Dabump

Yesterday morning, I was 168.2 -- down half a pound, or thereabouts. This morning? 166.0. WTF, scale? WTF? But the Wii Fit confirmed it, so there we are: 166, down 2.6 pounds from last week, and nearly back to the 165 I was before I started letting things slip.

I think I need to cut out the evening snacking again, even when I've got the points for it. I don't know if it's that saving points for a snack makes me hungrier during the day and more inclined to cheat, or that evening food just metabolizes that much slower, or what, but I definitely lose weight faster when I cease all eating after 7pm.

I'm also, now that the weather is thinking about getting warmer and produce prices are starting to come down, thinking of trying to work salads into my lunches. It doesn't actually save me that many points -- my usual sandwich is only 4 points, and the cobb-ish salad I had yesterday was 5 (egg, avocado, meat, and cheese add up fast -- thank goodness for 0-calorie dressing!) but it does drastically increase my veggie intake and shake up my metabolism a little so it's not anticipating the same thing every day.

I've been getting some fantastic compliments from people lately -- kind of weird how that seems to come and go in waves, isn't it? But I'm not complaining! I don't see a lot of change in myself, day-to-day, so it's always good to be reminded that I am still changing, and for the better.

ACK

I'm up three pounds this week. That puts me at 172.8, which is perilously close to making me lose my 100-pounds-lost cred.

It's Karen's fault. She lost like six pounds this week, so she must have greebled my loss.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I ate like a quarter of a king cake all by myself, and had cupcakes and chocolate cookies and triscuits for Valentine's Day and went out to eat and had mashed potatoes instead of broccoli and went to Rock Band and ate more cupcakes and chips and was generally and in all other ways and complete pig all week. Nope, not at all the problem.

So it's back in the saddle and strict logging and actually measuring portions instead of eyeballing them. And just to be sure, until I've lost those three pounds, plus one more for good measure, I'm cutting out any and all food after 7pm. Doesn't matter if I have points left. Doesn't matter how hungry I am. Doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing or who I'm with. No. Food. After. 7. Until I have an official weigh-in that's below (not at) 169.

I've come too far to let laziness and gluttony triumph over me now.

Recovery

This morning's weigh-in was 174.2 -- 1.6 for the week, 98.8 total, and putting me this close to being back to my pre-Christmas low.

I decided Monday morning, when the various feasts and dinners and such were all done and it was definitely time to get seriously back on the wagon, that I needed to be especially strict for a week or two. Not just logging and meeting my points goal for each day, but also meeting all the nutrition checkoffs. No junk food at all, even counting points for it -- all snacks must be heavy in nutritional value: fruits, veggies, or yogurt. No evening snacking at all, even fruits or veggies, until I've broken the evening grazing habit. Must absolutely do my 15-minute Wii Fit routine every weekday morning, must absolutely make it to the gym at least three times a week.

So Monday and Tuesday were a bit rocky. I did a lot of pacing and I drank a shocking amount of tea. Today will be rough, too, I expect. And possibly tomorrow. But I've been sliding for the last six weeks or so -- I've been more or less maintaining my weight since Thanksgiving -- and while I'd given myself permission to do so, I need to get back into control if I want this last thirty or forty pounds gone by the end of the year.

Maybe if I'm vigilant and determined, next week's weigh-in will earn me that coveted and elusive 100-pounds-lost mark!

Big and Round

This morning's weigh-in was 180 on the nose: down 1.4 for the week and 93 overall. That puts me exactly 1 pound from my 4th 10% goal.

I'm just pleased that I managed to avoid gaining weight through both Hallowe'en and my birthday, honestly.

Of course, I'm about to go out of town for four days, which upsets both my exercise and eating schedules, so I'm probably not expecting to hit that goal next week. On the other hand, I'll be doing a fair amount of walking on this trip, and the relatives I'm staying with are used to be sort of health-nut-y the last time I checked, so it's possible that I'll be able to stay on plan and hit it. You never know!

After that, the next big hurdle is Thanksgiving. I'm planning on bringing roasted pumpkin soup and the Weight Watchers recipe for candied yams, to help reduce the damages, but I think aside from that and some common-sense damage control (have a glass of water before eating and take big servings of the soup and veggies to help fill me up, be the one to get up and chase the kids after dessert so I'm not tempted into seconds, etc.), I might give myself permission to ignore the points counter for the day.

