Welcome to the club! Good luck losing!
50 calories = 1 Point; 12 grams fat = 1 Point; 4 grams fiber = -4/5 of a Point (3 grams of fiber = -3/5 of a Point, 2 grams of fiber = -2/5 of a Point, 1 gram of fiber = -1/5 of a Point. More than 4 grams of fiber in the food doesn’t “count” for any more Points off.)
Essentially, you’re rewarded for eating more fiber and less fat, even if the two options have the same number of calories. So while it’s true that there are no off limits foods - you’re going to be hungry if you make low fiber/high fat choices all day.
Thanks. So you’re allowed around 30 points per day?
Does exercise count for negative points?
I didn’t lose anything last week. I’ve been incredibly stressed out, and not sleeping enough, and that’s not a recipe for diet success. I didn’t gain any either, but I’m not thrilled. I don’t want to lose my momentum.
Yes, exercise gives you “activity points,” which you can spend on eating more more food, or not.
The number of points you’re given per day depends on your current weight. I think if you’re between 250-225 pounds, you get 30 points per day. Once you get under 225, you get 28 points, and it slowly reduces as your weights does.
You also get 35 “Flex Points” per week, which you can save up and use all at once, or use a few at a time as needed, or not at all.
ME personally, I get 30 daily Points right now. (I got 31 when I started.) As I lose, Points will lessen as well. My mom, who’s been doing it for a couple of years and is down to 140 and still trying to lose a little more, is allotted 20 Points, I think. I’m not sure how low it goes, maybe **Ginger **knows.
In addition to daily points based on your weight and goals (you get more Points when you move into the Maintenance phase of things), everyone gets, I think, 35 Points for the week. You can save them all and splurge on lobster and butter one night, or you can use a few each day. I find, personally, I lose faster if I use them all on one or two days instead of spreading them out evenly. My WAG is that tricks my body into “feast” mode instead of “famine”, and I don’t go into that starvation mode where my metabolism gets *really *efficient.
Exercise can get you extra Points as well. Those have to be used the day you earn them through exercising, although you’re encouraged not to use all of them, since you’ll lose faster if you don’t. You *must *use (well, they don’t send out force feeders or anything, but you’re strongly encouraged to use) all of your Daily Points though. Undereating by not using your Daily Points will sabotage weight loss through that pesky starvation metabolism thing. Plus, of course, it’s just not healthy.
I should mention that this is one of the two Weight Watchers’ programs. It’s called the Flex Plan. The other is called the Core Plan. In that one, you’re given a list of foods you can eat, but not a limit as to amount. You also get the Weekly Points to use on foods not on the Core list. More of our Doper WWers are doing Core than Flex at the moment. I think.
I’m on Flex. Core would drive me nuts.
Huh. It actually sounds pretty complicated, unless it comes with a big fat book of points values for nearly every food in the known universe. I’ll stick to my plan, which I consider way easier to deal with.
Well, no, but they do have over 10,000 foods and recipes in their database, including a lot of name brand and fast food options. There’s another site, Dotti’s Weight Loss Zone, which has a gazillion restaurants with many items Points calculated. If you can’t find the Points value there, there are pocket calculators and a web-based calculator - just punch in the Calories, Fat and Fiber and you’re good to go. On WW own site, you can create recipes and save them and save favorite foods that they don’t have on their list for easy tracking later.
I only know the formula because I looked it up when preparing to go camping. I don’t have a Points calculator, and I wanted to be able to figure out the Points while away from a computer for two weeks. Since I’m good enough at algebra to do a simple formula like that, I learned it. It’s easy enough once you get the hang of it, but most WWer’s wouldn’t know it. There’s usually no need to, and WW doesn’t make it well known. They’d rather you use their software and calculators.
Nutrition Label says: 160 calories, 6 grams fat, 3 grams fiber. So that’s 3 Points for the calories, half a Point for the fat and about half a Point back off for the fiber. I figure the extra smidgen of fiber and the extra 10 calories about cancel each other out, so I’d record that as 3 Points. And…yep, that’s what the calculator on the website gave me. I can do that in my head, easy. Easier than I can keep a running tally of 160 calories plus 120 calories plus 80 calories plus 430 calories, anyway.
But, to each their own! Doesn’t matter how we do it, 'slong as we keep losing!
I suppose it would get easier once you’ve done it a few times. Me, I don’t count nothin’. I’ve gotten to the point where I can pretty much look at a plate of food and know whether or not it’s healthy. Easy peasy (pass on) Chucky Cheesey.
OH, I can’t wait until I get to that point! Not yet, though. My three weeks of “slacking” weren’t as bad as I feared, but the “look at it and decide” method isn’t for me yet. I still need training wheels.
It’s really not all that tough to do, though.
Meat, starch, and veggies.
The meat should be about the size of a deck of cards, smaller if it’s red or pink meat. Lean poultry is good, fatty fish is better. Shellfish is OK, but shrimp no more than once per week. (It’s got a lot of cholesteral.)
Half a cup (or slighly more for men) of rice, pasta, potato, or bread. That’s about the size of a large plum (or one slice of bread). And make it whole grain.
A cup or two of veggies. Steamed is best. A little butter is OK on them, but it’s better avoided. The veggies should take up half of your plate. And it should be a smallish plate.
Get some vegetable oil in there somehow. Less than a tablespoon if possible, but get some.
So a good meal might be 3oz of grilled chicken breast, maybe grilled in a little olive oil, an ice cream scoop full of mashed sweet potatoes, and a big pile of steamed broccoli.
A good breakfast would be a poached egg, a slice of wheat toast, and a piece of fruit. A little trans-fat free margarine is OK to put on the toast, as is jam, as long as it’s not applied with a spackling knife. If you don’t want the egg, put a little peanut butter on the toast.
