Adventures in Dieting, Day Two

As you probably know, I started on Weight Watchers Sunday. This week I'm allowed 46 points per day. I finished Day #1 with one point leftover. Skinny here I come!

Day #2 started off great. I rode my bike for 15 miles which earned me a whopping 17 extra points. I only used three points for breakfast, and got by on ten points for lunch. I felt so good about my progress I splurged, burning up ten points to eat two cake pops. To make cake pops you bake a box cake, mash it up with a can of icing, form the mix into little balls, then after freezing the balls, dip them in white chocolate. I'm telling you they're great.

Friends invited us over for dinner last night. Unaware of our dieting status, they went all out. We had steak, a delicious floret salad (broccoli, cauliflower, bacon, cheese and mayo), a carrot and horseradish casserole (more sour cream and mayo and maybe some heavy cream), a baked potato casserole (still more sour cream, bacon, cheese and butter), and a good old-fashioned banana pudding with meringue on top for dessert (along with a couple of cake pops).

After we got home my partner took the recipes and went online to figure out how many points we'd eaten. Because I had seconds of the floret salad and the baked potato casserole, my total for just that one meal was (drum roll please)...56 points. Yeah, ten more than my allowance for the day.

Talk about eye-opening. I got to thinking that before Sunday there have been lots of times when I probably had dinners worth a good 50 or 60 points--like maybe five nights out of seven. No wonder I'm obese!

So yesterday I burned a total of 87 points. Fortunately, Weight Watchers allows 49 extra points for the first week plus any points I earn for exercise. I still have eight of my 49 splurge points and 23 points I earned riding my bike.

Today has gone a lot better. I got by on four points for breakfast. At lunch I ordered my usual Zaxby salad, minus the fried onion rings and with lite vinaigrette instead of honey mustard dressing. I refuse to give up the Texas toast. The changes cut the salad from 23 to 14 points.

In terms of points, yesterday I learned an expensive lesson. Giving up would have been a failure. I didn't fail because I started over today, wiser than I was the day before. Failing to lose weight is no longer an option for...

The Crotchety Old Man