I joined a group that watches your weight last weekend. (Thus, no trademark or copyright infringement)

This summer, I found out that I'm diabetic, so I changed my eating/cooking habits. I already was on a low-fat, low-protein diet. I then added low-carb , smaller portions, and eating more often to the mix.

The pool season has been pretty good to me this year. I've been swimming about a mile a day. I'm up to 47 miles. Today will be mile 48. I checked, swimming that amount of time, at a slow to moderate rate burns 834 calories. You'd think with all those changes, I'd have lost weight. Not really. I lost 10 lbs the first week, and then - zip. I have toned up a lot, but no real weight loss.

So when Drama Daughter asked me to go to Watchers of Weight, I went, but with no great expectation of losing weight. It's only been a few days, so I can't talk about how WW has changed my life. Thus far, it made my weekly menu planning take twice as long as normal. I have tried some new recipes. Their portions are actually larger than what I've been eating.

Joining has made me think about some of the tricks I've learned to save calories, fat, protein, carbs, sanity, whatever. So:

favorite nutrition tricks

• Instead of adding nuts to a recipe; add water chestnuts. Much less fat and protein, more vitamins, and you still get that crunch.
• Instead of pasta or rice with a stir fry, use spaghetti squash. You still get the sense of pasta, with no fat or carbs, very few calories. I don't recommend using this with a nice marinara sauce. Not very good. Stir fry - excellent.
• I make all my own broths/stocks: chicken, turkey, beef, veggie. I do recognize that making stock takes a lot of time. Except for veggie stock. It only takes an hour or so. But rather than buy veggies just for the purpose of making stock, we take the cuttings from all the veggies we use, store them in a big Baggie in the freezer. and use that for stock. Just save up a bag or two, add some salt and pepper, let it simmer for an hour, and - voila! Veggie stock. Almost any veggies will work. (I leave out ginger and hot peppers) Beets turn your stock a lovely red color. Skins, peelings, all of it. Very economical and very healthy.

I'm sure I'll add more, as they occur to me. Not that any of you really care, but the Handsome Hubby seems to feel that I should be posting these.

I'll let you know how WW goes.