You guys are my Weight Watchers meeting replacement.

Today is the three-month anniversary of the day I signed up for Weight Watchers, so I thought I'd do a little retrospective on how it's been going. First of all, I'm sick of running and I'm sick of our gym, especially since the trainer who rented it picked up and moved and brought all his stuff with him, so now the gym feels eerily empty. Also, I don't want to permanently kill my knees with the running stuff. So on the exercise side of things, I think I'm going to take a cue from Swistle (again) and order some different workout DVDs from Netflix until I find one that I can stand more than once.

In terms of the diet aspect (which is where Weight Watchers really comes into play), things are going reasonably well. I've definitely learned a lot about portion size and hidden calories from WW, and even though I don't need the system the way I did at first, I'm going to renew my subscription for the structure, for the ability to look up point values of everything, and for the recipes. I've lost 28 pounds so far, and it's definitely slowed down from how fast I lost weight at the beginning, but that's how diets work in general. So I just have to remind myself that it is still working, even if it's slower than it was before. And also, I've learned that the WW people cheat with the products they sell. The point values are ranges--for instance, one point can be 40 or 60 calories, depending on fat and fiber content. So sometimes, if something is right on the edge of a point value, having 2 of that thing will not mean that the point value exactly doubles. For example, one low-fat granola bar is 2 points--but two low-fat granola bars are 5 points. And Weight Watchers totally takes advantage of this with the products they sell--like the 2-point ice cream bars that add up to 5.5 points if you have two of them. How cheap is that? They market it as a 2-point product, but if it had one more calorie, it would be almost 3.

The problem with this little cheating system is that it's possible to cheat the software program yourself, as well. For example, if I have a granola bar with lunch and another one after dinner, I have two options for how to record it. Either I can put them both in the same meal section, in which case the software would combine them and list them as 5 points, which is the most accurate solution. Or I can list them in two different meal sections, and then the software considers them as 2 points each, which means they only add up to a total of 4 points, which means that I can cheat and save myself a point.

But what I have to remember is that this WW thing is not about number crunching to maximize the efficiency and benefits of my allotted daily points. It's about not cheating, because there's nobody to cheat besides myself. So I don't have 1 1/4 cups of cereal in the morning, even though that's the same points value as 1 cup of cereal. Because even if the points calculator doesn't know the difference, my body does. And that's the whole point here.

The other thing I've been struggling with recently is cooking. With the new job and the attempts to get to the gym and all the visitors we've been having and our social life, there have been a lot of nights out. And although I've gotten really good at finding the healthiest options on restaurant menus, it's still not as healthy as cooking WW meals at home. And unless we're at a restaurant that has its nutrition information online, I'm always estimating exactly what was in the dish I ate and therefore how many points it's worth. I deal with this by not using all of my allotted extra weekly points, so that if I inadvertently underestimate the point value of something I eat, the overflow is made up for. But it's still not good. I already vowed to make this a good cooking week, but then we went out last night and we're going away this weekend, so there will be a lot of eating out involved despite my best efforts.

But next week, it's back on track! No visitors, no plans, no trips, just me and the kitchen and a cabinet full of healthy ingredients. And in the meantime, the weight loss is still happening, slowly but steadily, and I'm still feeling healthier than I have in a long time. And I'm three gallons of milk and 12 sticks of butter lighter than I was on June 19. So it's been a good three months.