Show and Tell - WW food scale

Being mindful of my Free-Form goal this week, I have been putting a little extra work into my meals lately. Sunday night, I made veggie burgers (Morningstar Farms Grillers Vegan), roasted asparagus (forgot how much I love that) and home-made sweet potato fries. Last night, I made baked sweet potatoes topped with black beans (which I'd seen somewhere in the blogosphere), low fat sour cream and hot sauce. Alex made a delicious organic salad of mesculun greens, cherry tomatoes, avocados and apricots (I think?) with Trader Joe's fat free Balsamic Vinaigrette. It was delightful.

What was probably the most fun was when I whipped out one of my Christmas presents: The Weight Watchers Food Scale.

I've always told myself I was good about guessing the size/weight of my portions, but really, I suck at it. This scale made it very clear to me. Not only does it weigh the food for you (anything up to almost 7 pounds - who is eating 7 pounds of anything at once?), but it also has tons of food pre-programmed in with points values. For example, one of the sweet potatoes (or yams, according to the scale) was huge, yes, and 9 points! I never would have counted 9 points for a SWEET POTATO! Needless to say, I only ate half of that bad boy.

So last night was a very sobering realization that I most likely grossly underestimate the point values (and serving sizes) of almost everything I eat. I think now I'll probably be obsessed with counting, pre-measuring and weighing things for a little while (like my lunch - leftovers - which i pre-calculated to be 7 points where I probably would've normally counted 5). It will be a good exercise for me, and an annoying one for everyone else.

Speaking of lunch... time to eat.