Bunny’s Small Victories

Bunny has been on Weight Watchers now for more than 3 months.

And it’s working!!!

Day by day, she counts her points, dipping into her weekly total when necessary, but using it mostly as a buffer in case she accidentally miscalculated that chicken picatta as 9 points when it was really 104,535,593. Every Friday morning, she attends a meeting, and everyone shares tips and hints and ideas and successes.

And it’s working!!!

Bunny has lost 29 pounds!

Her hips are smaller. She knows this because lots of her pants are sliding down her not-as-full hips. She’s down from a size 24 jeans to size 20. It’s easier to fasten the seat belt on an airplane. And with 10% of her body weight gone, she has noticed that she doesn’t get as tired doing things like walking long distances and up and down stairs ten million times.

See, it’s working!!!

Bunny is all about goals these days. Lots and lots of little goals. She notes that if she loses 0.4 this week, she can kiss the 260’s goodbye. She celebrates every 5 lbs. loss. She has always heard that a 10% body weight loss offers significant benefits, so she made that one of her little victories as well.

These small celebrations, even if they’re just inside her head, are motivating Bunny to stay on the path. It’s not hard. She’s not suffering and doesn’t feel deprived. She is losing daily points as she loses weight, but she’s adjusting — her 9 point morning shake had to get a tad smaller so it was only 7 points. And when she just has to eat something, fruit and veggies are free!

So as Bunny’s buns are steadily shrinking, we face a new challenge. Next week Bunny is going on a cruise.

Stay tuned!

Snow Bunny in Ugg Boots

 

Bunny has decided to attend a Weight Watchers meeting on Fridays at 6:30 a.m. This is very early, and Bunny is a senseless zombie slow starter in the morning, but the meeting location is halfway to work, and it fits well into her schedule. If she can get up and organized that early.

It gets quite cold in the winter where Bunny lives. Last Friday, she dragged out of bed, looked out the window, and saw that the wind was whipping. She asked her electronic friend Alexa what the temperature was, heard a number that made her shiver, and stumbled into the closet to throw on some nice warm casual-Friday clothes. Emerging in a pair of jeans (not the dearly departed 24s, but a now-perfectly-comfy 22), a sweatshirt, a warm scarf, a parka, a sweater and Ugg boots, off she went to her meeting.

At her WW meeting, there is a sign that says, “For Health Reasons, Please Place a Paper Towel on the Scale if Weighing in Barefoot.” Bunny had decided in Week 1 that she might as well just keep her shoes on all the time. It seemed simpler.

So Bunny, still sleep and pre-coffee, got to the front of the line, wrote down her Monthly Pass number, and stepped on the scale.

Oh, you did well, just a little point-two flex. (This is WW’s way of telling you that you gained two-tenths of a pound without making it sound bad.) As Bunny was collecting her purse, the nice lady behind the desk yelled

WAIT!!!!!

Bunny turned to see what horrible thing was occurring.

LOOK AT YOU !  TAKE OFF YOUR SWEATER! AND YOUR KEYS! 

Bunny had left her parka in the car, but still had on a thick cardigan sweater, and the lanyard with her office keys hung around her neck, as they always did when she was on her way to work.

Oh. Will that make a difference?

Now the meeting leader had arrived and was assuring Bunny that “EVERYTHING COMES OFF!” 

Bunny obediently set down her purse, took off her sweater, and the lanyard, and got back on the scale. She lost 1.2 lbs.

Cheers went up, and as Bunny walked away from the desk to head for her seat, the nice lady behind the desk yelled

WAIT!!!!!

Bunny turned to see her scowl.

Ugg boots? Really? Those must be at least three pounds. Get back here.

There were people in the line, and Bunny didn’t want to hold up the parade any longer, so she said cheerily,

That’s OK, I’ll lose more next week!

The nice lady behind the desk was satisfied, and went on with the next weigh-in.

Bunny was right. The next week (without the Ugg boots), she lost FOUR POUNDS.

Bunny’s total weight loss stands at 18.6 lbs.

 

Bunny’s Baggy Jeans

After 5 weeks on Weight Watchers, Bunny has lost 13.4 lbs.! She is happily connected to eTools, tracking what she eats on her iPhone, and walking through the market scanning barcodes. Her FitBit is connected, syncing with her phone, ticking off Activity Points and cheering her on as she racks them up. (Well, she’s not exactly racking them up since she still sits most of the day, but when she does earn an Activity Point, the Weight Watchers app provides great encouragement.)