We'll see how I do in the two weeks between now and then, I guess. 'Tis the season for diet backsliding, but I really don't want to lose too much ground.

Dodge!

This morning's weigh-in was 181.4, which is .6 lost this week, 91.6 total.  Not an outstanding loss, but given the lack of control I was having with the Hallowe'en candy, I'm happy to have lost at all.

This week's challenge:  my birthday.  We're having dinner with my family on Sunday, and my actual birthday is Monday.  I executed some preemptive damage-reduction and told my mom and husband that I'd make my own cake, and then I spent a day or so trolling the Weight Watchers recipe database for lower-point desserts.  (I finally decided to make two of them:  a two-layer meringue/mousse, and gingerbread cupcakes.  I'm doing the cupcakes for the family party because my sister-in-law is allergic to both strawberries and chocolate, and also because I can slather the cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and no one will need to know that they're diet friendly.)  Still, the possibility for excessive dessert consumption lingers, so that's what I'll need to try to avoid.

I'm also looking ahead to the challenge that is Thanksgiving.  I've volunteered to bring pumpkin soup; I may also offer to bring lightened dressing and sweet potato dishes.  And possibly dessert.  (Honestly, I was going to volunteer to have Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year, but my mom is insisting.  I don't think she'll object, however, if I take some of the cooking off her hands.)

I also dusted off the Wii Fit this morning (pretty much literally -- I haven't so much as looked at it for three months or more) and did a little yoga.  That's got less to do with weight loss (yoga isn't exactly a calorie-burner) and more to do with my noticing twinges in my feet again lately, and yoga did more to help that than anything else, ever.  So I want to try to do a little Wii Fit yoga in the mornings.  The goal right now is to do about 15 minutes of yoga, at least 3 times a week.  Ideally, I'd like to make it part of my weekday routine, but I don't want to get too ambitious too fast -- and I need to see how it fits into the morning schedule, anyway.  If it works out well (and I can adjust to not hitting the snooze on my alarm three or four times in a row) I might start to tack on some of the strength training exercises, as well.  But for now, just the yoga, just 15 minutes, to get my feet back in line.

Landmarkes and Mileposts

I'm at 182 this morning, which means I lost 1.2 this week and 91 total. I finally passed the 90-pound mark, yay!

I've been averaging about a pound a week for the last three months, so if that holds, I should hit my fourth 10% goal in about three weeks. I should figure out what my reward will be for that pretty soon, eh?

(It may turn out to be more than 3 weeks, though, as I've got a lot of speedbumps between now and then, including book club tonight, Hallowe'en this weekend, my birthday next weekend, and then a trip to visit family the weekend after that. We'll see how it goes, I guess.)

At any rate, I'm hoping to get there before the end of November. And from there, it's only another 5 pounds to my next exciting landmark: I'll finally be saying farewell to the "obese" tag and falling into the merely "overweight" category! Even allowing a few extra weeks for things to stall out a bit around Christmas, I should make that milestone by the end of January.

And if I stay at about 1 pound/week, then I could get to the "normal" category -- which coincides with my 6th and final 10% goal -- by the end of next summer. (My 5th 10% goal will happen somewhere in the spring, by this estimation.) And then I'll try to figure out where I want my final goal weight to be, and hopefully get there by around this time next year.

It seems like a long way off, but it's been a while since I've done any long-range goal-setting. My original goal (almost exactly a year ago) was to be under 200 by the end of September, and I beat that by a couple of months. I'd rather plan realistically than ambitiously.

But that's the end of the road that I can see. The end of it. A year ago, I wasn't sure I could even get below 200. Next year at this time, I hope to be figuring out the ins and outs of maintenance after having lost very close to half my starting weight. Two years, give or take, to lose 130 pounds, give or take. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Here's to the coming year.

Clawing My Way

Pff. I dropped to 185 Friday morning, spent the rest of the week there, and then -- naturally! -- popped up to 185.4 this morning, so officially I only lost 0.6 pounds last week, 87.6 total.

At least it's not another maintain. I missed a workout this week, and ate out twice on Saturday, and had chocolate cake last night (which might account for this morning's bump up, actually -- concentrated sugar makes me retain water for a bit).

