So Annie asked me to join Weight Watchers last night. She asked partly because she wants help with her own weight loss journey, and partly because she knows that I need help focusing on mine.

I weighed in last night at 289.2 pounds. This is a long way from the high 270’s I was before leaving Ottawa, but still down from my horrible high of around 310 pounds.

The meeting last night was fairly simple. The hard part is, and I’ve told Annie this, that I have all this knowledge about weight loss, eating healthy, responding correctly to your body, but weight loss is still difficult for me.

I was given 61 daily points to use towards various things. This is in contrast to Annie who has the minimum 26 points per day. Some of the ladies at the meeting were astonished at how many points I was given, and were a bit jealous. Annie continually reminded me that my number will drop almost as fast as my weight.

For those that haven’t been part of the Weight Watchers world for a while, they changed in around 2008 to a new system for their points called PointsPlus. The values of various things were changed, and most fruit and veggies were made free on plan to try to promote the intake of those ever important food items.

Knowing how my body works, I’ve decided to work towards a high protein, medium fat, and low carb diet. I’ll never get rid of carbs, but I hope that increasing my protein will work as before and reduce cravings. If I can do this inside my daily points, I should lose weight slowly and in a way that my body won’t go into panic mode. Of course, I’m going to have to track foods in two locations currently, as Weight Watchers doesn’t easily give me information on fat, carbs, and protein as well as their PointsPlus values, so I’ll be trying to remember to put my food on MyFitnessPal as well, so I can track those specific things. Part of my goal is to keep my carbs under 120 grams per day.

I started tracking today, and despite a breakfast of three scrambled eggs, and three strips of crispy bacon, and a can of coke, I still only used 17 points. I’m going to load up on more protein and fruit and veggies for lunch, and then for dinner we are planning on having meatballs in diana sauce with asparagus. It is going to be difficult for me to use up all of the points available to me.

One of the stresses of being on a paid weight loss plan is knowing what goals they have set for your weight loss journey. Weight Watchers would ideally like me to be under 200 pounds. It has been a long time since I saw a number like that, and I don’t think that I could maintain a weight that low. My personal goal is the same as it has been for a while: size 38 to 40 pants, and large or XL shirts. If I can fit comfortably into that size clothing, I’ll be a happy camper.

I hope that not only can I help myself, but in doing so, I hope to help my fiancee. Working together as a team should hopefully make things easier. Wish us luck!