[day 3]

Despite my recent bout with Ginger, I do love being a child of the technological age.

Lately I've gotten in the habit of stashing things like a squirrel stashes nuts for winter. If I was a squirrel I wouldn't survive the winter. I have this tendency to instantly forget where I squirreled each item away. As a result there's not much in the way of order in my drawers and cabinets. For example, I left a pair of headphones at my parent's house accidentally. The first thing I did when I got home with Ginger was to look for my spare headphones. I remembered picking them up and stashing them somewhere several weeks earlier. But where were they? I vaguely remembered something about a purse so I checked every bag I've carried in the past 3 weeks. No luck. I checked drawers, cabinets and other odd places. After giving up the search, I was shuffling some things around in my closet. Out fell my headphones from a purse that I haven't carried in at least six months. I still have no idea how they got in there.

Back in the day, Weight Watchers was done on paper. There were little notebooks for tracking your food, little notebooks for tracking your weight and books for looking up points. Weight Watchers of yesterday was not for me. I would have squirreled each booklet away in a different location, been unable to find all 3 at any given time and eventually given up the whole endeavor.

Thankfully Weight Watchers of today can be done online. I can log onto the website, use the app on my phone or track on paper the old-fashioned way. I use a combination of website and phone app to track. So far it's proving wildly successful. That being said, today is only day three so I don't want to get too ahead of myself.

One of my favorite things so far is exactly what they emphasize on the commercials: freedom. Yesterday I hit the Victoria's Secret Semi-annual Sale with a friend after work. After trying on close to 20 bras each we wanted a snack. We popped into Godiva and each got a truffle. And you know what? That truffle didn't induce guilt or cause me to blow my whole day. I had enough points to cover it, especially once I factored in my walk home from work (around 30 minutes).

There's also the advanced planning element, which I love. Tomorrow I'm meeting my friends for happy hour. I can hop online in advance and explore my options. If I really want a burger tomorrow, I can figure out how to have my burger without breaking the bank so to speak. Since I've known about happy hour since Monday I've been saving activity and weekly points for the occasion. It really is an ingenious system that allows you to lose weight but not feel deprived or left out. The Cinch! plan was great but weekly happy hours with friends had me feeling left out in the cold and ultimately unhappy.

I also love the point system as opposed to counting calories. Before I tried to use Lose It!, a free iPhone app that allows you to track your food intake, exercise and weight. You can also set goals for yourself, reminders and use other helpful features. My problem was mostly a mental one: it bothered me that fruit cost me calories. My smoothie breakfast on Weight Watchers is 3 points (all the points come from soy milk). But on Lose It! the banana, blueberries and spinach also cost me calories. I know these foods have calories but there's something so discouraging about keeping track of them. It felt detrimental somehow. I like that on Weight Watchers I feel rewarded for making these types of choices. Since fruits and vegetables are 0 points I feel like I'm cheating the system by eating a ton of food and not incurring any points. That's how I was able to get my truffle yesterday: breakfast, snacks and lunch were predominantly fruits and veggies so I hadn't used many points despite the fact that I had eaten a ton during the day. I feel naughty in a good way, like I've gotten away with something.

I'll talk more in the future about the mental aspects of weight loss but I think this is going to be it for now.