Weight Watchers and Real Food

For the record, I was awake for 10 whole minutes today before a kid woke up. I didn't even move, I just laid there listening to the silence. Somehow, the older one still sensed that I was awake. She shuffled into the room and I pulled back the covers for her without saying anything. Miraculously, she snuggled between daddy and I and WENT BACK TO SLEEP.

I enjoyed the snuggle for a few minutes before slipping out of bed to try for that forbidden peaceful cup of coffee again. Just as I was adding the milk I heard the baby yelling out for a "baba". She's 15 months old so I really need to wean her off of it...but today is not that day. Giving her a bottle bought me ten whole minutes of quiet. Sweet, blissful quiet with nothing to do other than sip my HOT coffee and read Pinterest. When she finished the bottle we just snuggled and were silly together for a half hour while everyone else slept. These are the moments we just don't get enough of. Today is going to be a good day.

Low natural lighting in the kitchen made these shots a little fuzzy, but I love them anyway

I thought I'd take a few minutes this morning to share some advice about following Weight Watchers and sticking to an unprocessed, real food diet. A little over a year ago I joined WW for the first time. As I had an exclusively breastfeeding newborn I was allotted 46 points plus per day. I have to be honest, between the diet and breastfeeding I was dropping weight like crazy even eating oreos and Dunkin Donuts wake-up wraps on a daily basis. I went from post-baby weight to pre-baby weight in about a month and from post-baby weight to my lowest adult weight since I was in college in less than 6 months.

Then, the seasons started to change and the stress of selling a house, building a house, the holidays, and moving set in. I wasn't get fresh food from the Farmer's Market. My Weight Watchers subscription was cancelled. I was not going to the gym. The baby was nursing less. I was eating more processed foods. Nearly every successfully lost pound crept back on.

A year after my initial success I decided to start back up again. As I no longer have gads of points each day I need to focus a lot more on choosing "good" foods. Foods that are high in nutrients, satisfying, and that I "feel good" about eating. Here are my tips on combining a typical lower point (26) Weight Watcher's plan with real food ideas:

1. Real the labels! A trap a lot people following WW fall into is buying everything low fat or fat free because the point calculation is lower. This is a horrible idea. To save yourself a few points you will be filling your body with chemicals, additives, and fillers. You can find *some* reduced fat products that are only made with real ingredients (most dairy products), but you need to be extremely discerning and real your labels.
2. Plan ahead. If you have kids, or a job, or both you need to have your meals planned out or you will find yourself struggling to stay on the plan. Check back later this week for some easy meal plans to get through the week days.
3. Always have fruits and veggies on hand. Making healthy foods available will make you much more likely to eat them. For busy times of the day, having your produce prepped ahead of time is key - cut melon, rinsed grapes, easy to peel clementines, bananas, rinsed salad greens, sliced peppers, celery sticks, cherry tomatoes. For calmer times I find having a fruit I need to "work on" for a snack makes it more satisfying - grapefruit, cherries, kiwi.
4. Care about the food, not the diet. If you spend your time thinking about how safe and whole the foods you are eating are instead of calculating points on all the foods you know you shouldn't have, you will naturally make good choices! If you read the ingredient label on that box of Cheez-its you won't care that you can get away with 1/2 a serving for 3 points. You'll realize there are so many things in there that you don't want in your body it will be easy to chose a tablespoon of fresh ground almond butter and banana slices instead.
5. Splurge for real. Instead of planning myself a mini splurge every day (one cookie, a handful of chocolate chips, etc) which just ended up reintroducing all the "bad stuff" back into my system I plan one real splurge on a high quality item - a good piece of dark chocolate (not Hershey kisses), a handmade baked good (not Dunkin Donuts), a chunk of good full fat cheese (never eat the fat free stuff!), a few slices of good quality bacon (not turkey bacon), etc. 

Happy Sunday and Happy Eating!

Real Food Update and Drink Recipes

My sweet baby bear helping me unpack our goodies from the Farmer's Market last weekend

You've heard me talk a lot about real food lately, but I have to admit that my commitment to the cause waxes and wanes depending on how crazy life is. In general, I'd like to think we've made a lot of progress. We haven't purchased milk or eggs that weren't local in a long time and have far fewer processed junk foods in the house. My husband and kid are still consumers of processed beverages, but I've cut down my Diet Pepsi consumption from 2 (or more!) cans per day to a can or two per week and replaced it with home brewed iced teas and carbonated water that I make with my SodaStream. Our dinners have been well rounded and include lots of fresh local fruits and veggies.

BUT, we still aren't there yet. We tend to fall short during all the in-between times. When the girls and I are out running errands and it's close to meal time...when I miss lunch and am starving as I drive home...when we're all stressed and craving comfort food. It's SO easy to give in and stop at a drive-thru. I pretended I'm still doing a good job by avoiding McDonald's/Taco Bell/Wendy's and only giving in to Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks. Today I'm publicly calling myself out; it's not good enough! 

For the next month (until my Mud Run on October 5th!) I am pledging myself to avoid all fast food. No more iced coffee. No more wake-up wraps. No more cake pops. None of it. I'll let you know how it goes...

If anyone else wants to join me on the real food journey, here are a few simple real food drink recipes you should definitely try out!

Watermelon Mint infused Water

Add 6 oz cubed watermelon and one sprig of mint to a pitcher and fill with water.
Allow to infuse in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Brewed Peach Iced Tea

Slice 4 very ripe peaches. 

Boil 6 cups of water in a saucepan. 

Remove from the heat and add 6 black tea bags. Infuse covered for 5 minutes.

Take out the tea bags and add the sliced peaches. Allow to infuse for 10-15 minutes.

Using a potato masher, squash the the peaches into pulp.

Rest the mixture for 5 minutes.

Strain the tea through a fine mesh sieve into a pitcher and chill.

*If it is too strong for you, add a little bit more water to the pitcher*