Weight Watchers Chat #354 “How To Hack Your Home to Stay On Track!”

News and Reviews

Today is the first day of the “Tracking” Challenge hosted by Julie over on the If You Have an Egg Facebook Group. Hop in any time, it’s not a competition with anyone but yourself!
In case you hadn’t gathered by my constant mention of Girl Scouts, it is indeed Girl Scout Cookie time in Tennessee! Check out my latest post with all the 2024 points values here

Review Last Week: Last week was Chat #353 “A New Way to Respond to Setbacks!”

Your best friend texts you and drops this bomb “the Girl Scouts were set up in front of the store today and I was hungry when I got there. I’m so ashamed of myself, I bought a box and ate one whole sleeve before I even got done shopping!”

Your response is:

1 – “oh geez idiot, why didn’t you just go in the other door?”

2 – “oh no! You know you have to eat something before you go to the store, you were just setting yourself up for failure”

3 – “dang girl, you go! You only ate one sleeve?? Give the kids the other one and track your next meal. You are so killing this!”

Pro Tips for responding when YOU are the one who got suckered in by those little cute girls in green uniforms:

Tough Love Isn’t Self Love

While I don’t want you to completely overlook any potential setback and give yourself an unlimited hall pass, research shows that tough love for yourself can actually make you less likely to reach a related goal
Six or more “back up” frozen or heat and serve meals
Popsicles or frozen yogurt bars
Cheese sticks of some kind
Tuna packs

“You’re Should-ing All Over Yourself”

If you know who Stuart Smalley is you just told me we can fill in the same age range circle on a survey!

This Saturday Night Live series of skits from the early 1990’s was meant to be a satirical look at self help gurus and we laughed and laughed while Al Franken stared at himself in a mirror chanting “you’re smart enough. You’re good enough. And doggone it, people like you”.

But 30 years later I find myself Stuart speaking to myself and realizing much of what was said in fun is soooo true. A personal favorite is “you’re should-ing all over yourself”. In the Girl Scout Cookie scenario I can hear myself saying “you should have done this, you should have done that”. Stop Should-ing all over yourself!

Mirror Mirror

And now I’m totally switching gears and quoting a favorite Disney movie. “Mirror Mirror on the wall. Who is the fairest of them all?” We all assume it’s Snow White right? Nope, it’s YOU. You are the fairest of them all. And the smartest. And the most dedicated. You showed up on a Sunday night, took an hour of your time to check in, maybe even opened your app to see what changes I was talking about. YOU ARE THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL!

Your homework was #FairestOfThemAll. Easiest homework EVER. If you watched this Live OR if you checked in with us OR if you opened your app then you did your homework. All you have to do to get your badge this week is shout I AM THE #FairestOfThemAll

Kim watched the chat and checked out the WW app!
Carol is a proud Grammy (she has a Peanut too!) and exercises so she can keep up with her!
Marlene says “yeah, I did it!” and yayayay, she did it!
Lynn is one of our fairest of them all!
Melisa is a proud Egglette and tracks in her app!
And soooooo many more!

Bravo, you did it!

This Week’s Topic: “How To Hack Your Home to Stay On Track!”

Raise your hand if you’ve ever opened a container in the back of the crisper drawer and thought “what the heck even was that?”

Yeah, we’ve all been there and done that. Even with the best of intentions we ALL (pros and newbies alike) need some help getting our homes, offices and even our cars hacked to help us stay on track!

Pro Tips for Finding Your Best Space Hacks:

At your fingertips

Some things like your gym clothes, meal prep tools, your favorite appliance or food scale, and your best tracking method should be within reach. Keeping your best tools in reach (or at least in sight) is the best way to make sure they get used.

The principle of least effort.

