Healthy Eating

I've so far lost 7.8kg overall, but I plateaued over the holidays and have neither lost any more nor gained anything back. Following the advice of my mother and the Weight Watchers site, I've switched plans from the Points plan to the Core plan.

The points plan operates on the traditional calorie reduction method - every food is allocated a points value based on the number of kilojoules and the amount of saturated fat. You get a certain number of points per day which will provide slightly less than the number of calories you need to maintain your current weight, and voila! Weight loss happens.

The Core plan works by forcing you to skew your food choices all the way up to the healthy end of the scale, and control quantities by tracking your hunger and keeping it within the "comfort zone" of 'slightly hungry' to 'satisfied' (you are supposed to learn to avoid dipping into 'starving' or going over the line into 'stuffed'). After only half a day on it, I feel really positive about it. I think, even more than the Points plan, the Core plan teaches the habits that will lead to sustained long-term healthy eating, even after the weight is lost.

And you don't have to be constantly weighing and measuring and counting, which is awesome! As long as you chose foods from the 'allowed' list, you can eat as much as you need to maintain that hunger comfort level, and you don't starve yourself or overeat. The list is really diverse - good carbohydrates (ie all-bran cereal, pasta and wholegrain bread and potato and so on), lean meats, skim milk, low fat ricotta & cottage cheese, pretty much all vegetables, most fruits except for really wicked ones like avocado, diet soft drinks, cordials, jellies, jams etc, eggs, some cooking sauces, some cooking oils (in small quantities), tea, coffee - it's an amazing list. It's perfectly possible to eat a very satisfying diet without stepping outside the list. For when you do need to step outside it, you get 21 points to spend per week - 3 per day. That could, for example, allow you to have a tablespoon of mayonnaise on your salad, two weight watchers cookies at morning tea and a small glass of wine with dinner. Those little treats can make all the difference as you don't have to feel deprived.

More than any other diet I've seen, the Core plan sets you up to think about good food vs treat food in the way you must think about it if you're going to keep the weight off. Those top-of-the pyramid foods are put right into perspective with this plan, and it reminds you that if you want to eat high-calorie foods, you have to make the amount very small to avoid impacting on your health. A very good precedent to set for life after weight loss!