The smallest changes are the biggest

Before I started this journey, I had a wildly different outlook on food and eating, as you can imagine. Even when I followed weight watchers, my take away from that program was that you can eat whatever you want, as long as you stay within your points, and get in the minimum amount of fruits/veggies/fiber, etc, that they recommend.

I think I probably took a lot more latitude with the program than they would have wanted. I cut corners around the nutritional requirements, and as long as I stayed within my points, I always did fine losing.

Last year, Alison was telling me about a person she worked with who was a very healthy eater, and she would feel guilty about eating low fat frozen yogurt for dessert at night. She ate extremely healthy all day long, and she exercised regularly. How could she possibly care about having low fat frozen yogurt (it's not even ice cream!) for dessert? I could not wrap my head around that concept.

Well, here I am, a year later, and I completely understand that concept. I wouldn't feel guilty if I had a small amount of low fat frozen yogurt from time to time, but I certainly wouldn't make a habit of it - it's empty calories.

I asked D to pick up some sugar free ice cream sandwiches if she could find any. We've had a box of sugar FULL ice cream sandwiches in our freezer for some time now, and since I've been looking at them forever, I decided I wanted to have one -just not one that that quite so bad for me. She came home with weight watchers ice cream sandwiches. They weren't sugar free, but they are only 2 points, however, they are 120 calories each! What a waste of calories. I had one because I'd been craving it, and it wasn't very good. I won't have any more of them.

It just made me think about empty calories and how they really shouldn't have much of a home in weight loss. When I get to the point where I am maintaining my weight, then I suppose it's different, but for now, I try to make every bite count.

KC