A Food Based Reality Check... and this week's weigh-in.

It's taken me a few days to post about this week's weigh-in because initially I was quite disappointed.  I needed to take a few days and work out what happened and how I felt about it before I posted about it.

I lost half a pound this week.  I won't say "only" half a pound because I used to get told off for that by my last Weight Watchers leader, but I can't deny having been disappointed.  I'd stuck within my daily and weekly points, eaten all of my weekly points but no more, tracked everything I'd eaten that week and done a lot more exercise than usual, there was no particular reason for a small loss last week - well, I didn't think there was.

The following morning I was making my breakfast and inspiration struck - most mornings I eat a bagel with low fat cream cheese for my breakfast.  For the last couple of years I've been buying the same brand, and using the points values in the Weight Watchers database for them since I started back on the plan.

Last week though I got a food order from Sainsbury's and the bagels from their in-store bakery turned out a lot cheaper than our usual brand, so I bought them.  What I didn't notice until it suddenly struck me on Thursday morning was that the ones from Sainsbury's are quite a lot bigger than the branded ones we usually have.  

So, having checked the Weight Watchers database to find out how much each of the branded ones weighs, I put one of the bakery ones on the scales - and was truly horrified.  The branded ones are 85g each and the bakery ones are 120g.  All week I'd been cheerfully pointing them at 6 Pro Points, when I should have been counting 9 Pro Points for each one.  It's not hard to do the maths really.  I have one every morning for breakfast and at the weekend I had one for lunch one day - 8 x 3 = 24.  Over the course of the week I had an additional 24 points that I didn't account for.  Suddenly, light dawns.

The moral of the story is and has to be this - if you buy something new, double check the Pro Points.  You can't simply buy something of a different brand and assume that the Pro Points will be the same as the brand you were using before.  I don't know how many other things could trip people up in this way, but I imagine there are an awful lot of them.  Obviously with some things this doesn't apply - a medium egg is a medium egg, and half a pint of semi skimmed milk is half a pint of semi skimmed milk regardless of the branding - but one bagel is not like another any more than (choosing another item I can think of off the top of my head) one can of tomato soup is like another.  Get out the scales and the calculator, check it, write it down and you'll know for the next time.

If this post stops somebody else from getting caught in the same way it will have been worthwhile!  

So - onwards and upwards now into the new week.  This has been quite a challenging week already, but I'm learning things about myself and the way I think about food from it, which is always helpful and positive.  I'll be back tomorrow, I think. :)