So, I’ve done the unthinkable, at least for someone who loves food as much as I do.
I’ve joined Weight Watchers.
For someone like me, who not only loves food but isn’t grossly overweight, I could not have predicted this. In fact, whenever I thought of Weight Watchers, I thought, “fat people.” As in really fat people, Jerry Springer type stuff. After all, sure, I’m carrying a little extra weight, but I don’t need to pay money to follow a program. All I need to do is eat less and exercise more and I’ll be fine. Moderation, I would preach to myself. That’s the key.
So, for about 15 years I’ve told myself that and the scale has inched steadily upwards. I’m 5’4″ (almost) and my weight hovers around 150 pounds. Certainly not Wal-Mart fat, but consider that I weighed 114 pounds at my high school graduation 23 years ago. Couple that with an astounding family history of weight-related issues and I decided the whole “yeah, yeah, moderation” school of thought wasn’t working for me. I saw my future and it was stretch pants. I got scared. I joined Weight Watchers.
The hard part for me is loving food so much. I am not one of those people who gains weight because I eat emotionally or absent-mindedly. I gained weight because I love food. I love to cook it, love to eat it, hell, I love the smell of it.
That isn’t going to go away, so my goal is to find a way to cook food I actually enjoy eating. I am not the person who makes her brownies with applesauce. No one likes that shit. I will, however, use evaporated milk instead of heavy cream. Sometimes. I’m open-minded like that.
So, please, bear with me as I try to find recipes that I can live with without sending my weight, blood sugar, and cholesterol into national-debt numbers. So far, I’ve found some hope.
Emily Bites and Slender Kitchen are two sites that have WW-friendly recipes (my friend Amanda shared these with me). Slender Kitchen also has some handy information for Trader Joe’s fans, like how many Weight Watchers points are in certain foods and some of the best Trader Joe’s food for those of us trying to do Weight Watchers.
That butternut squash soup, by the way, is tremendous, and that’s not something I say about store soup.
Ever. Except now.