The other day, Bunny had to fly. When preparing for air travel, her plan is always to wear something warmish, not tight, and a nice baggy sweater. She decided on the size 24 jeans. She had never bought a size 24 before, and was pretty horrified about it, but she did so a few months ago because the size 22s were a little snug, did a brilliant job of defining her muffin tops, and she was tired of it. So they started out loose. After dropping 13.4 lbs., they’re apparently a lot looser. She didn’t notice any difference, and wore them anyway.

Stepping through the scanner at the airport, the buzzer went off. She then spent 10 minutes having a TSA lady rub her flat palms up and down Bunny’s various body parts, asking Bunny to widen her stance and hitch up her jeans, searching for whatever it is they search for. When this uncomfortable process was complete, the TSA lady told Bunny that the buzzer went off because her jeans were sagging in the crotch, and they “don’t expect that in a woman.” She advised Bunny, “next time, pull them up as you go through the scanner.”

How embarrassing! The size 24 jeans are now in the donation pile. We wonder how it works with those guys who wear their jeans with the waistband a foot below its intended location, with the crotch falling near their knees. Do THEY have to suffer such close inspection? (We hope so!)

So as Bunny scans and counts and tracks, we at Team Bunny try to be as encouraging as possible. We cheered when she lost 5 lbs. (although she brushed that off as first-week water weight). We cheered when she lost 10 lbs., and that made her happy. She started at 290, and she was delighted to say goodbye to the 90’s and then the 80’s. She’s approaching an overall 5% loss of body weight, and we’ll cheer her on for that when she gets there. “Hey, Bunny, you lost 3 times pi! You’re awesome!” (Anything to keep her going!)

Meanwhile, Weight Watchers gives her a “Bravo” star sticker for attending meetings, and a star sticker with the number of pounds lost when she hits a goal. She’s still trying to figure out where she’s supposed to stick all those stars. Right now most of them are on the bottom of her purse. That sticker system needs work, Weight Watchers.

 

Bunny’s Early Warning System

At her Week 1 Weight Watchers weigh-in, Bunny lost 7 lbs!

At her Week 2 weigh-in, she lost 0.4. 4/10. Four-tenths of one pound. She’s entirely underwhelmed by this. And now she’s worried. Here’s a sneak peak at what’s going on in Bunny’s head:

What if I’m too old to lose weight?? No, that can’t be. But 4/10 of a pound? At that rate it’ll take me 400 years to lose all this weight! I lost a lot the first week, but everybody knows that’s just water. What if…….????

With that state of mind in place, she attended the pre-Thanksgiving Weight Watchers meeting where they reviewed all the traditional holiday goodies and focused the members on how much of this and that equals how many SmartPoints. Armed with this knowledge, Bunny resolved to stay on the straight and narrow the week prior to Turkey Day, to minimize the net damage.

Then disaster struck. Two days after the meeting, Bunny went to a football party at Buffalo Wild Wings. She tried hard to choose something from the menu that sounded relatively safe. She went with something called Buffalitos — basically soft tacos. A lot of lettuce, a teensy amount of chicken, some hot sauce, and the tortilla, times two. Not too bad, right?

Sneaky little innocent-looking point-filled taco

When she got home, she discovered that this friendly looking meal cost her a cool 29 Smart Points. (What the heck do you put in your Buffalitos, Buffalo Wild Wings???)

Even worse, while waiting for the Buffalitos, she noshed on two of Buff’s mozzarella sticks. Just cheese, right? Nope. 10 Smart Points!

And that didn’t count that nice glass of wine (5 Smart Points).

So now she’s wondering about her ability to lose weight at more than 0.10039430423343 lb. per week, AND she feels as though her Thanksgiving week point-counting has been severely compromised.  Bunny is a hot mess.

But she has not entirely lost hope. We suggested that she skip this week’s weigh-in (it’s just better that she not know what she weighs the day after Thanksgiving). She will hop back on the program in earnest and have six days to (please God) lose something…anything!

Bunny needs some encouragement.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Google to the Rescue!

Since the last time Bunny did Weight Watchers, a wonderful thing has happened. Someone went to every restaurant, figured out all the SmartPoints for everything on the menu, and posted it all online! No more wondering what they put in the dish, and how many points are hiding under the lettuce leaves. No more wondering whether that bite of biscuit was 2 points or 222, and what about that teensy dollop of apple butter?

