Birthday and dieting

It was a nice birthday. Various people called and emailed to wish me a happy birthday, which was nice. My sister Katherine was in New York, and Mom took us to Aquagrill, which is a very nice restaurant for dieting, and then she'd baked (upon request) a Splenda Angel Food Cake that I could eat a reasonable quantity of on my diet. She said she wished it had risen more, but it tasted good ... especially with raspberries.

I've completed a week and a bit on Weight Watchers' Flex Plan. The scale said I lost ~3 pounds over the first week.

Assorted thoughts:

• The Flex Plan goes nicely with my general theory that I'll lose weight if every day I eat no more than 1,200 calories while walking at least 2 miles. The Atkins diet also fit well (it was surprisingly easy to eat light on Atkins as long as I stuck to only eating when I was hungry) but I had to count both carbs and calories. On Weight Watchers Flex, if I count the points I am counting the calories (they're the primary contributor to points.)
  
• Having to guess at the point cost of food is frustrating. Eyeballing the carbs for Atkins was easier, and while I had to guess at the calories I didn't have to fret as much about it since I didn't have a specific minimum calorie count to make. (Keeping to a specific diet was easier still, but burns me out on dieting very quickly.)
  
• Logging points for all my food and physical activity fits well with the way I tend to obsess about any diet I'm currently on.
• I'll have to wait and see, but I suspect Weight Watchers Flex addresses both my dieting failure modes: learning technically-okay foods on non-calorie focused diets and eating too many of them, and too many successive days of <1,000 calories leading to exhaustion and burnout.
• I need a better scale. Buying one will make a nice project for the rest of the week.
• It's nice being able to eat fruit and (unbuttered) popcorn fairly freely on a diet. Not being able to eat popcorn on Atkins felt very strange -- not that I missed the popcorn particularly, but it feels like it should be a dieting staple. And I did miss the fruit ... though there are advantages to not being allowed fruit on a diet; it sometimes leaves me hungrier.
• Okay, scale on order. Or would be, if drugstore.com would let me. (The connection's dying. At least they can't bill me multiple times: the virtual credit card number I gave them is limited to a little over the order amount.) Did I mention I obsess about dieting when I'm taking it seriously?
• Just noticed the time. I should have been in bed half an hour ago, by now, per both side rules on my diet (not to short myself on sleep) and everyday common sense.

Off to sleep.