Day One

Today was my first day on the new Weight Watchers Beyond the Scale program. It's still early, but so far I'm pretty happy with my experience. Prior to signing up I did a lot of research on the program, reading others thoughts to get an idea of whether or not to give it a try myself. By far the biggest complaint that I saw about the new program was that it was so restrictive. Quite a few people out there seem pretty upset over the fact that foods like crackers, chips, and ice cream have drastically gone up in points. I'm not going to lie, what first drew me to Weight Watchers more than a decade ago was that I could still enjoy these treats while also losing weight. However, now that I'm getting older I'm realizing that I'm far more concerned with putting good things into my body. I want to eat foods that are beautiful, colorful, fresh, and that give me energy. That's why I was so interested in trying out Beyond the Scale.

I panicked slightly when I woke up this morning and realized that I had absolutely no idea what I could eat. Not to be deterred I grabbed my cell phone and used the handy barcode scanner built into the Weight Watchers app to scan pretty much everything in my fridge. I eventually settled on two slices of turkey bacon, and a scrambled egg with mushrooms and spinach, topped with salsa. I ended up getting hungry again before lunch so I grabbed an apple and a water to hold me over. For lunch I made a spinach salad with refried beans, a sprinkle of cheese, and some homemade honey lime dressing, the recipe for which I will be sharing at a later date. It was at this point that I realized that I desperately needed to stock up on veggies. I didn't really want to think too hard about snacks so I just had a few honey glazed almonds and some bagel chips. Dinner was a bit of a splurge. We went to our favorite burger joint where I got a hamburger topped with lettuce, tomato, jalapeno, and a sweet sriracha sauce. The points on this were a bit questionable but I went with the suggestion in the app and calculated it as 14 points.

I ended up using 29 of my 30 daily points which I was pretty proud of, even if I definitely could have chosen some better options for dinner and snacks. I'm not too concerned about it since I completely expected for there to be a bit of a transition period.

After breakfast my husband and I (really just me) decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood. We ended up only walking for 15 minutes but it was nice to get outside for a bit of fresh air. Here's a tip: don't insist that your asthmatic husband go on a walk with you if your intention is to walk for an extended period of time.

One feature that I really like within the app is that I can sync my Jawbone Up Move to it. It tracks my activity and turns it into fit points. You can choose to trade your fit points for food if you go over your daily smartpoints allotment, or you can just use them as motivation to get up and move. The only thing I didn't like about syncing my fitness tracker to the Weight Watchers app was that it seemed to take a long time to update. My Weight Watchers app was still staying that I took 6,024 steps while my Up app had me at 6,972. It was a small difference but nonetheless I found it slightly irritating.

Only time will tell if my Weight Watchers Online membership will end up being worth the monthly fee, but so far I'm happy with my experience. Other than the fitness tracker syncing taking longer than I would like the only complaint I have is that they kind of just throw you into it. Nothing was explained to me, I kind of just had to figure out what I could eat and how to use the app on my own. Once I figured it out though it was actually pretty simple to use and definitely a handy tool. If you've tried out the Beyond the Scale program then I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Savannah