Well, the first week wasn't too too bad, actually. I was afraid that I might feel deprived as that had been my experience when I tried again a few times but, nope, it went pretty well, actually.
I did a few things differently than I had done in the past like really measuring the milk that I put in my coffee instead of guesstimating how much it was. I even changed some eating habits that I had from when I was losing weight. The 3rd day was hardest but, otherwise, it wasn't too hard.
Interestingly, I ended up having some good habits that just spontaneously came back. For example, we went out to dinner at a restaurant with friends on Monday and, when my food came, I ended up eating about half of it, assessed my fullness and found that I was full enough, and just forgot about the food until they asked if I wanted a box. I used to do that: mentally split the dish in half (sometimes even physically) and not touch that other half. I was just surprised when it happened without me actively thinking about it. I also went out to lunch with a friend and coworker and thought about where to go and pre-tracked the food so I knew how much it'd be.
My exercising hiccuped a little compared to what it'd be on a normal week thanks to some meetings and the weather. I have to get back on my bandwagon for that or else that 15k in March will be very painful. ;)
I made some surprising discoveries on either side of the "oh cool" and "oh no". For example, discovering how big 3 oz of awesome carnitas that James had made really was (that made for 2 big tacos) or that my beloved cider was 9 points for a regular bottle (I'll pass). Overall, I did not feel like I had to drastically change my eating habits. It felt more like tweaking. So that was good.
I also re-learned to cut myself some slack. For example, my dinner ended up being a good number of points last night but I was still within my points range (more on that in a second) and I hadn't used nearly all my weekly allowance points so it was totally fine but, when thinking about it more, I realized where I could have tweaked things to use fewer points while still having an awesome meal. I started kicking myself for that but thought that, no, this is week 1 and I'm re-learning to do this. I had a good week overall and this one meal won't make a huge difference. And I'm in it for the long haul so it's okay.
Just before I quit last year, I did have an explanation of the new points system but one thing that they tweaked since then is that now you have a points range that is considered your "healthy eating zone". So, before, you had a target daily point and you couldn't eat below that as that would not be enough food for you. Back then (and the points were calculated differently), it was 26 points. With the new points calculations, the daily target is now 30... but... they have deemed that you should really eat between 27 and 37 points to be in that healthy eating zone. They explained that, as long as you stay within that range, you should technically see a weight loss. Now the super cool thing about that is that it's not so spot on: you don't have to hit a number super precisely. In truth, it was the same before as well, but that range had never been spelled out so I always felt like you needed to be as spot on as possible. It helps my perfectionist brain. In the app version of the tracking tool, you see these solid blue dots over the days when you've stayed within your range, which is a quick visual to assess how you've been doing.
The result? I lost 3.4 lbs! I'm super happy about that! I know full well that I may not lose as much next week and that's okay.
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