$15.00 per month to watch my weight

Shortly after completing my first yoga session I reluctantly agreed to join Weight Watchers online under the condition that I would not have to attend any overly sensitive offline support meetings. I told Annie that I was just not prepared to talk about my weight in front of a group of supportive strangers.

I started out by registering my height and weight: 5ft 10inches and 256 lbs. The online Flex Plan program then spits out the number of points you can eat in a given day. I was allowed to eat 38 points per day. I thought this sounded impossibly low and and my suspicion was confirmed when I looked up the points value for a cup of Picadillo—10 points. So they basically told me I could eat 4 cups of fried beef a day....clearly Nicole Richie provided the science used to convert calories to points.

The plan instructs you to maintain your current diet for the first two weeks to help you create a baseline for what you are eating and acclimate you to the points system. Very quickly you learn that the diet prefers fiber to fat and home cooking to fast food. You also realize that there are tremendous benefits to keeping a food journal...like realizing that you eat like a cow grazing on chocolate grass and that it is in fact very easy to eat 56 points in a day. Here are some fun points conversions I learned during my first two weeks on Weight Watchers:

1. Snickers Bar = 7 Points
2. Subway Meatball Sub = 12 points
3. 1 cup of Ice Cream = 8 points
4. McDonald's Deluxe Breakfast = 29 points
5. Turkey Burger with Bun = 8 points