Time to remind myself why I'm a believer!

Yesterday I wrote about how I ran into someone over the weekend who was eating plain chicken, broccoli, and rice to lose weight and how it made me want to share the message that you can eat diverse foods and lose weight.

This is something that I wholeheartedly believe.  I believe it because I lived it.  As you all know, I had a lot of success losing weight in the past couple of years.  It's something I am really proud of and share with people who I feel like I can help inspire or share information with.  However, one of the things I need to do right now is remind myself of how to do that and reteach myself everything I learned over the past couple years.

I've been a fan of Weight Watchers because it teaches you how moderation and all foods can be fit into a healthy diet.  As a person who LOVES food, this is something I need.  I will never be a "food is fuel" type of person because to me, food is more than that.  Food is not just fuel for my body, but it is also a way to experience the world, learn about cultures, show love, celebrate, make friends, be social, AND it can be freaking delicious!

Earlier this year I tried a week of eating on a version of the "paleo" diet.  For a week I only ate green vegetables, meat, eggs, almonds, and green tea.  Oh wait, I "cheated" one night and had some carrot sticks.

Yeah, that's right, I "cheated" on carrots while seeing a movie.  To me, that's not living.

I had such a hard time going out with friends.  There were impromptu happy hours and weekend outings -- nothing excessive.  But it was killing me to be sitting at a beer hall with no real options of food to eat.   Although I was not hungry throughout the week and I did lose weight, I gave this diet up after a week because it was not something I saw as sustainable in my life.  I was grumpy and miserable throughout the week, I was unhappy, and I annoyed the heck out of my friends.  I know that I was going through some "withdrawal" symptoms from the lack of sugar and that some of that would go away with time.  But I didn't want to give up carbs, sweets, and going out for a drink with my friends for the rest of my life.  And with that sort of diet, as soon as you go back to your old ways of eating, you put the weight back on.  Which I didn't want to go through.

So I am sticking with Weight Watchers.  And hoping to prove to myself yet again that it works.  And I'm also taking with me some of the best things that I learned by my one week of eating "paleo."  One of those things is taking the time to really plan ahead.  That whole week I ate eggs for breakfast instead of my usual granola bar or Nutrigrain bar.  And ya know what?  I liked it!

This morning I cooked some egg whites before I went to work in the morning and when I got there used the toaster to heat up a whole wheat english muffin (same kind I used on my burger last night) with the egg whites and  a piece of fat free cheese.  I had a delicious little breakfast sandwich at my desk that totalled in at 4 Weight Watchers PointsPlus!

Sorry... forgot to photograph :)

After work I took my body, still achey from my run yesterday, and did a 1 hour 15 minute yoga class that felt GREAT!  I feel so much better tonight and am feeling ready to run again tomorrow.  Happy Monday everyone!