'Man-Tested' Weight Watchers Recipes

As I mentioned in the last post. Kyle and I are both officially doing Weight Watchers. Kyle is doing the online 'Weight Watchers for Men' and I am doing the Monthly Pass which allows me to go to unlimited meetings and also gives access to the online E-tools.

Since I know we are 'off the road' while Ken completes the second floor remodeling, this seems to be an excellent time to jumpstart my weight loss goal using Weight Watchers meetings. An independent study showed that people going to face-to-face meetings with such weight loss programs lose 3 times as much weight. I figure if I go and then pass on as much via email as I can to Kyle, who has no nearby meeting during a time he can make, he's getting the next best thing.

Kyle's official online weigh-in day is Sunday. He's a week ahead of me and has lost 8 lbs already. That's ok though because he has more weight to lose. To reach our goals I basically have to lose 2 lbs to every 3 lbs he loses so while he got a head start I'm going to pushing him!

My first meeting was this past Monday and that will be my official weigh-in day. The leader for Monday, Joyce, is someone I've known since childhood, gone through high school with and who has had children in school along side Kyle and Trevor. I was pleasantly surprised to see her as leader. She has lost 60 lbs and kept if off on Weight Watchers and does a very good job as leader.

Since, I have the Unlimited Pass, I also go on Saturday mornings for an extra 'injection' of motivation. Sue, the leader on Saturdays, went to high school with me and has been with Weight Watchers for 10 years now since she lost 60 lbs. Sue has many years of experience and her Saturday morning meetings are always packed because she does such a good job. It's also a good mix of meetings for me since there are different dynamics in terms of type of participants on Monday versus Saturday.

I try to make notes on things I've learned in the meetings so I can pass them on via email to Kyle.

I'm also a sucker for catchy sayings...the one that got me this week was actually from Dr. Oz not Weight Watchers...."Vision without planning is hallucination". I researched and this is actually a play on a quote from Benjamin Franklin "Vision without implementation is hallucination"...hey, since as a 30-year project leader, I know you have to plan to implement, it all works!!

One of the biggest challenges I've taken on, as part of this weight loss objective, is to try to develop a cache of Weight Watchers recipes that are winners with the men in my family without them feeling I'm putting them on a diet. I also focused on testing recipes I though Kyle and Jenni would be interested in, and that Trevor could replicate back at school.

Here was my general 'man tested' criteria:

1. My guys had to say they would like to eat it again.
2. The ingredients had to be something you could find easily...eg., available at Wal-mart, a store that all of us have access to.
3. The preparation/cooking had to be easy and something that could be done easily after work or school or could be in the crock pot while you were away.
4. I do give some preference to crock pot recipes since these are especially conducive to our RV lifestyle.

Over the holidays, I've tried several such weight watchers recipes. The one's I've noted below are the winners so far:


Layered Mexican Chicken – I sautéed the chicken instead of boiled. Why boil out the flavor?? Definitely serve this with salsa. A 'mexican' salad of lettuce, onion, tomato on the side also is a nice compliment.

Cabbage Roll Soup – the longer this cooks the better. Great for throwing together the night before, turning on in the morning and having hearty meal ready when you get home. I think the rice needs to be in there an hour though, not ½ hour.

Fiesta Chicken and Black Beans – large batch that we ate one night over rice and the next day on tortillas. Served with a ‘mexican salad’ of lettuce, grated cheese, tomato, fat free sour cream as a side. My guys likes to combine the hot/cold items, really getting great Mexican flavor combo.

Crockpot Sweet and Sour Chicken – Trevor bought himself a steamer/rice cooker so we did this over Jasmine rice from his cooker—really great.

Spicy Sweet Potato Fries – these were a big hit but be sure you slice really thin and then get your fingers in there and all slimy to really get that egg white coating over all the surfaces. Ken didn’t get to try these since Trevor had them wiped out before Ken got there.

Diet Coke Cake – this is a weight watchers standard and so easy, just mix a cake mix with a can of diet soda. The link is a discussion thread where they discuss variations and possible frosting as well. I simply did devil's food cake with 12 oz. diet rite cola and it disappeared before there was a change for any toppings.

Broccoli and Cheese Quiche – my men will eat quiche!! Trev really liked this recipe and plans to do some experimenting adding lean ham, ground turkey, spinach and/or mushrooms. He also saw how easy it is to get a pie-crust almost as good as grandma’s from the Pillsbury crusts in the dairy case. I like these crusts over the frozen crusts already formed both for taste and because they take up less room in freezer/frig when in the RV. My stores don't carry small amounts of fresh dill so I used dried dill and it was just fine.

Julienne Zucchini – really simple variation on zucchini that has lots of flavor and looks nice on the plate.

Corn-meal Oven-Baked Catfish – I did with catfish nuggets that were on sale at our grocery store instead of the more expensive fillets and they turned out great. 1 1/2 lbs for Ken, Trevor and I and even though they ate a lot we still had leftovers so this is a good 'budget' recipe as well when the nuggets are on sale for $3.69 a lb.

If you can't access one of these recipes let me know and I'll email it to you. While most recipes do not require you have paid access to the WW site, even those that do allow me the option of emailing to others without copyright infringement. I would suggest that you 'print' any recipe you see online that you want to keep since from experience I've learned not to trust that an online recipe page will stay around. To save any online content that I want to retain permanently, I use a free software, PrimoPDF, that you can download online. I then'print' such pages to my hard drive under my 'Recipes' folder. Since I don't like killing trees and want my recipes available when we are on the road where internet might not be accessible this has been a very valuable 'print' tool for me.

I know a lot of my readers are weight watchers followers so I'd love to hear from you if you can recommend any recipes that your experience shows would likely meet the 'Man Test'!

Hugs, C