I love that they have two plans - Flex would’ve driven ME nuts eventually with all the counting. 
TDN, on Flex the points are figured differently than they used to be (simply by weight). Now you take a quiz to figure your daily points on - they are based on age, gender, how active you are throughout the day, and I think a couple of other things I’m forgetting.
Though from your menu, I think you’d do better on Core anyway, since you don’t seem to want to count. Also, most of the foods you posted are Core (assuming you’re using whole wheat pasta), except for the butter & bread, but you do still get weekly points for non-Core stuff.
Actually, there ARE books which have pretty much every food in the universe listed with their points values. I have them. $20 for a set of two at WW centres, or you can get them on Ebay. They’re called The Complete Food Companion and The Complete Dining Out Companion. Rather handy. Of course, I pretty much know it all now, after so darned long.
I’m allowed 22 points per day plus 35 Flex per week. I think the lowest allowance is 20 plus Flex.
ETA: Obviously I’m on Flex rather than Core. I’ve never investigated Core, actually.
I’m down to 220, which is about 5 pounds in 2 1/2 weeks. I say “about” because the scale at the gym is a little iffy; it’s an old balance beam type that has seen better days, and seems to have a margin of error of about a pound either way. The 220 figure is from my electronic scale at home.
My regime so far:
Don’t eat so much that I can’t move. Avoid seconds generally.
Eat less meat and more veggies.
Take the stairs at work at least once a day, even if it’s only on the way down. (I work on the 6th floor. My apartment is on the 3rd with no elevator, so there’s some enforced stair climbing there.)
Hit the gym at least once a week, preferably three times. They have 8 machines for basic strength training set up with signs, so I do those twice each then grab a treadmill for a while.
The only thing I keep track of in detail is my strength training. They have sheets where you can write the adjustment settings, weight, and reps. Oh, and I don’t weigh myself all the time either. I figure it’s like the stock market; it has its ups and downs in the short term, but I’m only concerned with the long term.
Yes, tdn, I think you’d be happier with Core (if you were to do WW at all - certainly one can lose weight without Weight Watchers!)
Here’s the kind of problems I run into with my diet: how do I count a casserole? A soup? A frozen lunch? Half a handful of Cheerios with some yogurt that the toddler didn’t finish? Does meatloaf count as meat or as grain or as veg, since it has breadcrumbs or oats and minced vegetables in it? Is 2 cups of steamed corn equivalent to 2 cups of steamed broccoli? (Answer: no!)
The “serving size” thing is not at all intuitive to me. I’m not good with spacial relationships to begin with, so tell me my meat should be the size of a deck of cards, and my next question is “um…so how big is a deck of cards?” I’d much rather weigh it to be sure. Alternately, I could keep a deck of cards on my countertop, but that’s still measuring.
Half a cup of starch is just not enough for me. Yet. I’m down from about a cup and a half to 1 cup (which I measure - the family’s gotten used to metal measuring cups as serving utensils!), and as my Points go down, I’ll be forced to reduce further, I know. But half a cup of rice just has me reaching for cookies after dinner. I’d rather have half the meat for one meal and have more rice.
Flex takes care of all that for me. If I can write down the ingredients in the casserole or soup or meatloaf, it doesn’t matter that they’re all squished together - I can still find the Points on 1/8 of the whole dish. If I want more rice, I know just how small my meat portion needs to be.
Sweet! Chain restaurants also all have nutritional information available, either on their websites or in pamphlet form at the place. I think anyone with more than 50 employees has to provide this on request, so your corner Chinese takeout might not, but Chili’s and Starbucks sure do.
FYI, I’d use Dottie’s site as a last resort for restaurant points. I know at least some of them are wrong, usually on the low side. I think she uses an older way of figuring points, from before there was a fiber cap. It can be a good resource, though.
I take it all back, I’ll stay fat if those are my meals. I’m depressed now. 
Kidding aside, I think most of us do know that’s healthy. It just doesn’t sound yummy (I assume it’s not flavorless when you cook it, but in description it sounds that way). When it get’s tricky is learning how to take those main components and make them into interesting and varied meals while keeping the correct portions. How to make things flavorful without a lot of fat/sugar/whatever is something I need to learn. I need to replace that butter on my veggies with something, or I won’t eat them. So it becomes about making/finding the healthiest sauce.
(This is also why I couldn’t handle Core)
Can I ask you what you think the Core plan is? Because while TDN’s food is mostly Core, it isn’t a great cross-section of what foods are on it, or necessarily a typical menu.
Your first sentence that I quoted above is a huge part of what I’ve had to learn while doing it. For example - I use olive oil & herbs/spices on veggies, & roast them, instead of using butter.
I’m asking basically b/c there tends to be huge misconceptions about the plan by people who’ve never done it - even by Weight Watchers leaders.
Here is one of my favorite Core recipe pages. Even if you’re not doing Core, they’re great recipes that could fit into a lot of different plans.
I tried using thedailyplate.com as my calorie counter, and they have darn near everything in their database (and if not, it’s easy to add stuff), but I stopped tracking after a couple of weeks. Mostly it’s because I don’t really have the patience to calculate all the separate ingredients in a single custom-made meal (I refuse to give up Mongolian grill). I’m fairly sure I’ve gotten a good bead on what foods are healthy, and I’ve taken to eyeballing the nutrition per meal if I’m not already familiar with it. With the amount of exercise I do each day, I can hit about 2100-2500 calories per day safely, which fits my general diet as long as I avoid ridiculously unhealthy foods.
Not to mention, Dottie went and gained back all of the weight she’d lost. I’ve used her site in the past, but I look at it only as a last resort.