Bunny and Buff went to BJ’s Brewhouse for dinner the other night. Bunny found a nice chicken dish on their light menu page. (It had brussels sprouts, but she figured she’d just ignore them. Turned out they were pretty good!) While waiting for the food and sipping on her 8-point glass of chardonnay, Bunny googled the restaurant, and Lo! There was the exact dish she ordered, all set out on a food label with all the info she needed to calculate the WW points!

Since then, a little more digging has turned up a page called fastfoodnutrition.org, which has a list of all kinds of restaurants, and provides the SmartPoints for all their goodies, including Panera, Starbucks, Domino’s Pizza, and even Baskin-Robbins!!!

This is a wonderful tool. If you’re trying to keep to a points system, check it out!

Oh….did we mention that at her Week 1 Weigh-In, Bunny lost 7 lbs.? That’s half the weight of her cat!

Woo-hoooooooo!!!!!!

 

Bunny Does Weight Watchers…Again

Well, the first step is the hardest, and Bunny took it. She walked into a Weight Watchers center, signed back up, and stepped on the scale. 

As it does every once in a while, WW has changed its program. (Weight Watchers and Bunny have known each other so long, she hopes it doesn’t mind if she calls it “WW” for short. We’ll let you know if we get a nasty-gram from Oprah.) Smart Points are now Points Plus. In order to determine a food’s points, you only need to look at the label, add the trans fats to the carbs, subtract the 1/4 the fiber, multiply by 5/17 the calories, add the unsaturated fats to the serving size, divide by pi, and multiply by the age of your youngest child.

OK, that’s not quite accurate, but the point is, the formula is a little tricky, and Bunny wishes she hadn’t passed up the online tools, thinking she could do the math in her head. Online tools, here we come! Once she can figure out the points without a slide rule, she’s going into the pantry with a magic marker and writing the points on all the food!

Bunny gets 41 points every day, and 42 extra for the week. Fruits and veggies are free (even bananas)! For the first few days, Bunny’s task was to figure out how much of what to eat, and when. She’s getting the hang of it. It’s Day 3 and she has nearly hit the target all 3 days.

They made her set a goal for the first month (apparently people get discouraged with weekly goals, but almost everybody loses some weight in a month). Bunny’s goal is 9 lbs. She thought she’d lose a lot the first week, then 1-1/2 lbs. or so each subsequent week. She forgot about Thanksgiving.

Stay tuned!

 

Ads on our blog??!?!??!

Oh, dear, no. We’re not very technologically savvy, but we’ll get rid of those nasty little things just as soon as we can figure out what buttons to push!

We’re baaaaaack……!

We’ve been away for a long time. We’re very sorry.

Shortly after our last post, Bunny’s 85-year-old parents were in a bad car accident. This set off a long, horrible chain of events, involving nursing homes, assisted living, hospitals, the sale of their family home, walkers, wheelchairs, bedsores, innumerable financial issues, and dementia. It all came to rest last month with the passing of her beloved father.

This has been the perfect storm for an emotional eater, and bad things happened to Bunny’s weight-loss situation. Bunny is no spring chicken, and between enormous stress, a sedentary job, menopause, and the general insanity of the world around us (this is will not be a political blog, but this moderator has to say, just once … Trump? really?), our Bunny is heavier than ever, and sporting quite a belly.

Well, she’s just tired of it. She just got off a cruise ship, and after a little rest and recovery, Bunny has declared war on all that extra weight. They say you can’t lose weight after age 60. Well, Bunny’s not in the mood to hear that. She has a new fitbit, is on her way back to Weight Watchers, and called us and asked us to revive this blog. Once we figured out the password, we were all set!

So welcome to the next chapter of Shrinking Bunny’s Buns!

Let’s Make a Deal: Nancy Nutrition Edition

So Bunny’s new diet is boring.

The last time Bunny lost a bunch of weight on a low-carb diet, there was a set of rules she understood and mostly followed. (Anyway, she followed enough of them that she got into a size 8.) Now that the Carb-Hating Doctor has brought Nancy Nutrition on the scene, there are more rules. New rules. The playing field has changed. Notable among these news rules are:

Limited proteins:Bacon, cheese, and beef are limited to three times a week. Total, not each.