The fact that Saturday's indulgences on top of Friday's lack of exercise didn't affect my weight does make me wonder if it's time for me to start playing around with, oddly, eating a little bit more. Specifically: I wonder if I ought to start eating my Activity Points, within, say, 24 hours of earning them. It's not like I rack up a lot of them; usually 3 points at a time. That's an apple and a half-cup of milk. Or a yogurt and a couple of crackers. Or two slices of low-fat cheese. (I've been craving dairy lately; can you tell? Might need to step up the calcium intake a bit.) Also, I should buy some more fruit and snack healthier when I'm trying to use up points to get to my minimum for the day. Jello sugar-free mousse cups are very tasty (2.5 points for 2 cups!) but possibly not quite in the spirit of the law, as it were.

Other signs of progress, though: I finally got around to ordering new bras. The 40D fits! I'm down to a D cup! (Though it's a bit of a squeeze, so I might have to go back up to a DD for certain styles.) The 40 part is definitely not a squeeze, though. Fresh out of the packaging, all three bras fit comfortably on the middle set of hooks, and two of them fit (snugly) on the tightest set. I might have waited a little too long to order those, hehe.

I tried on the too-tight Medium shirts with the new bras, and it no longer looks completely ridiculous, though I'm still not quite ready for them, yet. (Which means I still need to buy a few more long-sleeved shirts for the fall/winter. Even with my heater running, my office is freezing half the time.)

Any way, I'm not backsliding, but I really need to get a grip and start paying closer attention. The Danger Zone is only two weeks away: Hallowe'en, my birthday, Thanksgiving, Matt's birthday, and then the whole Christmas season... I need to set goals and plan strategies and stick to it!

Oops.

Gained 0.8 this week - 194.2.

I'm a bit disappointed, but not horribly stressed over it, since there's not much question of why it happened.

Guess my metabolism is crap enough that I'm just not able to dip significantly into my weekly or activity points. I earned 9 APs this week, and used a total of maybe 10 points above my daily minimum. Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.

I also should probably take a tighter grip on the evening snacks. I've been slipping, there, all week. The points are logged -- and sometimes I'm having them specifically to get up to my daily minimum -- but late-night calories just don't burn as efficiently. I'm tempted, in fact, to lay at least 3/4 of this gain on Monday night, when for whatever reason, I just could not stop eating. Need to make up my plan early in the day, stick to it as closely as possible, and come up with things to do in the evenings that make it hard for me to snack.

On the other hand, it's my first actual gain since I started the diet. (Not counting the one that happened the week after I had the stomach flu, which was arguably nothing more than rehydration; or the probable small gain I had the week of Christmas when I wasn't here to weigh in, but which was already gone by the next week.) So that's not bad, for ten months worth of dieting.

Weigh-in day. Before I went to Texas for the weekend, I stepped on the scale and saw 209.something, and I thought -- if I can just manage to keep it at 210 or lower, I'll be happy. It's really, really hard to diet while traveling.

But I managed it. Thank goodness for online nutrition databases and my iPhone.

I discovered that, dangerous though it is, Olive Garden has a couple of reasonable options -- their salad dressing is horrible stuff, but if you like salad undressed, that's only 2 points a serving (though the website doesn't tell you how many "servings" is in a bowl) and the minestrone soup is only 2 points a bowl. A breadstick is only 3 points, surprisingly (I had half of one) and there are two reasonable entrees -- the Linguini Marinara for 8 points, or the Venetian Apricot Chicken for (surprisingly) 7. I had the chicken, and it was really quite good. Though if I hadn't been traveling the next day, I would have had a second bowl of soup (it's bottomless, after all) and saved half the chicken for lunch. (On the other hand, if temptation is a problem for you, stay away: the number of entrees over 30 points was pretty crazy.)

And I walked with my dad both mornings I was there. It was only about a mile, and at what I figured was a "leisure" pace, because I didn't want to push my knee too hard. Interestingly, though, my knee hurt far less than I expected. I may start to swap out the bike for the treadmill once or twice a week at the gym for my "warm-up" activity.

Sunday was rough, food-wise, though -- I had a banana and coffee for breakfast, and then because of the way my flights lined up, only a packet of airline peanuts to tide me over until about 3:30 in the afternoon, when I stopped at a Chinese fast food place (it was the closest thing to my gate) and got some egg drop soup and something sort of like General Tso's Chicken. I only ate about half the chicken, though, before they started to board the plane. I thought about taking it with me, then realized that I really wasn't hungry anymore, so I dumped it.

