I didn’t bring any food to work yesterday. I know, crazy?! But the beauty of working in Chicago is that I have plenty of options for food. Freshii is located in the lobby of my building. This is their huevos bowl – shredded kale (it’s on the bottom) eggs, seasoned black beans, cheese, avocado with salsa and a spicy bbq sauce. I will suggest that you get the spicy bbq sauce on the side, because the first time I had it, it was like 2 tablespoons of bbq sauce – it’s delicious, but too much. I drizzled just a little over my bowl – this bowl is 400 calories and I counted it as 10 points.
My sister and I are just not on the same page for walking this week. Tuesday I worked through lunch and yesterday she had meetings during lunch. Plus it was fricken cold. While it was around 17 degrees it was windy so it felt closer to zero. I had a taste for soup and I immediately thought of Xoco – Rick Bayless casual restaurant next to Frontera Grill.
I got the pork carnitas posole, which I spelled incorrectly below. The soup comes in one container and the accessories in another – shredded radish, cabbage, lime and I asked for extra slices of jalapeno. Words cannot describe the depth of flavor in this posole. I counted my bowl as 8 points.
I only had to work 30 minutes late last night, but there was a slight train delay so I didn’t get home until 7:15. I defrosted a package of thin cut seasoned chicken breasts that I bought buy one, get one free last week. I made a shredded zucchini and cheese stuffed chicken breast. Because the chicken was so thin, this dinner came together in less than 20 minutes.
Each chicken breast was 4 ounces (3) and the filling was an ounce of Trader Joe’s mozzarella (1), I added a teaspoon of grape seed oil to my cast iron skillet and cooked the chicken without the sauce with a lid on for the first 5 minutes.
I’ve tried flipping this chicken before, but it falls apart on me, so at this point, I added 1 cup of prepared pasta sauce and let the chicken simmer another 10 minutes with the lid on. I added another ounce of mozzarella (1) over the top of the chicken and finished it off under the broiler. I served it with 1/2 cup of cooked pasta. Dinner was 8 smart points.
Here’s a tip – I don’t put raw meat on my cutting board, so I just put a piece of parchment paper on top – easy clean up too!
This was all kinds of delicious. The chicken was super tender, the zucchini became almost creamy inside with the cheese. Yum.
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Let’s talk about Weight Watchers Freestyle for a second. I have tracked everything, ditched my wine, get my 10k steps each day, and the scale is barely moving. It got me to thinking that even with all the “free” foods, its still calories, so on the train ride home last night, I added all my food for two days into Food Tracker, and was shocked at the results.
On the day I ate 22 points, I ate 1741 calories. On the day I ate 26 points, it was 2071. What?! No wonder the scale isn’t moving. Well, and the fact that I need to get my ass to the gym.
As luck would have it, I stumbled upon a girl on WW connect who has a way to still use the WW app, but go back to counting 30 points a day. If I were to put my dinner in my tracker now, it would tell me that the chicken is 0 points, when I know it was 3 points on the old system.
It requires a bit of effort to add back in the “free” foods that would otherwise be zero points. You could add stuff on a rolling basis which I am doing – I added chicken as custom food – I made it a 3 ounce serving, so that if I eat 5 ounces, or 6, I’ll have the accurate point calculation.
Here are her directions on “fixing” your app.
You also have to switch your settings to maintenance. On your profile screen, you’ll see your setting wheel on the top right corner. Click that and select food setting, then select “maintain weight” and set your target points to 30. The weekly points will be set at 35.
This week is not going to show a good representation of this plan yet since I switched midweek, so my true results won’t show up until a week from Saturday.
I don’t plan on eating the weekly points – my take is that I am going to use the 35 points to add to my daily points to move them from 23 back to 30. Does that make any sense? Let me know your thoughts!!
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If you have time, can you show me some comment love over at The Chopping Block for my latest blog post? It’s an epic Brunch Board! I had so much fun putting this together, only to realize I was the only one home, so I brought it over to my neighbors house – so I am basically the best neighbor evah. š
Happy Thursday friends – make it a great day!
I love so many aspects of your blog except the constant self-flagellation about whether you’re being “good” or “bad” with your weight loss efforts. If the scale doesn’t move but you’re living your life the way you want, isn’t that a success in itself? And the zero-point foods were probably designed to take into account the increasing body of research that is indicating “a calorie is a calorie” is not particularly true. And that exercise isn’t extraordinarily effective for weight loss, while high-protein/high-veggie eating seems to be better. I wish you the best in your journey but please know that there are many people out there who think you’re great no matter your size, and that health and happiness are valid goals regardless what the scale says.
Thank you so much for this comment Lin – I appreciate it!!
I am having trouble with Freestyle too. I love the WW app and website, but I am vegetarian and eat very little dairy including no eggs so the only new freestyle food I eat is fat free refried beans, beans, and corn, and I don’t eat those things everyday. So, with just 23 smart points I get too hungry and feel deprived and go off program, ugh. I am seriously considering using a different point counting app so I can go back to 30 smart points and ditch freestyle.
I agree – especially for not eating protein like chicken, it would be hard to stick to 23 points! Hope you can find your balance! š
I think maybe youāre cheating yourself by not eating weeklies and adding them back to your 23! Youāre back to Freestyle! Iām #backto30 also, and just am doing it exactly as I was before the new plan unfolded. 30 dailies PLUS weeklies! But of course, if it works for you, no need to fix it. I just need those weeklies to make myself feel like I really can eat what I want (every now and then) and still be āon program.ā
I will probably add the weeklies back in, but will just do the 30 points to begin and see how that goes š Thanks for your feedback though!
Yeah, I used to do WW. I had success in 2002, and again in 2007/08. The plan had changed between those times.
I know that WW changes the plan based on new information. That’s a good thing! But there were a couple of iterations that did. not. work. for me at all. When I was 40/41. And whenever the Core Plan was.
I like the idea of “free” foods, but they need to be somewhat realistic because some people will take it as a reason to go all out. If “free” is meant to encourage chicken not beef, fine. If it’s a reason to eat more protein, then no.
I finally went with 21 Day Fix, which worked great. Though now I just do my own thing on maintenance. The only “unlimited” things on that plan were veggies.
I am basically going to count everything but veggies too – I am the queen of maintenance, I just need to be about 40 pounds thinner š
I don’t even do Weight Watchers and I’ve been saying from the START that this program was going to be trouble. You just cannot give people “free” food without consequences, especially when those “free” foods have plenty of calories. So dumb.
Your stuffed chicken looks really good!
I understand their reasoning, that someone isn’t going to binge eat on boneless chicken vs. a bag of cookies, but you are right – calories are calories now matter how you look at it.
The chicken was so good! Hope this snow we are expecting this weekend isn’t coming your way!
I “think” you’ll do better going back to old style WW points. When I was doing WW, I would occasionally do what you did and count calories to see if I was staying at a reasonable count. I hope you’ll have better luck with the change. š
Thanks Caron – maybe since I am that much closer to 50 than I was last year, that my body isn’t responding like it did last year. No worries, I’ll figure it out – at least I am not gaining š
Mmmm, looks quick and yummy. If time permits, I will stop by the store tonight so I can make it for dinner. The brunch board looks too pretty to eat. Lucky neighbors. Hopefully they invited you to stay so you could share it with them. Off to the CB blog now.
Thanks for commenting over on TCB site š