KKiserApps

I’m always looking for healthy snacks besides the usual granola bars and rice cakes. Here’s a couple of new ones I ran across that I’m definitely going to try:

1. Frozen peas or corn. 1/2 cup of peas is 55 calories and 3 grams of fiber! Corn per 1/2 cup has 72 calories and 2 grams of fiber!
2. Soy Chips, about 100 calories a pack
3. Real licorice – a handful is about 150 calories and is more satisfying than a pack of M&M’s
4. If you want something but not really hungry, chew a piece of gum!
5. Baked chickpeas or dried peas
6. And of course a good stand by, an apple dipped in a little peanut butter.

It looks like WW changed the way you calculate your daily points. The previous method assumed that people would ‘cheat’. Makes sense, since I ‘fudge’, and still am losing weight. Anyway, here’s the new way of doing it, and it appears to be loosely based on BMR, at least the numbers produced, are very close. I’ll change the BMR calculator to be a dual calculator.

Add your scores together based on the answers to the following questions.

1. Gender:
Female- score 2
Male- score 8
A nursing mom- score 12

2. How old are you?
17-26- score 4
27-37- score 3
38-47- score 2
48-58- score 1
over 58- score 0

3. What do you weigh?
Enter the first two digits of your weight in pounds.
(for example, if you weight 198, you will add 19 to your score)

4. How tall are you?
Under 5’1- score 0
5’1-5’10- score 1
Over 5’10- score 2

5. How do you spend most of your day?
Sitting down? score 0
Occasionally sitting? score 2
Walking most of the time? score 4
Doing physically hard work most of the time? score 6

Just add all of your scores together and that’s your daily point total.
35 is your weekly bonus value.

Personally, I liked the old way of doing it, but this way does not encourage cheating. Don’t forget, as you lose weight, your daily points go down.

If you follow weight Watchers, you know what points are. Values are the same thing. I temporarily switched the words as points is trademarked, and I was already told once on a previous version not to have trademarked words. Since I was rushing out the fix for the crashing issue, I didn’t want to have anything hold up acceptance of the app. I’m putting the points in the next version, but all lower case, since the trademark is on ‘Points’ with a capital P.
We’ll see if that works.

Did you know that the average Thanksgiving meal can be anywhere from 3000 – 4000 calories! That’s approaching gaining 1lb, (3500 cals to gain/lose a pound or 2.2 kgs) just for one meal! How do you still enjoy yourself and not derail yourself from your weight goals? I’ll share how Im going to approach it in a bit, but here are some web sites I found about Thanksgiving that may help:

Great Huffington Post article, on being thankful.
Another good article, on just how many calories in all of that yummy food!.

Here’s my approach to enjoy myself and still keep on track:

1. Since Thursday is the last day of my week, my bonus points are crucial. I try to get as much exercise and keep within my daily budget to maximize the number of bonus points I have for Thursday.
2. I absolutely refuse to weigh myself the day after.  I’m not going to get discouraged knowing that I may have gained weight that I know will come off by the end of the following week.
3. I’ll be very careful for the week following Thanksgiving just to ensure any excess calories are burned up.
4. I’ll skip the rolls at dinner. at 50-100+ calories a pop, do I really need to stuff myself with them? I’d rather enjoy the real food, like turkey!
5. I always make my own gravy by combining fat free chicken stock, a touch of sherry, flour and 1 tablespoon of the pan drippings (with as little fat as possible). You’d be surprised at the enormous amount of flavor 1 tablespoon has.
6. Eat sensibly. No one says you need to pop a button on your pants to enjoy yourself. I like to enjoy a little of everything, and hey, there are always leftovers!
7. I’ve never been a big sweets person, so I usually skip the pie, but if you like it, have it! Just think portion size. 1/4 of a pumpkin pie is not 1 serving!

I hope you and your family have a happy, safe, and thankful Thanksgiving!

And available in the app store. It fixes the crash issue. Version 1.4 should be submitted to the App store over the weekend.