(As a note -- General Tso's chicken is a lot of freaking points. It's a good thing I dumped it. Sheesh.)

Anyway, this morning I reminded myself that weighed in at 208.4, down 2.6 this week for a total loss of 64.6 pounds.

Whoo! Travel pit traps successfully negotiated!

Advice

And now, the fatty offers unsolicited advice: Eat dessert first.

Here's the thing: I'm going to eat everything on my plate. I'm not six anymore. The number of times in the last five years that I've walked away from a plate with food on it can probably be counted on one hand -- and most of them can probably be attributed to either illness or really quite unappetizing food. In which case I wasn't going to eat it anyway. So I am certainly not going to "spoil" my appetite for the healthy portion of my meal by eating the yummiest bit first.

And here's another thing: The flavor that lingers in my mouth is the flavor of whatever it is I ate last. If what I ate last was dessert, then tasting its lingering flavor on my tongue is going to make me want more of it. (Because if there was such a thing as "enough," I would not be fat to begin with.) But if what I ate last was something a little less compelling, then continuing to taste it is at least less torturous.

I'm aware that it's not the best practice ever. I certainly don't advocate dessert first at dinnertime, when the kids are watching and (hopefully) preparing to follow my example.

But at work, when it's time for my afternoon snack, which is almost always an apple and a chocolate or caramel-flavored chewy granola bar, then I eat the granola bar first, and finish up with the apple. And at lunch, when I sometimes have some fruit leather, I make sure to save a bite or two of sandwich or some pickles for after that's done with.

Losing weight is about psyching yourself out.

Confessions

I burned through some extra points this weekend.

I stayed inside my weekly points, but I exceeded my daily points for three straight days, which I don't usually do. So on Wednesday morning, I'm either going to lose some weight and find out that no really, I can use some of my activity or weekly points without completely falling apart, or I'm going to maintain/gain and learn that no, really, I need to keep my intake to somewhere just below my daily allowance.

I honestly have no idea which it's going to be.

On Friday, I'd planned a spectacularly low-point dinner. I worked everything out and discovered that I had ample space in my dietary budget for a candy bar in the afternoon. About ten seconds after I licked the last delicious chocolate off my fingers, my husband called to tell me that some friends had called and wanted to take us out for Mexican. Well... heck.

To cut down on the damage, I forbade myself even a single chip, and I had vegetarian fajitas. I didn't eat the tortillas, but then I never do -- I dump the lettuce and sour cream and guacamole onto the fajita plate and add about half of my refried beans and mix it all up into a fajita salad. (Yes, the restaurant offers a fajita salad already made, but it doesn't taste the same, and it's only about half as much food once you ignore the fried tortilla bowl thingy.)

So I think, all in all, I didn't do too badly, there. It was certainly more points than I'd planned on having that day, but I don't think I exceeded the boundaries of reasonableness too much.

Saturday was a birthday party, and I went fully intending to fix myself a single plate of food, with a pre-figured amount of specific foods on it, and to skip the cake.

But there were no plates (and I was apparently too dumb to just ask for one) so I found myself wandering back to the food table and grazing and I ate crackers and paté that I hadn't banked on, and more mini-muffins than I'd planned, and only a fraction of the veggies, and then I had chili and... well, heck, might as well have just a small piece of cake, right?

Sigh. Next time, I will remember to ask for a plate, and then I will get my planned amount of food and go plant my butt on the couch and not keep walking back over to the food table. And then, if I give in and have cake anyway, at least it will not be on top of extra muffins and paté and chili that I hadn't planned on.

Sunday was an early Easter dinner with my family. I brought low-cal biscuits, only took one, filled my plate once and did not have any seconds. I also brought my own dessert and managed to avoid the temptation of cookies. So the only real problem for the day was that 1) I have no idea whether my guesstimates of how much ham and potato salad I ate were correct, and 2) I have no idea how many points my mom's potato salad is. (It ranges from 3 to 8 points per half cup, in the WW database. I'm quite sure I ate more than half a cup of the stuff.)

As an aside, have you ever noticed that for certain foods -- potato salad, or mac-and-cheese, or other really common dishes where every family has its own variant -- the one you grew up with is always the Right One? And everyone else's variant is always just a bit... off? Could be really good, but it's not THE food? Which is sad, because I have no idea what my mom's recipe is for potato salad. (At least I have her mac-and-cheese recipe.)

