The Points! Oh, The Points!

For the past week I have been utterly disciplined with my points. 20 points a day, no more no less. It was easy - I ate those wretched frozen meals and counted up the points and stopped when I got to twenty.

And I was faint with hunger and crabby all week.

So - I signed up for WW online, read some recipes, talked with my girlfriends who have done it before, and now I am eating real food again and watching my points.

Monday I slipped up badly, but I will not bore you with the details of my consumption of three giant cheese bagels with rich creamy neufchatel cheese spread lavishly across each carb laden crust. Ahem.

Here are my goals. I am 5'7" and a half. I have always weighed somewhere between 125 and 128 pounds. Always. Well, with the giant exception of pregnancy. Yes, I am a Weight Watchers virgin, but I'm here to tell you that over the course of four pregnancies, averaging fifty pounds in weight gain each, I have actually gained and lost almost 200 pounds in my life. So don't give me crap on the 125 thing - I'm small boned.

Right now I weigh 137 pounds (yikes!!!) and more worrisome, my waist measurement is three inches bigger than it normally is. This bothers me for the reason it should bother all apple-shaped women: heart health. Science has proven the correlation between abdominal fat and heart attack risk, so I am wanting to whittle things down to mitigate my risk for heart problems as I age. Heart disease runs in my family so I am not taking this lightly.

My biggest goal with losing this weight is incorporating more fresh healthy options into my snacking routine. With four kids, I tend to nosh on the crap they can consume, what with their wiry frames and active metabolisms. I need quantity. When I'm working out I can eat a lot, but I have been hit hard with colds and infections this winter, so I need to manage things with food. I am also hoping that with a healthier diet, maybe I won't get so sick each winter.

So today, as my kids ate sliced pears, cookies, milk and kettle chips after school, here is what I snacked on. And guess what? It was DELICIOUS.

I took several large leaves of a vibrant red cabbage and lined a plate with them. Then I shelled one and a half cups of edamame and sprinkled the soy beans over the leaves. Then I liberally spritzed the entire plate with the Wish Bone Asian flavored dressing (at one calorie a spritz!). It was crispy, crunchy and savory - everything I look for in a snack. AND it was pretty - all that purple and bright green. Total points: Two. And I rounded up.

For dinner I had a huge baked potato. I sprayed it with "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" ( yeah - I hate fake food and sprays - but right now I can't spare the olive oil, okay?) then I sprinkled a quarter of a cup of light Mexican blend cheese, slathered it in hot spicy salsa, and topped it with zuccini and mushrooms sauteed in organic olive oil Pam and garlic.

Filling, delicious, and less than five points.