Peter Kay and Pro Points (and a mammoth gain)....

Well, I was hopeful that this new WW plan would help motivate me and get me back on the straight and narrow - but actually, the 6.5 pound gain last night seems to have done the trick. In a perverse way, I am glad I had a big gain, because quite frankly, the way I have been going, if I'd not have gained, I'd have carried on trying to get away with it.

Monday night at Peter Kay was absolutely amazing, he was supported by Rick Astley, which was just bloody brilliant. Big girlie screams from me. Peter was hilarious, I can honestly say I have never laughed so much in my life. I was almost choking!

Anyway, I digress. So, last night I was expecting a gain, but not quite the 6.5 pounds I was met with. It's really made me think about what I have been doing of late and has helped me to reassess what I am trying to achieve. This year I have achieved precisely zero on the weight loss front. I've been playing around with the same stone since December last year. Utterly ridiculous.

I stayed for the meeting to try and get a better understanding of the new plan. It seems to make sense, and all of the clerks at the meeting who have been trialling it have had excellent results.

So basically, I get a shed load more points than I used to, but these don't in anyway correlate to the old points system. Gone are calories and saturated fat, in their place we have Protein, Carbs, Fat and Fibre. Most things work out to be more points (wine is particularly impacted) but some things have come out of it ok (think cheese and bacon... lovely!). It's slightly annoying that all of my old cook books, eating out guide etc. are no longer valid, but WW have provided some conversions for the books, so I guess it's not all bad. Fruit is now zero points, but we were advised not to go mad on the fruit front as it still obviously contains calories.

At the meeting, we were given an example of 2 breakfasts of 300 calories each. One was 2 slices of bacon, a poached egg, mushrooms, tomatoes and a slice of toast. The other was a muffin with butter and jam. The cooked breakfast comes out at 8 pro points whereas the muffin is 9. I know what I'd rather have. Apparently the theory now is that protein takes longer to digest and you can burn up to 25% more energy trying to digest it. So - protein rich foods come out better in the new Pro Points plan.

I now get a massive allowance of 41 pro points a day (that's gone up a point thanks to my mammoth gain) plus the extra 49 per week that I can dip into. You cannot carry over any daily points, so if you don't use them, you lose them, and you can earn a maximum of 6 activity points per day. In theory, you can therefore have an extra 91 points a week on top of your daily allowance. Seems a lot of food.

Here is an example of a daily allowance of 29 points (the minimum you can ever have).

Source: Daily Mail

I can't see how I can go hungry on this, but similarly, I get another 12 points on top of that and it just seems like a lot. Anyway, I am willing to give it my all this week and see how I get on. I have a fair few night's out to negotiate, but I suppose I will just have to guestimate as best I can.

I actually feel excited at the prospect of getting my arse back into gear. Once the eating is back under control, I might even tackle my exercise demons.