So anyway, there's my confession. We'll find out Wednesday if my damage control efforts did any good, or if I completely blew it.

My Discovery

This was a complete accident.

We started eating Blue Bunny ice cream because it gave us pre-measured portions of low-carb ice cream, which was an excellent option for my diabetic daughter.

When I started Weight Watchers, I discovered that the Blue Bunny ice cream bars we had in the house were pretty much the same number of points as the WW ice cream (2-3 points each) at significantly lower prices. (My favorite was English toffee, while my daughter prefers butter pecan.)

I went looking for something different this weekend, though, and I saw these fudge bars. In case you don't feel like looking at the link, let me entice you: One ice cream bar is zero points. Two ice cream bars is only one point. It actually says on the box that a serving is two bars. I ate two of them last night. And then I followed it with some Girl Scout cookies. And I was still under my minimum points for the day.

I'm going to start bringing a box of these to my parents' house for big family dinners, for dessert. "Me? I'll have two bars of chocolate ice cream, thanks!" Scrape it off the stick and into a bowl, and no one in the family would know the difference, I expect.

And lest you dismiss it as probably being flavorless or otherwise flawed (like, say, the WW "giant " chocolate ice cream that has so much air whipped into it that I can't eat it on the stick; it droops as soon as I take it out of the wrapping) I'll tell you that the Blue Bunny variety is pretty gosh darned similar to the fudge bars I had in school as a kid -- possibly better, as the outer crust of barely-flavored ice was thinner. Chocolatey and delicious.

Go ye forth, and eat chocolate ice cream, and get skinny.

Carrot

Historically, I've always had trouble coming up with good dieting rewards for myself.

How often is often enough? How much of a reward is really rewarding -- and how much is too much? Do I reward the good behavior, or the good results (as they don't always match up exactly)?

The last time I got really serious about a diet, when I got down to about 225, I decided that when I got below 200, I was going to buy myself the new laptop I'd been lusting after.

Finally, I thought, I'd hit upon a good one. The goal was not so far away as to be completely out of sight, and the reward itself was something I wanted but didn't actually need (my old computer was doing its job adequately, after all). It was big enough to be a serious expenditure, but not so big that I couldn't afford it at all.

Naturally, then, I hit a plateau and hovered around 220 for two straight months. And then the maid service dropped my computer and broke it, which made getting a new one more or less a necessity.

So much for that idea.

I'm still working on it, this time. And I'm working on it hard right now, because I'm currently in a bad state of mind for dieting where every little bit of progress seems to take forever and I'm feeling discouraged, like I'll never get there.

When I hit my 10% goal (and also to reward myself for getting through Christmas without gaining anything), I got myself a full 90-minute massage. That was lovely and decadent, but it wasn't really planned. More of a spur-of-the-moment thing.

Lately I've found myself eying purses whenever I'm in a store that stocks them. My current purse is about three years old, and it's starting to get pretty beat up and pitiful-looking. And boring. I want something with color and pizazz. And sure, I could pick up a $25 bag from Target, but then I thought maybe I could get one of these terrifically expensive but oh-so-gorgeous Anuschka bags as a diet-goal reward. Maybe when I hit my next 10% mark, which currently looks like it will happen in April. Yeah, it's more than I spent on the massage, but surely the smaller, prettier me deserves a pretty bag?

I'm going for the big-big reward again, too: I've been pondering an SLR camera for some time now, and I love the pictures that they take, but I'm not entirely sure I could justify spending that much on a camera that I'm mostly going to use to take shots of the kids. (Especially since most SLRs do not come with video capability, so I'd probably be losing that function if I didn't want to lug multiple cameras around.) Anyway, I've been waffling for a long time. It's a lot of money to drop on a piece of equipment... which makes it a perfect reward item, yes? So I've pretty much pegged it as my reward for my next 10% goal, which (not coincidentally) will be the one that drops me below 200 for the first time in almost 15 years.

And I'll worry about rewards beyond that point when I get closer to them -- I think that's plenty to be going on with.

What I'm pondering are rewards for smaller goals and triumphs: 5-pound marks, maybe, or successfully negotiating events and holidays. Something to focus my mind on to keep myself going for just another couple of days without mounting a raid on the Pepperidge Farm outlet store...

