Weekly Meeting Topic : What's In Your Holiday Toolbox

Tonight's meeting was bittersweet in two ways.  Tonight we were saying goodbye to the "momentum plan", this is my last meeting under the old Weight Watcher's points plan.  I am actually quite excited for my first meeting next week to learn the new program which I hear is moving from a calories/fat/fiber focus to calories/carbs/protein/fiber focus.  We were also shocked when our meeting leader told us that after 20 years she will no longer be our meeting leader!  It was quite a shock to all of us, she has no idea who will be taking over being our leader.  Gail, helped me through loosing over 60lbs and I'm so sad to see her leaving us!  Gail has assured us she'll be popping in to join us hecklers in the crowd from time to time.

Gail was such a huge part of my weight loss success!

Now onto this week's meeting topic!  December is here which essentially means Christmas is looming on the horizon.  So we all need to get out our "Holiday Toolbox" to survive!

As someone who is loosing/aware of their weight thoughts constantly on my mind are : What will I eat???  How much?  When?  How often?  I think we need to be prepared and focused to make it through Christmas.  As Gail often said we have three choices

1. You can loose weight
2. You can maintain your current weight
3. You can choose to gain weight

Then you need to put a plan in action to make that goal a reality!  If your choice is #3 just make sure you set a number don't go pigging out for the holidays!!!

One of the tools you can put in your toolbox is : Decode Favourite/Family Recipes
If you're an online or etools member of Weight Watchers you can take advantage of the recipe builder.  This allows you to input all the ingredients and quantities enter in the number of servings and it spits out your points per serving!  So easy and convenient.  What if you don't have access to a great online resource like the recipe builder?

1. Find our the points value for each ingedient in the quantities needed for the recipe
2. Add up all the points
3. Divide points total by the number of servings and there you have it, your points per serving!

One little set of tools, are having strategies at hand

• Learn the points value of family favourite dishes
• Focus on eating filling foods.  Its least a little harder to eat when you're full or at least you'll think twice about it and feel uncomfortable afterwards!
• Decide before the meal/event/party what you're going to eat and how much
• Drink your water!
• Don't go to a meal/event/party hungry!
• Use the tool for living : mental rehearsing to come up with a plan to handle that event and vision yourself doing it successfully!

During this season there will be a lot of challenges, and we managed to share quite a few of them in our little group.

• Parties
• Visitors/Company
• Pot lucks
• Busy
• Time/motivation to exercise
• Alcohol
• Fancy drinks
• Big meals
• Other's cooking
• Seasonal baking
• Treats in the workplace (cookies/chocolates/etc.)

So there you have it, a few tools to put in your weight loss toolbox to hopefully get you through the holidays!  Christmas happens every year, its a fact of life so there's no point in panicking about it.  Come up with a plan, and put it into action!

Guess what?  Today is my last entry for NaBloPoMo!  I have posted a blog entry for every day in November!  Not only for one blog, but two!  That's 60 blog entries in 30 days!  I'm CRAZY!