Chick-fil-a and Weight Watchers
This is day 3 of my week out for lunch. And, I found myself at one of my favorite places to eat, Chick-fil-a! I could have gotten a salad, but I wanted to stick with the sandwiches like the previous two days to show a comparison. This is half the points from my first day at Which Wich.
I have talked about them several times. You can read those posts here, and here, and here, as well as some of the comments posted there.
Chick-fil-a has several options for someone trying to stay in the 8-15 point range for a meal. Here is what I had to eat:
- Grilled Chicken Sandwich - 7 Points Plus
- Light Mayo – 1 Points Plus
- Medium Cup of Fruit – 0 Points Plus
- Large Tea – 0 Points Plus
- Total for lunch = 8 Points Plus
I have had people mention that the fruit cup has mandarin oranges and that those add up more… whatever. The fruit cup, according to the Weight Watchers website says 0 points. Besides, it’s 3 little tiny slices of mandarin orange. Under the old points system, maybe. But the new system is 0 points.
I could have saved a point by not adding my tiny squirt of light mayo, but so far, this is my best meal of the week. So, I’m not goint to worry about that.
Other options for a good Chick-fil-a Weight Watchers meal
Salads – most of their salads, chargrilled fruit, southwest, or whatever are all about 6 points plus. Then, whatever the dressing is. Their salads are pretty good, and the lettuce and veggies are fresh.
Regular Chickfila Sandwich – If you’re going to get fruit, then a regular chicken sandwich may not be bad if you are craving it. It is only 11 points plus.
Stay Away From
Avoid the cheeses, heavy dressings, and milkshakes. Those are obvious.
Less obvious are the wraps and cold sandwiches. Several of the wraps are going to be 10-12 points. That’s not horrible, but it seems they could be better. Most of the points are in the dressing and wrap. The sandwich is 13 points.
There isn’t really a lot to stay from at Chick fil a when you’re watching your Weight Watcher points… much better than most fast food places by a long shot.
One Other Thing
Chick-fil-a’s wheat bun is very good. One of the things I have noticed with many places is that the wheat bread can be the same, if not more points than the white bun or other type bread. It’s quite deceptive. Most people order “wheat” bread at a restaurant thinking they are getting something healthier, when in fact, it is worse. It has more fat, but mostly more sugar added to the mix.
So, if you want, you can also order the wheat bun for the regular chicken sandwich, and save another point or two, maybe taking the sandwich from 11 points down to 9 or 10 points.
Wendy’s And Weight Watchers
Today was day 2 of my eating out for lunch for a week. I’m focusing on your typical quickee, fast food, type of a restaurant, where a person can eat for $5-8 or so.
Today I went to Wendy’s. Wendy’s (I thought at first) would have some decent selections for someone on Weight Watchers. I was quite wrong once I started calculating up all the points. I’ll get to that in a second.
Today I had a grilled chicken sandwich combo with a side salad and unsweetened tea. Here is how it broke down for Weight Watchers Points Plus
- Grilled Chicken Sandwich – 9 Points Plus. It comes with lettuce and a tomato. It also comes with some kind of dressing. That will hit you for extra points, so make sure to ask for no sauce or dressing.
- Garden Side Salad – The salad was 0 Points Plus – A decent side salad with lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots.
- Ranch dressing – 3 Points Plus. I could have gone low fat or fat free, but I don’t like the taste of those.
- Unsweetened Tea – 0 Points Plus. Straight, no sweetener.
- Total = 12 Points Plus for my lunch
That’s better than yesterday, staying within my target point range of 8-15 points.
I could have saved 1 – 3 points by tearing off some of the bun. The bun was bigger than the meat. I could have just taken off the top and eaten it “open faced,” or just torn off the edges. Other than that, not much more could have been done.
The chicken had a good flavor and was a decent size. The side salad was good, fresh, green, and a pretty good size for being a “side.”
Other Options – Uh… not many.
Of course, I could have gone for one of their salads, but BEWARE! If you go for one of their Garden Sensations salads, you’re gonna get nailed with points. They are a minimum of 15 Points Plus for the Apple Pecan, and as many as 21 Points Plus for the Spicy Chicken Caesar. If you want a salad at Wendy’s, just get a regular Garden Salad.
You think you’re being healthy when eating a salad at Wendy’s, but they’re loaded with fat, carbs, and high protein. Wendy’s Garden Sensation salads are not Weight Watcher friendly.
The only other real options at Wendy’s is to eat small. Order a kid’s meal or something off the value menu. You’re still going to get 11-13 Points Plus for a kids meal. You would be better off eating what I ate above.
Bottom Line
If you’re gonna eat at Wendy’s and stay within the 8-15 point range for your Weight Watchers diet, your options are very limited. I think I found about the only option, at least worthy of being called a meal.
Wendy’s is also known for their Frosties. An original chocolate Frosty will cost you 11 points plus.
Somehow on the TV commericials it always seems like Wendy’s is better than McDonalds or Burger King… but I think these 3 places are about the same. Your options are going to be slim, and you’re better off choosing another place (if you have that choice).
