On the road again...

I'm back on the diet bandwagon.  I've been hesitant to mention it to too many people because every time I've mentioned it in the past, I've always cursed myself and jumped off just a few weeks after I started.  Although this time, I'm not calling it a diet - I'm calling it a lifestyle change.  Because to be honest, that's what it is.  I know I'm always going to have days where I'm going to eat whatever I want either due to convenience or sheer desire, but my goal now is to drop all the extra weight (slowly, but permanently) and maintain a healthy lifestyle.  For now it's only diet, but I really want to get back into going to the gym.  I miss it a lot more than I thought I would.  It's been super hard to get there lately because now that I work part time at B.RU (which I love, BTW - can you say BABY FIX?!), I usually work on Monday and Wednesday nights, and those are the nights of my two favorite classes, Body Flow and Zumba.  And the nights that I don't have to work I'm usually too exhausted to do anything.  I spoke to my manager (we'll call her Boss Lady) and told her I needed less hours - because I do.  I work all week at school, then I'm working an extra 25-30 hours each week at B.RU - far too many.  I feel like I never see Julianne, and she's become very clingy.  Boss Lady seemed to understand that I need to spend less time with other people's babies and more time at home with MY baby, so she said she'd take care of it.  Some things I really like about her. :-)

WW has changed their plan around a lot - they now use what they call Poin.tsPl.us.  Most foods are more points than they used to be (except veggies, which are free, and now, hallelujah - all fruit is free too!), and you no longer use calories, fat and fiber to figure points - you use fat, fiber, protein and carbs.  I think the premise behind not using the calories anymore is that not all calories are created equal: some are from fat, some are from protein, some are from carbs, etc.  They also don't have a slider anymore (I think I read somewhere that it was just too complicated to make an effective one) so now you have to either buy the WW calculator that figures it all out, or be smart like me and download an app on your phone that does the same thing (for free). 

The whole plan change thing freaked me out at first until I found out I got to have more daily points too - now I get 49.  Even though I get more dailies I was worried I'd be hungry because all of my favorite foods went up in Poin.tsPl.us, but the whole free fruit thing is really saving me.  I can have my banana/strawberry/blueberry smoothie in the morning and all it costs me is the Poin.tsPl.us for the milk.  Plus, if I wanted to, I could eat ten apples, a bowl of watermelon and whole pineapple for a snack.  Not that I think WW recommends doing that, but it's nice to know the option exists. :-)

In an effort to really get excited about it, I decided to buy my first grown-up lunchbox.  I spent HOURS on Ama.zon looking for the perfect lunchbox for me and narrowed it down to these:

Of COURSE I picked a frog lunchbox.  :-)  It turns out neither one made the cut - my friend J talked me into going to Ross to look at what they had and I found a big pink one with bungee straps on the outside for bottles of water (or in my case, smoothies) and it was only $5, so I got that one instead.  In the 4 days I've owned it, I've only taken it to school twice because I forgot it the other two.  Typical.

Anyway, that's where I'm at for the moment.  I feel good, things feel food, the plan is working for me so far.  So I'm gonna keep on groovin' along.

Peace!