My Ice Cream Diet


I don’t know about you, but every winter my weight goes up another five or ten pounds. Once summer arrives, I’m usually able to drop about half those extra pounds.  Consequently, my weight trends upward some three to five pounds a year.

Once upon a time, those extra pounds arrived between Thanksgiving and Christmas. While I am a bit of a slow learner, I do eventually figure these things out. In recent years, I’ve taken steps to make sure I don’t pile on extra weight over the holidays. Now they show up after the holidays are safely behind me. They seem to have multiplied, too. Instead of five or ten pounds, I’ll pick up an extra twenty. Either way the pattern is clear. Every year I gain more weight than I lose.

My normal weight reduction plan revolves around eating a tiny bit less and exercising a whole lot more. The more I exercise, however, the more inclined I am to feel entitled to eat whatever the hell I want. Consequently, the resulting weight loss is often disappointing.

In mid-May, after a five year break, I started riding my bike again. About every five years I decide to get serious about losing weight. It’s just coincidence that my high school class reunion also takes place every five years. As a matter of fact, we have one coming up in October. Anyway, two weeks after I started riding I’d lost eight pounds. The rapid loss isn’t nearly as impressive as it sounds, considering a) how fat I had become and b) how rarely I leave my comfy sofa.

Then I started Weight Watchers. No, I don’t go to meetings to socialize with other fat people. I’m doing the online version with weigh-ins on my own scale in the privacy of my own home. I’ve been following the program for nearly eight weeks and as of yesterday (my official weigh-in day), have lost eight more pounds. That’s sixteen pounds in about two months.

I pay a lot more attention to what I eat, but don’t feel like I’m on a diet. In addition to my daily point allowance (44 points), I get 49 extra points per week, plus activity points for any exercise I do each week. I tend to use nearly all my daily points and about half my weekly points. So far I’ve only tapped into my exercise points once.

My diet has changed quite a bit since starting Weight Watchers. There are a lot of foods I never eat anymore: pizza, Chinese carry-out, hamburgers, biscuits, and with few exceptions, any kind of fast food.  I could eat these things, but the point values are so high I choose to skip them.

Don’t worry–I’m not depriving myself. I enjoy a delicious dish of Bluebell ice cream almost every night. It’s a choice. I’m careful with my points all day so I can splurge on a yummy dish of cookies and cream, dutch chocolate, or another favorite flavor before I go to bed.  My nightly dish of ice cream sometimes eats into my weekly points. I don’t care–it’s worth it to me.

And I’m still losing weight.

That I’ll be on Weight Watchers for the foreseeable future doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, I can see myself staying on it forever. It’ll take that long to move my Body Mass Index from obese, to overweight, and then to normal. Between now and then, I’ll keep you posted on my progress right here in…

My Glass House


6 responses to “My Ice Cream Diet”

  1. Yay for you! It’s becoming really clear that I’m going to have to move into a structured routine. the “cutting back” just isn’t doing it for me. I have done the WW program many, many times. It is true: The program works if you work the program!!

    Hey, I love the new blog, (and thanks for linking me!) If I link this one to my CathyB blog, wonder if I will see your updates…. I’ll give it a try.

    Meanwhile, I’m waiting on Steve to get home with our Peking sesame chicken…. but at least we are sharing one order. that’s progress. (isn’t it?)

  2. I’ve heard a lot of people rave about the on-line WW program. I’ve been toying with the idea of trying it out, but my problem isn’t really with food (I actually need to eat more if you can believe it) but with exercise. All the activites I love (reading, sewing, blogging, crafting) involve sitting down. I do like walking, but lately I would have to wait until 8:00 at night to go because heat-stroke is not a good look for me (yes, I could get up earlier in the AM, but mornings are a whole ‘nother issue).
    Anyway, I applaud your progress and admire your determination. Keep it up!

  3. Cathy thanks for hooking me up–I know you have a big following.The problem for me with cutting back is that the things I think are good for me usually aren’t! The value of WW is not so much the diet, but the education about making better choices.

    Amy thanks for the encouragement! I’m a big fan of non-active activities, too (you left out watching television!) and absolutely hate exercising–especially in this heat. The key is to try to find something (better yet, several things) that burns calories and gets your heart rate up that you kinda sorta like to do and start small. When I started riding my bike, all I did was ride up and down my street. Since I started WW I’m actually not riding as much–just 30 to 60 minutes four or five times a week is enough and a lot easier than the two to two-and-a-half hour rides I was trying to get in on weekend mornings.