Weight Watcher's Diaries Part Eight
By Carol Daelemans

The week I GAINED weight back.
I gained 1/2 pound this week. It was not really that much of a surprise. I had been expecting its return. A combination of things helped to plaster it back on my hips. The past weekend was Easter and I had been poorly behaved from a Weight Watchers point of view while in Chicago the week before. I was surprised I hadn't brought a little weight back from the Windy City with me. Goodness knows I brought back a few other things in my overstuffed luggage! I was sure that the Garrett's Caramel Corn in all of its delicious, greasy goodness was going to make me pay. I didn't care. It was worth it and I have been slowly proving to myself that I can do this weight loss thing. That does not mean that I want to lose weight only to find it again. Oh no! I am in this to make a difference. There is no way I want to make a habit out of dieting. I intend to get the weight off and in the process learn to eat and live better so I never have to lose as many pounds as my 3 year old weighs again. It's not really all that much fun and I can think of better things to do than count calories and weigh in every week.

The week was shaping up to be a challenge for many reasons. I was planning to go out Friday night, Easter was Sunday and school was out for 10 entire days starting after school on Thursday. You can imagine my mixed feelings as I looked toward the weekend. As far as food went, I had a pretty easy time of it for the first part of the week. I was trying to save up my Weekly Points to use on the weekend and I was doing OK... well maybe not that OK. Looking back on the week I can see that I was feeling sorry for myself and working through that with snacks. Sure, I kept up the exercise and watched my points. But I saw where they went; an ice cream on Monday, a cupcake that I shared with my 3 year old on Tuesday, banana bread that I had to make with the old bananas on Wednesday, (who can make banana bread and then not have a fresh slice??) and one small Dairy Queen ice cream on Thursday in celebration of Spring. By Friday I did not actually have all of my weekly points left but I had most of them. A few had gone into this week long indulgence of sweets.

All the local children got off of school Good Friday and we had 10 long days ahead of us. Of course, only one of my 9 year olds friends was actually going to be in town for the week so entertainment for her looked bleak. Without school or friends to distract I knew she would resort to picking on her 3 year old sister for entertainment. I have to tell you honestly that she started this tactic the minute she woke up Friday. Luckily for me, I had a gym appointment and an excuse to leave them both with Daddy. By the time I returned, Daddy had negotiated a play date for the older one and the younger one was happily watching Pinocchio for the 3000th time.

I made it through my Friday evening out with about half of my extra weekly points and started getting ready for Easter. I have to say that all of the Easter guests worked harder to make this holiday healthy but with all the old favorites. We decided to have a late Easter lunch instead of an early dinner. This way we would not end the day having consumed vast quantities of food. The earlier time also had the advantage of making it so I could have seconds of whatever I liked later in the day and call it dinner. The first thing we did was agree to only make as much food as we thought we would consume. What is the point in having eight different side dishes? There is no way the dozen or so of us can finish off all that food. We did decide to have two different desserts but only enough for everyone to have 1/2 a piece of each. This way everyone got to try both but not get over stuffed.

We also altered our choices just enough to improve the healthy aspect of the dishes without changing the taste. I experimented with 1/2 sugar free cello in the traditional cello mold and I didn't tell anyone until afterward. No one noticed, but as soon as they knew they felt they could have seconds. For our traditional Key Lime Pie we used half low fat and half regular sweetened condensed milk. Mom got the leanest ham she could find and made her own fabulous glaze that had a lot less sugar than the usual Honey Baked glaze. One sister made sweet potatoes and used butter milk instead of butter. Another made homemade, noodles in gravy. OK, so everything wasn't lower fat, but we tried. All these little changes add up to a delicious meal with nothing missing, except wheel barrels to take everyone home at the end of the day.