill you up faster. Some experts even say that adding spice to food can actually speed up your metabolism a bit—not a bad thing!

8. Friendly Finds
More guilt-free friends you’ll find at your local sushi spot include edamame (a 1/2 cup serving of shelled edamame contains 127 calories, 6g fat and 4g fiber, for a POINTS value 2), ginger (great for digestion and virtually calorie-free) and seaweed salad (typically about 50 calories and a POINTS value of 1).

Happy sushi-ing!