According to Harvard Linguistics Professor George Kingsley Zipf, PhD two factors guide human behavior
a) A desire to maximize benefit

b) A desire to minimize effort

It’s simple – things you want or feel you need to do for your weight loss success, make an easy path. Things you need to limit or even avoid? Make it hard! Here are a few examples:

If you want a butternut squash as part of your dinner after a long day are you more likely to hack into this? Or use something like this? Easy peasy!
If you want to get up on time to go out for your morning walk do you sleep with your phone in your bed? Or put the alarm clock (and your dang phone) across the room? No brainer!
If you want your kids and yourself to eat more fruit instead of candy, which one do you leave sitting out? Let’s ask Casey…she has started putting out apples where the girls can see them and even invested in a good quality apple corer / slicer. The candy from Alyssa’s birthday party is abundant but put away in an opaque bag. I’ll let you guess which one is the easiest path now!

Now You See Me

All these years of chats and listening to my fearless leader Gwen later and this is still a Top 5 Topic Favorite. I have labeled these identical opaque containers with colored post its rather than numbers or letters so I don’t accidentally lead you in a decision.

One of these contains a zero point food. One is 8 points worth of something that isn’t bad but might be more points than you want to “accidentally” consume. The third is 20 points of something that may be a problem and should probably be out of sight.

How could these be stored to encourage you to enjoy the 0 point food, use the 8 points in a civilized manner, and maybe avoid the 20 points until the occasion calls for sharing?

This Week’s Homework: #NowYouSeeMe

Your homework for this week is #NowYouSeeMe. Still pretty darn easy homework again this week, will you do it? Find ONE thing in your pantry, fridge, grocery pick up list that needs to be front and center in a clear container OR something you need to put in a spot where you will be less likely to grab it and show us how you took care of it! Now DO YOUR HOMEWORK because I promise there is someone who needs the idea you have already rattling around in your head. Whatever it is let us know, I promise your decision to participate this week will help you AND someone else! Then type it, snap it, share it however you like, and then tag me for your next cool badge!

Don’t forget to do your homework #NowYouSeeMe and tag me when you share on social media!

Tag @ifyouhaveanegg on Instagram
Tag @ifyouhaveanegg on our Facebook Page
Tag @Kelly Green Milligan in our Facebook Group
Tag @ifyouhaveanegg on WW Connect

Extra Credit: Microwave Popcorn Test!

This part of the chat this week was inspired by a lady that works with me, Linda. She struggles to understand how WW works and what foods are good and bad. She also has a love for bringing in food for me to try. She brought me some Black Jewel popcorn (she is originally from Indiana, and it is grown up there) and kept telling me how much I was going to love it. I’m going to test it for you all, and it inspired me to do a microwave popcorn test!

I will be using my Saldree silicone microwave air popper, so there will be no extra oil and no extra points for these tastes tests.

The kinds of popcorn I will be trying are Black Jewel, Orville Redenbacher White, and Jolly Time Select, and I will be popping 50 grams of each on the popcorn setting.

Reviews:

Orville Redenbacher White – On the automatic popcorn setting, it was just starting to get a little too hot… so listen close to it while its popping! But the flavor is nice, and there weren’t that many kernels left in the bottom of the popper left.

Jolly Time Select – The yellow popcorn does smell different… and it popped yellow! That was surprising to me, and quite a few egglettes during the chat too. Jolly Time is a little fluffier and I like the flavor better, but there are twice as many un-popped kernels left in the popper.

Black Jewel – These are the TINIEST popcorns I’ve ever seen in my life! They are so itty bitty! BUT, Linda was pretty close to being right… I only had about 8-10 that were left in the bottom. It popped white not black, and the flavor is just ok. I will not be going out and getting more, but I do appreciate Linda giving this to me to try!

My Final Opinion:

The Jolly Time Select is my winner for flavor and smell, but the Orville Redenbacher wins for the least kernels left behind. As one of the egglettes pointed out, the Jolly Time looks like it has butter on it because it was yellow, so that may be why I thought it tasted better.

I won’t be purchasing Black Jewel popcorn, but thanks to Linda for inspiring this microwave popcorn test!

Which type of popcorn do you think would be your favorite? Let me know down in the comments below!