What this means to Bunny is that if she puts cheese in an omelette and has a side of bacon with it (not a whole side, that’s half a pig…what we mean is a side order, 3 or 4 slices), anyway, if she does that, then she has trashed her limited proteins for the week and only has one left. Bunny doesn’t like this. She likes to have cheese sticks as snacks, and to sprinkle queso on her chicken-fajitas-no-tortilla-rice-or-beans (essentially a sizzling plate of grilled chicken with a little guacamole and salsa for your dipping pleasure) at the cantina across the street. 

Net Carbs: You know those low-carb candy things they used to sell all over the place until the Carb Fad ended a few years ago? Well, those were helpful in Bunny’s weight loss. She only had 25 carbs allowed each day on that last diet, but because those goodies were made with sugar alcohol, you were allowed to subtract the sugar alcohol carbs, AND the fiber carbs. (Why? We have absolutely no idea. Bunny failed chemistry, and so did we.) So, a snack that was 18 carbs went down to 3 net carbs. Bunny counted it as 3, and all was well. Size 8.

Well, Nancy Nutrition has called a halt to that, and net carbs are a no-go on the new diet. Count the carbs, not the net carbs. Net carbs are for diabetics, she said, and have nothing to do with weight loss.

Oh, poo.

Tomatoes: On that last diet, the Carb-Hating Doctor let her eat tomatoes, she just said to watch it because they’re carby. Bunny happily munched her favorite snack, and it was ok. Now Nancy Nutrition says NO TOMATOES. EVER. THEY ARE A FRUIT. NONE. ZERO. ZIP.

So there are the new rules. Bunny liked the old rules better. She lost weight with the old rules. Why are we adding new ones when the old ones worked? (Did we mention, Size 8?)

On her last visit with Nancy Nutrition, Bunny hadn’t lost much weight. Two pounds in a month (a pound  a week is what her dietary supervisors are insisting on hoping for). Nancy tried to figure out why her weight loss was slow, and Bunny ended up whining about all of the above, tossing in an extra whine about how drab her morning shake is without a banana.

Nancy Nutrition said:  OK, this isn’t going to work if you’re miserable, and nothing made by Mother Nature is going to make you fat. So let’s make a deal. Eat tomatoes, cheese, bananas, as you like. Don’t go overboard, though. Make healthy choices every time. Let’s see how you do. If you can still lose weight while adding in these foods, it’s OK with me. Just keep a food log so I can see what you’re doing.

You’ve got it, Nancy!! Let’s go!!!!!!!!

Oh, boy. Bunny’s REALLY got to lose weight now. We can just hear Nancy Nutrition’s I-told-you-so-now-stop-whining-and-go-back-to-doing-it-my-way speech.

Hello, tomatoes! Bunny’s missed you!

Get Thee Behind Me, Thin Mints!!!

As Bunny was munching her kale chips…

which, by the way, she has had only twice, because it turns out that it’s nearly impossible to find kale in the market, let alone kale that isn’t 90% stalk (stalks, you should know, are utterly useless for kale-chipping purposes)–but we digress…

As Bunny was munching her kale chips, a news story caught her eye.

The Girl Scouts have introduced a new cookie! Just in time for Bunny’s low-carb diet!

Savannah Smiles! 

How cute is that?

Maybe, she thought, they’re some awful flavor, like liver or castor oil or grapefruit or cat food, and not tempting at all. That’d be great!

No such luck. The article revealed that they’re little wedges, filled with a blast of lemony goodness.

Oh no…………….

Bunny loves lemon.

Bunny loves Girl Scout Cookies. Bunny wants Savannah Smiles. And now that the subject has come up, she is thinking about her lifelong friend Thin Mints. Ooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh….

This, of course, is a classic example of the power of suggestion. Bunny hasn’t thought about Girl Scout cookies in six months, but now, they’re number two with a bullet on her list of banned but intensely desired munchies.

As you might expect, the mean Carb-Hating Doctor’s hideously boring highly restrictive diet strictly forbids lemon, sugar, cookies and all things even remotely yummy.

What the heck, let’s look at the label, just for kicks:

There are 140 calories and 23 carbs in 5 cookies. That’s about 4 carbs per cookie.

Gosh. That’s worth thinking about.

Let’s see. Bunny gets 25 carbs every day. If she ate 5 cookies and nothing else for the rest of the day, she’d be good.

Right?

Oh, okay, we know, that’s cheating. But it’s fun to think about.

Sorry, Savannah Smiles. Not this year. You either, Thin Mints.

Bunny loves you, though.