I have... no ideas. I am not restrained about buying books or music, and I'm trying to declutter my house anyway. Food is obviously a counterproductive idea. Spa treatments (massages or whatever) are too expensive for rewards that could hit two or three times a month. Movies and similar activities are too much trouble to arrange. Clothes shopping is a chore, not a reward.

I need ideas. Something in the $30 or under range that can be obtained without completely rearranging my schedule and which could reasonably be called a reward, something to make it worth the struggle of putting down the snacks and going to the gym... Ug. I just don't know. C'mon, help me out here.

Resolve

After two weeks of being on vacation and allowing myself little cheats, and more little cheats, and then big cheats, and then even bigger cheats...

If nothing else, the last two weeks have been a shining example to me of exactly why I should not be allowed "off the reservation" for any length of time. Even with the best intentions and the firmest plans, I succumbed to stress eating, and I succumbed to boredom eating, and I succumbed (most insidiously of all) to "well, it was right in front of me" eating.

Time to get back on the wagon.

I'm easing into it, somewhat -- Tonight is hot dog night for dinner, which means I have lots of extra points to play around with, and I have more than enough wiggle room for some snacks and treats.

Unless I screw up royally, there's a reasonable chance that I'll be meeting my first 10% goal next week, and starting my next 10% journey. That one will be almost 3 pounds shorter (10% of 245 being less than 10% of 273), and it'll stretch across Valentine's Day and possibly Easter and my anniversary, but it won't be anywhere near as riddled with traps as this first one was, which braved Hallowe'en, birthdays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas!

Even if my rate of loss cuts in half -- which is pretty unlikely -- I should meet that goal and embark on the third in time for summer. And then I'd think the third would be achievable by the end of the year. (That's two 10% goals in 12 months -- I think it's fairly reasonable, given that I did my first one in about 3.)

So those are my mid-range goals: Second 10% by summer, and third (which will have me below 200 pounds for the first time in ten years!) by this time next year.

It's doable. It's a pretty modest goal, even. I just have to stick to it, and keep slowly ramping up my activity level to keep my metabolism from falling into a slump.

I can do it. All it takes is resolve.

'Tis the Season

Last night, we exchanged gifts with our next-door neighbors, since they're leaving today for two weeks. They gave us a cute snowman decoration, and a tin of homemade cookies. (2 points each? Ish?)

There are two boxes of my favorite doughnuts in the kitchen. (6 points each) And a tin of sugar-glazed pecans. (4 points for 1/4c)

In my office is a gift ornament containing eight Ghiradelli chocolate squares. (3 points for 2 squares.) Also, six candy canes. (1 point each)

The doughnuts are the hardest to deal with, and the most dangerous -- I'm constitutionally incapable of only eating one, so I really don't dare indulge. The candy canes are the easiest -- even if I eat all six, it's not completely disastrous. (Which, perversely, makes it easier for me to eat fewer of them.)

Next week, we're going to be out of town, visiting family and (hopefully) friends. Which means I'll spend a lot of time both bored and surrounded by food. We'll eat out a lot. Various relatives will pull out all the stops and have fabulous meals. And then we'll come back and have a big Christmas dinner with my family.

The goal. If I say I'm going to keep losing through all that, then I'm just setting myself up for failure. So the goal is not to stick religiously to the plan, but to try to be a little sensible. The goal is to journal everything, even if it means having to record that I went way overboard on multiple occasions. The goal is to gain no more than 5 pounds over the next two weeks. If, on January 2, I step on the scale and it says 253, then I will have succeeded. And then I will get back on the wagon and lose those pounds before they have a chance to unpack and make friends.

Here's hoping.

Breakfast

Trying something different for breakfast. I've already switched out my coffee for hot tea, though that's a winter thing, and I'll almost certainly go back to coffee in the spring.

But now I've swapped out one of my two packets of instant grits for a little cup of Fiber One yogurt. It's a one-point reduction, and gives my system a couple of different kinds of food to process, so it seems to last a bit longer.

And since the yogurt takes up some milk/calcium slack, I replaced the half-cup of milk I was drinking with my pills and vitamins with a few swallows of Crystal Light. Which saves me another point.

It's goofy that I'm working on ways to save points right now, because I'm still ending each day with a handful of points to spare. (I'll almost be grateful when I drop to the next category down.) Still, it's good practice for the future. And certainly helpful on days like today, when I've got a pasta, butter, and dessert-laden holiday lunch looming over me.