Wednesday, January 5, 2011

CVS Deals - 1/3

Monday evening, after dropping some pasta off at the local food pantry, I had a few minutes and stopped in at CVS. I didn't have my coupons with me, I was just stopping in to see what they had on Christmas clearance, in hopes that they had the M&Ms that everyone was talking about. I did pick up some Clearance items, but sadly they were out of M&Ms.

The good news is that I got some good coupons from the coupon machine, sadly no $/$$ coupons like the woman in front of me who got them at the machine and at checkout - where is the equity in that? I got a $2 off coupon for Tylenol Precise, which I will combine with the $2 coupon I have to get it for free after ECB. I also got a $3 on Benefiber coupon, which I will combine with a $4 IP I have from a while back to get it for under $1 for 16 flavored drink sticks. I looked ahead and am not seeing this as an ECB deal next week, so I will use it this week to get it cheap. I did get the M&M coupon as well, maybe I will hang onto it and see if they have a Valentine's Day M&M deal.

Here's what I got on Monday though:

4 - Christmas Pencils with Giant Erasers
2 - Caramel Santas (not diet friendly, but oh so yummy!)

Total $.98 OOP.

Also, if you haven't done the Kellogg's cereal deal, there is a coupon for a BOGO on Special K available on their website. This will make it a pretty good deal, I just hope that they have Chocolate.

This post shared at Super Savings Saturday.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Mamavation Monday

Admittedly, I was a little more challenged this week than I was the week before. I wasn't doing my formal exercise workout and was instead relying on activities that I had planned with the family. Those activities were excellent workouts and I received activity points every day. Unfortunately, many of those events seemed to wind accompanied by eating events. I did not do such a good job of tracking my PointsPlus values and the actual food consumed. In addition, we had company in and wound up eating out an additional meal than originally planned.

When I first learned about fruit being Zero PointsPlus value, I thought that a fruit smoothie would be a great treat with a very low value - just frozen fruit and a bit of milk or yogurt. Well, it still is a great treat, but I learned today that when you use fruit in a recipe, that you count the full PointsPlus value for it - it is only Zero PointsPlus value when you are eating it whole. When I made my smoothies last week, I simply entered the ingredients in the tracker and got 0 for all of the fruit and a few points for the yogurt, but then when I entered it through Recipe Builder today, I learned that the smoothie that I expected to be only a few points for the milk or yogurt is actually closer to 4 or 5 PointsPlus value per serving. Those were some PointsPlus values that I didn't account for last week, which I'm certain also didn't help me. Guess I will stick to eating my fruit instead of drinking it!

In the end, I wound up not losing and actually had a slight gain (but expect that to disappear quickly!).

But, as I mentioned the other day, I did a little shopping at VS and I was able to go down a size - okay, not a major change but evidence of progress.

Now, looking forward...

This week, I started the Mamavation P90X Challenge. Nothing out of the ordinary for me, but since I am sharing my experience through comments at Mamavation, I want to push myself harder. I took my measurements this morning and will use them as a benchmark to measure my progress through the coming weeks. Because I am in Phase 3, I am not restarting at Phase 1 with those that are just starting today, but will instead take recovery weeks with the others but otherwise continue to follow the alternating weeks of workouts approach of Phase 3.

I am back and focused on tracking my food and the associate PointsPlus values (tracking was even the topic at tonight's meeting). Would you like to learn more? There is a Weight Watchers virtual event on Wednesday that you can participate in (see my post here).

I am confident that I will have success in the new year. I am already starting the year ahead of where I was this time last year, which is a positive from my perspective.

This post shared at Mamavation Monday.

No compensation was received for this post. I am a Weight Watchers Insider for the new Weight Watchers PointsPlus program and have received complimentary online access to Weight Watchers, an IPad with the Weight Watchers Kitchen Companion App downloaded, a Flip Camera and other tools to help me on my weight loss journey, using Weight Watchers. 'People following the Weight Watchers plan can expect to lose 1 - 2 pounds per week.'

Weight Watchers Virtual Event

On Wednesday evening at 7 pm eastern, Weight Watchers is going to be holding an online event, where you can learn about the PointsPlus program and learn tips about healthy cooking and healthy living. There will also be a cooking demo of a Weight Watchers recipe. If you are interested in participating or learning more, you can head over to http://www.weightwatchersevent.com/to RSVP.

No compensation was received for this post. I was made aware of this event through my role as a Weight Watchers Insider.