The first choice

Dieting and creating a healthy lifestyle is all about choices.

What to eat.

When to eat.

How much to eat.

The first choice, selecting a plan, could be the most important. And there is certainly no shortage of diet plans.

There are plans such as Jenny Craig, LA Weight Loss and NutriSystem. These are the programs that saturate late-night television with their commercials. If Dan Marino interrupts SportsCenter one more time to tell me he’s loss 34 pounds with NutriSystem, I’m going to lose it.

Then there are the low-carb diets like Atkins or South Beach.

There are the meal replacement diets, such as Slim Fast or Special K.

There are programs that deliver meals right to your door- for a nice price, I’m sure.

There are the fad diets.

The avocado diet. The grapefruit diet. The cabbage diet. There’s Hollywood 48-hour diet. There’s even something called the garlic and onion diet.

There’s the Biggest Loser Diet.

LL Cool J and Marilu Henner even have their own diet plans.

It all makes your head spin.

So which way do you go? Who do you trust?

Marilu Henner?

I pretty much eliminate anything where I’m going to have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for. I, like most average folks, don’t have the disposable income needed for the pay your way to a slimmer self plans.

The Atkins Diet sort of lost its appeal when its creator, Dr. Robert Atkins, died of cardiac arrest in 2002.

I have to say, I love the Special K granola bars, but I’m not going to eat Special K three times per day.

And I am not sure if I’m going to follow weight loss plans created by the gal from the “Taxi,” reruns or the “Mama Said Knock You Out,” guy.

Instead, my wife and I are following a plan we know can work. We know, because we’ve done it before, and we’ve also seen others have a great deal of success.

Amber and I are following the Weight Watchers plan.

A few years ago, good friends of ours followed this plan and lost a tremendous amount of weight. When we participated in Trim to Win two years ago, both Amber and I also had great success.

So after a couple years away from Weight Watchers, we are back.

I will admit, we don’t pay the monthly rates or go to meetings. Hopefully the Weight Watchers mafia will not track us down.

But we do follow, what I think is, a fairly solid plan.

The idea is basic.

The plan gives you a set amount of points per day, a value based on your body type and the amount of physical activity you have in your typical day. Foods are given point values based on a calculation that factors in calories, fat grams and fiber.

Here is a link to an online Weight Watchers points calculator.

http://www.webmilhouse.com/pointcalc.php

An actual calculator can also be found for sale at websites such as amazon.com.

Basically, you use this formula to figure out the point values for most things you eat. It’s very easy to determine the value of prepackaged foods.

For example, I happen to have a box of Special K Italian tomato and herb crackers in front of me. Each serving, about 24 crackers, has 120 calories, three grams of fat and two grams of fiber.

Enter those numbers into the calculator, and I know I can have 24 crackers for two points.

I am to the point where I can go down the aisle of the grocery store and figure out exactly how many points are in prepackaged foods.

I know that a Special K granola bar, a fat-free yogurt and a serving of sugar free apple cinnamon oatmeal have a value of two points each.

There are estimation for the point values of lean beef, poultry and fish. And for the most part, fruits and vegetables have a very small points value, if any.

I know that I can have a foot-long oven roasted chicken breast sub at Subway, with no cheese, all the veggies and fat-free honey mustard for about 13 points. That is about a third of my point total I am currently allowed per day.

That’s pretty good considering a quarter-pounder is 13 points. If you want French fries, a large order is another 10 points.

I like this thing called a Six Dollar Burger. That’ll cost me 23 points though.

Crazy huh?

Even though we don’t pay the monthly membership fee, we’ve bought the cook books and such. There’s also a ton of stuff online about the program.

So far, it’s working for us. It gives us an idea where should be at, and what we should be eating.

We’ve found out, by using different ingredients, we can make family favorites such as spaghetti or fajitas for reasonable point totals. We just have to remember to only serve sensible portions.

Well all of this talk about food is making me hungry. On a typical Sunday, watching the NFL games on television, I’d be trying to convince the wife to hit the store and buy a bag of chicken wings, or order a pizza.

But this Sunday, I’ll actually behave myself.

Good luck to all,

JB