My Low Carb Weight Watchers Points

So how does your wife feel about this. I mean, she must have noticed that
you get to eat a lot more food while losing weight. Hasn't this made her
curious about trying LC herself?
A guy I work with did WW for about a year and only lost 30 pounds on the
points system. He cheated a lot because he said it was just too hard to
follow since he was hungry all the time. He's since gained most of the
weight back in less than 4 months.

joshv said:

My wife is on Weight Watchers. It has been working well enough for
her. But a consistent source of amusement for me has been the "Points"
system, which penalizes fat in the extreme, to the extent that if one
were try to do low carb and follow the points system you'd have to
starve yourself to stay within your points allotment.

I decided to look up the formula for the points system and input my
average daily calories and fat grams from fitday.

For the last month

Avg Calories: 2075
Avg Fat grams: 125
Avg Prot grms: 124
Avg Fiber grm: 12

The points formula is: Calories / 50 + fat / 12 - min{fiber,4}/5

That last part is a bit dodgy, it means that you take the number of
grams of fiber in a serving, or 4, whichever is less, and then divide
by 5. As I don't really have good per serving data, I will just knock
off 3 points as a good guess for fiber.

So how many points do I eat a day on average?

2075 / 50 + 124 / 12 - 3 = 49 points

My wife gets 28 points a day, and she weighs a little bit more than I
do (they assign points by weight, your points allotment going down as
you lose).

According to Weigth Watchers I am eating an insane number of points and
should be gaining weight - but I have in fact lost about 15 lbs in two
months. Huh.

-----
Bev

joshv said:

My wife is on Weight Watchers. It has been working well enough for
her. But a consistent source of amusement for me has been the "Points"
system, which penalizes fat in the extreme, to the extent that if one
were try to do low carb and follow the points system you'd have to
starve yourself to stay within your points allotment.

I decided to look up the formula for the points system and input my
average daily calories and fat grams from fitday.

For the last month

Avg Calories: 2075
Avg Fat grams: 125
Avg Prot grms: 124
Avg Fiber grm: 12

The points formula is: Calories / 50 + fat / 12 - min{fiber,4}/5

That last part is a bit dodgy, it means that you take the number of
grams of fiber in a serving, or 4, whichever is less, and then divide
by 5. As I don't really have good per serving data, I will just knock
off 3 points as a good guess for fiber.

So how many points do I eat a day on average?

2075 / 50 + 124 / 12 - 3 = 49 points

My wife gets 28 points a day, and she weighs a little bit more than I
do (they assign points by weight, your points allotment going down as
you lose).

According to Weigth Watchers I am eating an insane number of points and
should be gaining weight - but I have in fact lost about 15 lbs in two
months. Huh.

There are a number of articles on being able to lose more weight with a
low carb diet than on a low fat diet.... even if the low carb diet has
more calories.

Here is one of many similar articles, and it was posted here just a few
days ago.

LINK

http://my.webmd.com/content/article/110/109800.htm

In one sense, what you are saying is really old news....

When I was young and pretty active, I lost a lot of weight while eating
more or less a low fat diet.

When I was older and pretty active, I couldn't lose much weight at all
on a low fat diet. Lost nearly 60 lbs on low carb, though.

--
1) Eat Till SATISFIED, Not STUFFED... Atkins repeated 9 times in the book
2) Exercise: It's Non-Negotiable..... Chapter 22 title, Atkins book
3) Don't Diet Without Supplimental Nutrients... Chapter 23 title, Atkins
book
4) A sensible eating plan, and follow it. (Atkins, Self Made or Other)

Oh no, this is nothing new at all. I just thought it would be an
interesting exercise to calculate my "points", because I knew they'd be
outrageously high.

What baffles me is that it's usually the opponents of low carb (Weight
Watchers among them) who say "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" -
no, not on the points system, some calories are "special".

My wife did low carb once, but didn't really control how much she ate,
so it didn't work for her. She is the type that needs structure, and
"eat protein and fat until your are satisfied" wasn't really enough
structure for her. The "points" system and the weekly meetings seem to
give her the structure she needs to control calories.

I am somewhat the same way, but I chose to use fitday instead of the
points system to make sure I am controlling carbs, and keeping the
calories down. If I don't watch calories I tend to start eating more,
and more calorie dense foods (nuts, etc...).

My wife tends to eat relatively few carbs though, as we share most
meals. Sometimes she might add a small portion of rice, or substitute
a lower fat ingredient in her serving. Her diet is probably moderate
carb, high protein, moderate fat which I think works out ok in the
points system - my "extreme" of fat intake on the otherhand breaks the
poor little points calculator.

-josh

Bev-Ann said:

So how does your wife feel about this. I mean, she must have noticed that
you get to eat a lot more food while losing weight. Hasn't this made her
curious about trying LC herself?
A guy I work with did WW for about a year and only lost 30 pounds on the
points system. He cheated a lot because he said it was just too hard to
follow since he was hungry all the time. He's since gained most of the
weight back in less than 4 months.

