Weight Watchers - how does it work with your family?

[StarryEyedMama]

Hi All

I'm thinking about starting Weight Watchers again (!) on Monday. The one point I struggled with last time was the family meals - I found it really difficult to point our normal family meals and therefore slipped up on too many occasions. I wondered how you all do it? Do you have separate meals from your kids/partner etc or have you come across some family meals that will suit the whole family? Would be grateful for any advice!

If they fancy a pizza or something then I'll have something else, but I do a lot of the cooking (and even if I'm not cooking I plan what's to be had), so I look at WW recipes that I know they'll like. E.g. Made a zero point soup for lunch yesterday, will make a veggie lasagne for dinner tonight. The iPhone app is great btw - you can use it to work out the points in a meal. E.g. I made muffins last night - divided ingredients by 12 (e.g. 200g flour divided by 12, 80g sugar divided by 12 etc) then added them together to find propoints value. Don't think I've explained that well, sorry!

when I did it properly, I pointed up everything we ate and so we all ate the same. I made WW versions of all our meals. If DH fancied something totally un WW then he would have it and I would have something else

Thanks Roughtyping and Funnysinthegarden - any chance you could give me a list of the kind of meals you eat?

I also make sure I point up dinner first thing and then base the rest of my day's eating around that.

I point up things in advance and have a smaller portion when it's something like sausage and mash. I do the same as obviouslyoblivious and my main points stash goes on dinner. Lunch is normally tuna or chicken salad with fruit snacks.

Hi starry. We are not the best eaters as we've been pretty skint saving for holiday and DS and OH don't like anything too fancy! Different meals we've had recently -
Veggie soup
Veggie lasagne
Pasta & pesto
Fish/veggie fingers, potatoes & mixed veg/salad
Spaghetti and tomato sauce (tinned tomatoes, tomato paste, oregano)
Macaroni cheese (made with half fat cheese, white sauce is skimmed milk & cornflour)
Veggie burgers & home made roast potato wedges
Veggie stir fry and noodles (just a pack of supermarket stir fry veg & dried noodles, maybe a splash of soy sauce)
Tuna pasta
Baked salmon with broccoli
Roast chicken with roast potato wedges and mixed veg
Good old beans on toast!

Can't think what else just now. For lunches we have sandwiches with roast chicken (me) or ham (DS & OH), some cherry tomatoes and carrot sticks, strawberries, cut up mango, sugar free jelly, sometimes a WW biscuit or homemade fairy cake. I take an apple for a snack. I'm a teacher and find this is loads for a day at school, whereas at home I would munch constantly.

I buy WW bread (either wholemeal or malted danish) as this is less points. Use I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light, Fry-Light spray (can't remember if that's actually the name!), skimmed milk. For breakfasts we have cereal (usually Rice Krispies or Special K for me), LO sometimes has porridge but I hate the stuff. For snacks - I bake sometimes, made some peanut butter & choc chip muffins for LO the other night, quite often make fairy cakes and eat them un-iced (works out at about 2PP per cake). I try to snack on fruit or veg, toast, mini-breadsticks as they are hardly any points, dry reduced fat cream crackers (oh yummmm), or WW biscuits/Special K cereal bars. OH eats a ridiculous amount of junk. LO eats a reasonable amount of fruit! I drink lots of Diet Coke (bad I know...), water and green or white tea which doesn't need milk or any sweetening. But then I'm also known to drink plain hot water ;)

I am not the best at sticking to WW btw! Best laid plans and all that... Trying hard though - aiming for having lost a decent amount by June as we're off to Florida which will involve less clothes than Scotland...

Meant to say - also use things like half-fat sausages and cheese!

www.parsleysoup.co.uk/

That's one of my favourite sites - it's a vegan site so lots of veggie recipes :)

If you track your points online, you can use the Recipe Builder.
You enter all the ingredients and how many servings it makes and it gives you your pro points per serving.
You then save the recipe for future use.

my rule of thumb is most red meat is too high, except lean steak. Avoid cheese entirely and use low fat versions of all other dairy inc mayo and salad cream. Wherever you can swap to a low fat version. I also eat lots of potato wedges which are low and try not to have main meal which is more than about 7-8 old points. In practice this means a lot of salad, vegetables, chicken, fish, eggs and potatoes.

My real no no foods are burgers, sausages, cheese and any sort of proper pudding.