Honesty

It struck me this morning how easy it would be to not be honest in a food journal. You know what a food journal is, right? It's where if you bite it, you write it. A food journal can be kept for any number of reasons. Health care providers love to ask you to do them to help source out possible allergens or to monitor diabetes or cholesterol control. Food journaling is the foundation of Weight Watchers.

Let me tell you, those first few weeks of journaling for Weight Watchers were awful for me. I hated it, but it was eye opening. At that time, I was trying to just eat what I usually did within the Weight Watchers plan. It was instantly apparent that I had to cut soda out of my life as I could have easily consumed most of my Points just by drinking Dr. Pepper alone. I don't use artificial sweeteners, so, I just cut it cold turkey. No diet soda for me. I've heard the carbonation is just as bad for you as the sugar or artificial crap in it anyway.

I was hungry all the time then. I couldn't figure out why. I was eating, sensibly, I thought. Turns out, I just wasn't eating sensibly enough.

Seeing your diet right there in black and white is so helpful in trying to figure out how to combat hunger and where all your calories are going. It's easy then to see where you can streamline things.

I'm still a paying member of Weight Watchers, mostly because I love the online food journaling. It's so easy and there's a handy dandy recipe builder thingie that will figure out the Points values of your favorite recipes. The rest of Weight Watchers really doesn't interest me. I don't like the meetings. I don't like to weigh anywhere, but the privacy of my own bathroom. And I don't like the sales pitches, "Get this WW pedometer for only two payments of $19.95". All of that was what kept me away from this program in the past. Thank God for the online option.

Getting back to honesty. I think honesty is at the core of the successful weight loss journey. You must honestly look at how you eat. You must honestly look at how much you move in a day. I wish that I would have journaled for about a week before I started, just to have that as something to look back on. I think the honesty of what I was actually eating pre-WW would floor me.