Which Wich and Weight Watchers
Today was day one in my lunch dining out for a week. I chose to go to Which Wich. Of all the sandwich shops, this is probably my favorite… more than Subway or Jimmy Johns. There aren’t as many of them around the country, but they’re growing.
As you can see from the photo (which you can click on to enlarge), I chose the 7 inch chicken sandwich, baked chips, and an iced tea. Here is the breakdown of how my lunch went with all the Weight Watchers Points Plus totalled up:
1) I ate the chicken sandwich on 7 inch wheat bread. I did “Double Meat,” light mayo, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and cole slaw. No other spreads, oils, or anything else.
- wheat bread – 7 points
- double chicken – 4 points
- light mayo – 0 points
- veggies – 0 points
- cole slaw – 1 point
- Total for my sandwich = 12 points plus
2) Lay’s Baked Sour Cream and Onion chips – 4 points plus
3) Unsweetened ice tea – 0 points
Total for my lunch = 16 points plus
How could I have saved more points?
- I could have dropped the cole slaw and asked for more lettuce instead. That would have saved me 1 point. The 1 point probably came from a cole slaw dressing that was on the cabbage.
- I could have gone regular meat and saved 2 points
- I could have gone regular baked Lay’s chips, which are 3 points instead of 4.
This would have brought my total down to 12 points for lunch, which was within the range I wanted to be in of 8-15 points for lunch.
Other options or things I found out while eating at Which Wich:
White bread and wheat bread are both 7 points. So, don’t worry about one being better than another. The differences on the nutritional chart was so minimal that it didn’t make a difference in the points.
- Turkey, beef, and chicken are all good choices, at 2 points. Ham is 3 points. A Wicked is 7 points worth of meat.
- Load up on the veggies at 0 points. Cole slaw adds 1 point. Olive salad adds 2 points. Other than that, load up!
- Another way to cut more points and stay on the low carb side is to do a bowl, instead of a sandwich. It is 2 points, saving you 5 points over a sandwich.
Stay Away From
As usual, stay away from the cheeses of all kinds. They will hit you with another 2- 5 points.
Stay away from most of the dressings and spreads.
Stay away from the milk shakes. While tasty, most will cost you about 22 points, just for the small!!
Next Time
Next time I might try a bowl, or just get my sandwich without the double meat and load up on more veggies. A sandwich will almost always get you for at least 9 points, whereas a bowl will get you all the way down to 4 points!
I think Which Wich is a great option for those of us on Weight Watchers. Give it a try. It is quite tasty as well.
Go to their website before you go and plan what you want to get: www.whichwich.com
One Week Of Eating Out For Lunch
Starting tomorrow, Wednesday, I am going to go out to eat for lunch for one week. A couple may be repeats, but I’m gonna try and include several new restaurants and do evaluations of points for Weight Watchers.
I hope to find some good stuff out there, and try and keep all my lunches between 8-15 points.
As I’ve done in the past, I’ve looked at other options on the menu, evaluated the taste of the food, and realized later I could have saved a few points by doing something different.
I’m gonna try and eat at places that are common, average prices, and make choices to get the most bang for my buck.
So… until tomorrow after lunch,
Rich
Weight Watchers and Running
I have visited this topic a few times, but after spending this morning with an orthopedic doctor, I thought I would touch on it again.
I went in to see the doctor because the pain in my right knee continued to persist. I finally decided to spend the money and find out what is causing it.
He said there was no injury. My ACL, MCL, PCL, LCL, and patella tendons are all in good shape, meaning no tears or anything. My joints were strong and I had good range of motion.
What has been causing the problem is that my patellar tendons have been inflamed and that is what was causing the shooting pain and weakness. The key is to reduce the swelling and the pain will go away.
This is being done through a steroid injection into my knee and then some ultrasound therapy over the next few weeks. The purpose of this is to reduce the swelling and increase the blood blow in that area, because blood flow through the knee area is typically low.
The problem is… running will continue to cause swelling in the tendons of the knee until I can do two things:
- Have better form when I am running to reduce impact. It doesn’t really matter what the surface is if your form is bad. People say to run on softer surfaces. That isn’t the real issue. The issue is better form with lower impact. The sports therapy facility I went to is going to work with me on this.
- Exercise within my threshold. Injuries, strains, and swelling are more likely to occur when you begin pushing beyond your threshold. I can work in increase my threshold. But, when you begin working beyond your threshold, proper form becomes even more important. The problem is, when you push beyond your threshold, you are usually more tired. And, when you’re tired, form is usually one of the first things to go.
Finally, I told the doctor that my goal was to run a marathon in November, and that I wanted to drop another 20-30 pounds before that time. He looked at me and said, “You know that you won’t lose weight by exercising. You lose weight by your diet.”
We talked about this for a bit, and this is the main thing I want to revisit.
I have learned over the last year that the weight I lost had little or nothing to do with the running I was doing. Exercising does not give you the privelage of eating more food.
That is why I wish Weight Watchers would stop putting a point value for recording exercise in the Plan Manager. It is deceiving until you realize that the only value for the Weight Watchers Activity Tracker is to mark the fact that you did do exercise.
