Weight watchers points and MFP calories don't watch

Queenmunchy

I lost all of my baby weight about 8 years ago with ww. They had free non starchy veggies at that time and it was fine. I also counted calories and I ended up around 1000-1200 most days.

gooz71

adcook1981 wrote: »

WalkingAlong wrote: »

adcook1981 wrote: »

Ok, I have a question for those who have ever done weight watchers. I did WW before and lost a lot of weight. Now I'm doing MFP calories. Well today I tracked both to see what a difference it would make. I ate 25 WW points and it was only 975 calories. Do I need to stick with the points or calories?

The new points roughly average 38 calories so that sounds about right. In addition to your daily points (which are probably not 25 if you're in the US because the minimum is 26, I believe), you should be eating up to 5 servings of free fruit and vegetables and you should be spreading your 49 weekly points over the week, so there's another 270ish per day.

My points were 20 on the old program and 23 (weight loss boost on app) now on the points plus. Maybe I need to go to a meeting to catch up on the new program. I thought I didn't have to use the extra 49 points every week?

It's now called Smartpoints and is totally different. You definitely need to go to a meeting and learn all of the new changes.

VeryKatie

adcook1981 wrote: »

Ok, I have a question for those who have ever done weight watchers. I did WW before and lost a lot of weight. Now I'm doing MFP calories. Well today I tracked both to see what a difference it would make. I ate 25 WW points and it was only 975 calories. Do I need to stick with the points or calories?

I prefer calories. I also did this test once. I was eating 1100 calories a day on WW (Points+). It's because WW doesn't really well define just how many free fruits and veggies you can have... if you put them in your diary separately, they're free, but if you put them in a recipe they're not if you look at the total points for the recipe (even though they're zero in the ingredients list! The total will be more than the sum of ingredients). Which I found very inconsistent for hopefully obvious reasons. So I took the "conservative" side and always added them to the recipe if they were part of the recipe (likely leading me to eat less). And 1100 a day and 5' 6" isn't cool.

Another thing for me was fruit isn't something I crave a lot of, so I never took advantage of the free points. Which had me eating less than a minimum amount of calories. And I lost weight really quickly (considering I was still in the normal weight category). And I was tired a lot. WW is great for some people, but not the best for others. I have one friend that it works really well for. Except that they made her quit when she got pregnant, instead of helping her eat the right amount and staying healthy while pregnant.

So essentially you need to count the calories of fruits and vegs on MFP. On WW you don't. For me, WW didn't encourage me to eat more veggies or fruits.

FYI the min points on SmartPoints is 30, right? So you have some left still?

ETA: I did WW Online so I also didn't have the resources of meetings to ask questions. And their forums were dead. It would take me 2 weeks to get a response to a simple question like "Is condensed soup counted as ml for prepared or unprepared?"

fitmom4lifemfp

adcook1981 wrote: »

Ok, I have a question for those who have ever done weight watchers. I did WW before and lost a lot of weight. Now I'm doing MFP calories. Well today I tracked both to see what a difference it would make. I ate 25 WW points and it was only 975 calories. Do I need to stick with the points or calories?

Back when I did WW (12 years ago) the average worked out to be 1 point = 50 cal. So 25 points would be close to 1250 calories. When I started it, pretty sure 25 points was at the top of my allowance. The lowest bracket put me at around 900 cal a day. To this day, 1200 cal is pushing it for me...it's maintenance on an active day. The older I get...the less I can eat.

dottiedj

I stopped MFP on new year's day and started WW with the new smart points program. I've only lost 3 pounds in 6 weeks. Yesterday I compared my 30 smart points to MFP and realized I ate 1,610 calories! That's way more than I should eat if I want to lose a little weight...I am 57 y/o, 5'3" and 130 pounds. I can't eat 1,600 calories a day unless I am exercising 30 minutes a day...which I haven't been doing like I should. I'm back to MFP so I can better monitor my intake. Forget the points!

junodog1

elv1ra wrote: »

Weightwatchers lets you eat fruit and veggies (within reason) for free, because allowing them to not be counted encourages people to eat them and make better food choices.

What bothers me about WW is that they can't seem to make up their mind about their points calculations. They've had at least 3 different points systems based on varied macronutrients. And also the fact that I gets most of my nutrition info off the internet and I can't stand having to look up one thing so i can plug that into into another calculator to get a points value. I prefer to just count my calories on MFP. My sister prefers WW. We've both had success and both gained the weight back when we went back to bad habits.

From a business plan viewpoint, WW needs to change the program every few years so that they can sell new materials.

melissa6771

_John_ wrote: »

WW will also count a lot of points for even lean proteins, so if you don't eat fruits and veggies and eat a higher protein diet the calories eaten can be quite low (which make it work, but still).

They don't do that anymore. On the new program, the lean proteins went way down in points.

In any case, I had great luck years ago with weight watchers but know a lot do people who don't do well with the newer plans. If you're using MFP, that should be enough. Why are you doing both? I think it would be better to pick one and stick with it. But, if you are using both, on here, track everything you put in your mouth. Pretty much that simple. Also, using both may get very confusing.

junodog1 wrote: »

elv1ra wrote: »

Weightwatchers lets you eat fruit and veggies (within reason) for free, because allowing them to not be counted encourages people to eat them and make better food choices.

What bothers me about WW is that they can't seem to make up their mind about their points calculations. They've had at least 3 different points systems based on varied macronutrients. And also the fact that I gets most of my nutrition info off the internet and I can't stand having to look up one thing so i can plug that into into another calculator to get a points value. I prefer to just count my calories on MFP. My sister prefers WW. We've both had success and both gained the weight back when we went back to bad habits.

From a business plan viewpoint, WW needs to change the program every few years so that they can sell new materials.

Yup! And they charge way too much for their program. And penalize you when you don't go to a meeting. Ridiculous.