Bev-Ann said:

So how does your wife feel about this. I mean, she must have noticed that
you get to eat a lot more food while losing weight. Hasn't this made her
curious about trying LC herself?
A guy I work with did WW for about a year and only lost 30 pounds on the
points system. He cheated a lot because he said it was just too hard to
follow since he was hungry all the time. He's since gained most of the
weight back in less than 4 months.

I had similar experience, dieting by eating less made me hungry all
the time.

i

Quoted message said:

joshv said:

My wife is on Weight Watchers. It has been working well enough for
her. But a consistent source of amusement for me has been the "Points"
system, which penalizes fat in the extreme, to the extent that if one
were try to do low carb and follow the points system you'd have to
starve yourself to stay within your points allotment.

I decided to look up the formula for the points system and input my
average daily calories and fat grams from fitday.

For the last month

Avg Calories: 2075
Avg Fat grams: 125
Avg Prot grms: 124
Avg Fiber grm: 12

The points formula is: Calories / 50 + fat / 12 - min{fiber,4}/5

That last part is a bit dodgy, it means that you take the number of
grams of fiber in a serving, or 4, whichever is less, and then divide
by 5. As I don't really have good per serving data, I will just knock
off 3 points as a good guess for fiber.

So how many points do I eat a day on average?

2075 / 50 + 124 / 12 - 3 = 49 points

My wife gets 28 points a day, and she weighs a little bit more than I
do (they assign points by weight, your points allotment going down as
you lose).

According to Weigth Watchers I am eating an insane number of points and
should be gaining weight - but I have in fact lost about 15 lbs in two
months. Huh.

Bev

--
223/174.8/180

Here's a suggestion that might help to control portions. Enter what you
intend to eat into FitDay for the next, or even several days. Then you can
see the numbers and adjust them before you actually eat them. Then when
that day comes, eat only what you have entered. If you're hungry at the
end of the day, you can adjust the next days meals slightly while still
controlling how much you eat. It's too bad FitDay doesn't have the ability
to print out the daily menu so that you could tape it to your fridge,
though.

joshv said:

My wife did low carb once, but didn't really control how much she ate,
so it didn't work for her. She is the type that needs structure, and
"eat protein and fat until your are satisfied" wasn't really enough
structure for her. The "points" system and the weekly meetings seem to
give her the structure she needs to control calories.

I am somewhat the same way, but I chose to use fitday instead of the
points system to make sure I am controlling carbs, and keeping the
calories down. If I don't watch calories I tend to start eating more,
and more calorie dense foods (nuts, etc...).

My wife tends to eat relatively few carbs though, as we share most
meals. Sometimes she might add a small portion of rice, or substitute
a lower fat ingredient in her serving. Her diet is probably moderate
carb, high protein, moderate fat which I think works out ok in the
points system - my "extreme" of fat intake on the otherhand breaks the
poor little points calculator.

-----
Bev

You should be able to print it by hitting PrtScreen, pasting into an image
editor, cropping as necessary and printing from there.

In news:[email hidden],
Bev-Ann <[email hidden]> stated
| Here's a suggestion that might help to control portions. Enter what
| you intend to eat into FitDay for the next, or even several days.
| Then you can see the numbers and adjust them before you actually eat
| them. Then when that day comes, eat only what you have entered. If
| you're hungry at the end of the day, you can adjust the next days
| meals slightly while still controlling how much you eat. It's too
| bad FitDay doesn't have the ability to print out the daily menu so
| that you could tape it to your fridge, though.
|

Thank you for this insight into the weightwatchers system.

"joshv" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

My wife is on Weight Watchers. It has been working well enough for
her. But a consistent source of amusement for me has been the "Points"
system, which penalizes fat in the extreme, to the extent that if one
were try to do low carb and follow the points system you'd have to
starve yourself to stay within your points allotment.

I decided to look up the formula for the points system and input my
average daily calories and fat grams from fitday.

For the last month

Avg Calories: 2075
Avg Fat grams: 125
Avg Prot grms: 124
Avg Fiber grm: 12

The points formula is: Calories / 50 + fat / 12 - min{fiber,4}/5

That last part is a bit dodgy, it means that you take the number of
grams of fiber in a serving, or 4, whichever is less, and then divide
by 5. As I don't really have good per serving data, I will just knock
off 3 points as a good guess for fiber.

So how many points do I eat a day on average?

2075 / 50 + 124 / 12 - 3 = 49 points

My wife gets 28 points a day, and she weighs a little bit more than I
do (they assign points by weight, your points allotment going down as
you lose).

According to Weigth Watchers I am eating an insane number of points and
should be gaining weight - but I have in fact lost about 15 lbs in two
months. Huh.

joshv said:

I decided to look up the formula for the points system and input my
average daily calories and fat grams from fitday.

The points formula is: Calories / 50 + fat / 12 - min{fiber,4}/5

What if you substituted carb grams for fat grams?

Quoted message said:

According to Weigth Watchers I am eating an insane number of points and
should be gaining weight - but I have in fact lost about 15 lbs in two
months. Huh.

WW is a low-fat oriented plan according to their formula.
Simple as that. I'm not sure there's much point to
modifying their formula to make it biased in favor of
low carb but doing that is possible.