Day in the life of Weight Watchers Simple Start

As I mentioned in my last post I've gone back to Weight Watchers but things have changed a little since I attended a meeting about a year and a half ago. When you join Weight Watchers now you follow the Simple Start plan for two weeks before they introduce the idea of counting points. So what is Weight Watchers Simple Start?

It’s an introduction to the Weight Watchers plan that helps you get to grips with eating the healthy and satisfying foods without the distraction of counting or weighing anything at the start. You follow Simple Start for up to two weeks and can add a couple of treats per day like almonds, avocado, cheese and chocolate    

You chose foods from the Filling & Healthy food list. This includes things like baked beans, tinned tomatoes, potatoes, eggs and ham alongside calorie-controlled brown bread, wholemeal pasta, lean cuts of meat and plenty of fruit and vegetables. I love the fact that I'm never hungry and I can boost flavour with things like dried herbs, curry powder, lemon juice, soy sauce which means all my food is tatsy and my partner will eat it too so I don't need to cook two meals.
 
I've only been on the plan for a couple of days but I am enjoying it and get to eat very varied foods. My big bowls of tasty fruit are something I look forward to everyday. This is what I eat on a typical day:

Poached egg on wholemeal danish bread and bacon medallions. 

Tea with skimmed milk.

I also has a small bowl of shreddies, this was a Sunday and I woke up late so this was more of a brunch. 

Crumpets with berries and cherries jam (1 of my 2 daily treats)

Fruit salad with 0% fat Greek yogurt.

Fish pie with leek and mustard mash & vegetables

If you want to make the fish pie you can add as much or little of the following ingredients as you like, it's so flexible on the Simply Start plan. I was really hungry so I had lots of mash and added loads of mustard for extra flavour.

Ingredients
Frozen fish mix, you can get these in most supermarkets and they have a variety of fish in them.
1 Bay leaf   
Black pepper
Skimmed Milk
Quark + low fat garlic and herb soft cheese (50g=one of my extra treats)
2 tsp parsley, chopped

For the mash
Leek
Potato
Wholegrain mustard   

Instructions

• Preheat the oven160ºC(fan). Place the fish in a small roasting tin, add the bay leaf, pepper and pour the milk over. Cover tightly with a piece of foil and cook for about 10 minutes. Strain the milk into a jug and bin the bay leaf)
• Meanwhile, whisk together the  reserved milk with the soft cheese. Add the parsley and season to taste, then pour the sauce over the fish.
• Cook the leek in a pan of boiling water for 5 minutes or until soft. Drain well. In another pan, cook the potatoes in boiling water until tender. Drain, then mash with the mustard and the remaining strained milk. Stir in the leeks and season to taste.
• Top the pie with the leek mash, spreading the mixture out with a fork. Cook for 25 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling.