I'm a Pod Person from Outer Space

I must be a pod person.
I swear my body has been taken over by aliens.
Aliens who like to sweat.
Aliens who enjoy exercise.

Aliens who got me to stay on the elliptical for 60 minutes today!!

That's how I know my body has been taken over by aliens, because there is absolutely NO WAY that I would work out through 60 continuous minutes of elliptical hell. 

It must be aliens.

Or it could be that I'm addicted to watching HEROES on my IPod, and I just wanted to see what was going to happen on the next episode and I lost track of time, and I exercised for 60 minutes somewhat by mistake.  That could be it, too.

But IPods May be Dangerous to Your Couch Potato Ways doesn't sound nearly as headline-making as Fat Girl Forced to an Hour of Grueling Exercise by Gym-Loving Extraterrestrials!   If I were writing a column, I'd definitely go for the second headliner.


Seriously though, I almost don't recognize myself sometimes.  Who is this person making good choices and being all healthy and stuff???

Today I went to Panera's for lunch.  Mmmmm......Panera.........bready goodness....*gurgle*, *gurgle*, *drool*, *slurp*.....
Sorry, I'm back!

One of the things I really love about Panera besides the awesomely tasty yummies they make is the fact that they offer free Wi-Fi, and it's a good enough signal that I can get it even out in the parking lot.  So, I sat outside the restaurant for 15 minutes looking through the Panera Bread website, searching for nutritional information on the different foods I was interested in getting for lunch.  I was SO GLAD that I spent that time in the parking lot looking like some sort of weird techno stalker person, because I was able to make a really well-informed decision about my lunch.

I looked through some of my favorite sandwiches to find out how many Weight Watchers points they would cost me for the day.  So I looked up my absolute favorite sandwich: Frontega Chicken.

Guess how many points the Frontega Chicken sandwich costs.
Ten, my friends.  Ten, all by its little lonesome self!

Now, I only get to have 32 points everyday, so that might give you an idea of how much fat and how many calories this sandwich has in it (430 calories and 20 grams of fat, actually).  I usually spend about 10-11 points on my entire lunch, including desert if I'm going to have any, so I wanted to find something comparable here.

Oh yeah, by the way, that's the amount of points for HALF of a sandwich!  I always get the "You Pick Two" with a bowl of French Onion Soup (5 points) and half of a sandwich.

So, I decided to check out my next favorite sandwich: Tomato Mozzarella.  How many points would you estimate for it?
Eight points.
Better, but still pretty high in the point range just for a lunch.

I decided to keep looking.
What's this?  The Mediterranean Veggie sandwich with cilantro hummus and feta?  That sounds like it could be tasty.
Oooh, and only 6 points (with only 300 calories and 7 grams of fat!)!  Ding! Ding! Ding!  We have a winner!!

Okay, so when it got to the choice of an apple, chips, or bread to go with my lunch, I caved and got the baguette.  I LOVE Panera bread, and since I'd done my homework, I knew I could splurge 3 points on a crispy hunk of Frenchly-divine bread.  It was delish!


So normally, my "healthy" lunch at Panera would cost me 28 points for a cup of soup, half of a Frontega Chicken sandwich, hunk of bread, and of course, a chocolate chip cookie.

Today's lunch from Panera was exactly half of that!  14 points baby, boo-yah!!

I was so proud of myself for making good choices at lunch today.
But again, this is not me making these choices.  This must be some weird pod person from the planet Mars who has taken over my body.

And finally, tonight's dinner was tough.
Papa Murphy's pizza at my sister-in-law's house.  Yummmmmmmmmy!

Normally, I don't eat pizza on a Friday before a Saturday morning weigh-in, but I wasn't the one buying tonight, so there you go.  I can't believe I really did this, but I stopped at only 2 pieces!  If you're a thin person and all you ever have is one or two pieces, then, well, I hate you.  Sorry to be brutal, but I do.  Everyone else who isn't like that can understand how INCREDIBLY hard it is to eat only a couple slices of pizza.

My saving grace was that I was sweaty and stinky from working out, and I had brought a change of clothes with me.  I asked Jen if I could use her shower and I booked it in there after my 2 pieces were gone.  I was still hungry for more when I went to take my shower, but by the time I got out, I was ok with having just 2 slices.  I still had to stay far, far away from the leftovers, but I could control myself if I didn't wander into the kitchen.

I'm nervous about tomorrow's weigh in, but I really did my best this week.  I tried hard.  I exercised hard.  (I earned 67 activity points from exercising so hard this week!) I made good choices.

Hopefully all these hard decisions will show up tomorrow on the scale.

Keep your fingers crossed.