You can set a goal to do 15 – 20 points worth of exercise, but those points are NOT food points, regardless of what the Weight Watchers website says. Until I realized this, Weight Watchers was getting very frustrating.
None of this is saying that exercise is not important. In fact it’s vital. But, exercising to lose weight is wrong thinking. This is expecially true once you leave your college years and make your way into your 30′s, 40′s, 50′s and beyond.
So, stick with the points you have been given. If exercise makes you more hungry (and it will), then choose better foods to eat that are more filling without consuming too many extra points, drink more water, and/or find some other activity you can do to take your mind off of eating (like shopping, going fishing, watching a movie, cleaning the garage, or whatever…).
So, my takeaway from the doctor’s visit today:
- My knee is okay except for some tendon swelling. That can be treated with ice, topical cream, etc.
- Learn better, low impact form to reduce the impact on my knees when running. Jeff Galloway is a great resource for this.
- Stay within my threshold and slowly increase it to be at the level I want to be.
- Exercise is for being in shape, cardiovascular health, toning, feeling better, etc. It is NOT for weight loss.
- Strengthen my quad muscles and my core, which was also his advice as being very imporant for running injury and pain free.
- Stay within my Weight Watchers Points Plus range so I can lose more weight and further reduce the impact on my knees.
I hope this helps in some way. Even though I actually knew most of this, it was a good reminder to me and helped put several pieces of the puzzle in place for me, by a real doctor and not my own self-diagnosis, or seeking “advice” from running forums on the internet.
BTW, he is a very good doctor, as the official orthopedic doctor for the baseball Texas Rangers, as well as several other teams and athletes. So, being a knee specialist, I trust his diagnosis.
My Weight Watcher Story Update
I just wanted to give you an update on where things are right now in my journey to lose weight.
January – July 2011
It’s been over a year since I joined Weight Watchers. If you’ve read through any of my previous posts, you’ll see that I got off to a great start and went from about 295 to 255 over a period of several months.
I hit a few plateaus along the way, fought through those, but made my way. I chose running, hiking, and walking as a means to start exercising. It was all going along pretty well, but I had some struggles balancing my points and my exercise. 40 pounds in 7 months.
August – November 2011
Running made me more hungry… especially about 3-5 hours after I ran. I seemed that after a few hours of cooling down, getting rehydrated, cleaning up, etc., I would be hit with hunger. That was okay because the Weight Watchers points tracker was telling me I had earned some exercise points.
The reality was it wasn’t okay. The exercise points tracker was off, and I was eating more points than I was burning. I wasn’t eating a lot of extra points, but I learned this after a while:
Ignore the exercise points because they do not accurately give you extra points to eat.
Even though I was running more, I was not losing much extra weight. I was running 20-25 miles per week. By the time I ran my half marathon in November, I was down to 247. 8 pounds in 4 months.
December 2011 – January 2012
I went through a couple of injuries from my running and hiking, as well as some family crisis that threw me off track. In 2 months I had gained back 15 pounds. Ugh!
The lack of exercise and eating about 20-30% more points than I should have, along with extra holiday eating, I had regained 31% of the weight I had lost. I weighed 262 pounds.
February – March 2012
I got back on Weight Watchers, but it hasn’t been easy. It is amazing how hard it is to get back on track, tracking points again, and regaining that enthusiasm that once burned. I have dropped 9 of those pounds I gained back, and am down to 253 currently.
While that’s good, I have done it with a combination of Weight Watchers and Atkins. I had to do some Atkins in order to break some of my addiction to carbohydrates.
April 2012 – Forward
Today, April 9th is the start of a 15-week training program where I am going to train for the Chicago Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon on July 22nd. I am following a 15 week program laid out in Jeff Galloway’s book, Half-Marathon – You Can Do It.
My goal is to finish the race between 2:00 and 2:10 minutes. I basically need to trim about 20-30 minutes off my time in order to do this.
To make this possible, I am going to:
- Religiously track every point and hold to my daily points. No exercise points.
- Cut out all candy and soda. This includes any diet or sugar free stuff.
- No Hostess or doughnuts.
The rest of my days will be filled with regular food, including extra veggies and fruit and make up for removing the candy, doughnuts, and cakes. I’m also going to be drinking more water and tea to replace the soda.
Summary
Losing weight is rarely a straight line down. There always will be battles to stay on track and not retreat. For now, I am content to weigh less at the end of the year than I started out. Even though I gained some weight back at the end of last year, I was still about 40 pounds less.
This year, my goal is the same. To weigh less on December 31st than I did on January 1st.
It helps me to have projects and small goals to give me a purpose in doing what I’m doing. Like a race coming up. I need to run and watch what I eat in order to perform better. Or, to have an event in which I want to fit into some pants or something that are currently too small.
Anyway, this blog is a big help for me as well – getting my thoughts and ideas out, as well as encouragement from many folks who leave comments or drop me an email.
Thanks again, and now it’s time to start my next project – Chicago here I come!