Living Inspiration
by Jeanne Moore

I'm attending Weight Watchers as part of my effort to lose weight and get healthy. The "points" system I'm following with them bases the number of points a serving of food has on a formula they've figured out using calories, grams of fiber and grams of fat.

I'm working on going vegetarian because it's healthy and you can eat so much more food when it's vegetarian. For example, using WW's point system, 12
ounces of tofu has 4 points and 3 ounces of chicken (white meat, skinless, boneless) has 4 points. Of course I'm going to pick the tofu - that's a no
brainer! Stir fry it in water with a little shoyu with veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, some garlic and onion - which all have zero points in the WW program, and you have a HUGE dinner for 4 points. And a healthy one, too!

One is able to eat more and still loose weight if one makes vegetarian
choices. In staying within the Weight Watchers guidelines, I look for what's going to be the best value - in having to pay attention to the calories, grams of fat and grams of fiber, I find myself looking at other nutritional considerations, too. If it's a choice between 12 ounces of tofu and 3 ounces of chicken for a similar caloric content, of course I'm going to choose the tofu because it's more food. I also find myself looking differently at processed foods - in having to read the labels and seeing what's in them, I'm now questioning "do I really want to choose this? That's not a good nutritional value!” I’m noticing the sodium and other things (that I don't know what they are) that are in processed food. A little awareness helps a lot in making choices.

I also like foods that don't take a lot of work to prepare and with vegetarian food, it seems like you can find choices that can be as much or as little work to prepare as you want to do. Stir frying with a little water or doing things like washing grapes doesn't take that much work and suits me just fine.

My goals are to change my lifestyle to a healthy one and to be healthy as well as to lose weight. Besides watching Tasty and Meatless, we also listen to Dr. John Westerdahl’s radio program with Dr. Shintani and Dr. Ruth on Sunday nights called "Nutrition and You." (AM 1080). All of you are a big help to my family in our endeavors to become healthy.