Double Tracking

crewahl

Are any of you tracking both your points on WW and your calories on MFP? What do you feel you get from it?

I’m considering doing it just as a means of further increasing my awareness of what I’m eating. And also because more time thinking about what I’m eating is better than more time eating and not thinking.

steve0mania

I never did that. My only concern would be about creating extra work for one's self for incremental "improvement" might more readily lead to quitting both!

crewahl

Understood. I’ve already tried quitting both; it turned out to be an ineffective strategy for me. Not sure I’ll do it, or do it forever.

whathapnd

I double tracked in 2018 when I re-joined WW. I did this out of necessity because the WW Program didn't make sense to me from a point to calorie standpoint. I was frequently out of points and nowhere near satisfied, and I wanted to understand why. Turns out, I was frequently eating less than 1000 calories on that WW plan even though I was out of points. I dropped WW pretty quickly once I realized this. I hated the extra work of double-tracking, but I'm glad I did it.

I think the current WW programs may be more similar to the original PointsPlus program in terms of points more closely aligning with calories. But that opinion is anecdotal based on a brief conversation with a friend doing the Purple Plan.

linmueller

@whathapnd I think each plan coincides with a previous program, at least for the most part.

💜 Simply filling
💙 Points plus
💚 Smart points

Al_Howard

We've been double tracking for quite a few years. I find it "fun" to see the days I'm way under SPs, but out of calories. It works both ways, but I find it "interesting".

whathapnd

Thanks @linmueller.

I thought Purple sounded like Simply Filling. When my friend told me points values of a couple of foods, it sounded like the 38 calorie/point rule might apply, so I wondered about other plans.

I'd be interested to know if this is true due to some ruminating I was doing this weekend. Any chance you'd be willing to check a few foods to see if the rule applies? (The 2018 WW plan showed nutritional info including calories as well as points. I don't want to create work for you just to satisfy my curiosity. 😊 ) I plan to make a post about my ruminating later this week.

linmueller

@whathapnd it does give NI. I'll post the info for a banana to show you what's included. Let me know what foods you want me to check for you.

imastar2

My experience pretty much aligns with @whathapnd. Except I dropped WW altogether 1/1/20 and just tracked on MFP exclusively. It's been a bumpy year for me after losing 61 lbs from 10/1/19-10/1/20. That would be a good accomplishment except that I never should have out the 61 lbs back on.. All the medical situations plus covid has been quite a trip this year.

So working I'm currently working with my family MD plus my Cardiologist, Nutrionist all through our Hospital System and a Physiotherapist to get to the bottom of a couple of issues. For now I'll keep you guys posted as things go along.

susan092907

I haven't posted here in a long time, but once in a while I lurk...

I've got a free WW account going to July 2027 because I'm a Lifetime member maintaining under goal since December 2010, and I got vouchers for free etools every month until they stopped giving them out in Jan or Feb of 2020.

I don't track on WW but still keep up with what the program is about.

I stopped tracking on WW a few months after they switched to Smart Points from Points Plus. At that time they recalculated how points are determined. I just couldn't make it work. The penalties for fats and sugars - naturally occurring or added - made it so that I was always in the red, even when I was eating what I considered healthy foods. I attempted to figure out how much I could go over my allotted points and just keep within that amount, but there just seemed to be no rhyme or reason to how points were assigned. So I gave up and just tracked calories on here.

After some time, the WW plan was changed again to Freestyle. I again tried to make that work, but still had the same issues. Freestyle still used the same point calculations as Smart Points.

The current program now offers options - still based on the same way of calculating points.

Green = Smart Points
Blue = Freestyle
Purple= something similar to simply filling, with some differences. Not sure exactly what. A daily points allowance and a weekly points allowance, and also rollover of up to 4 daily unused points to the next day.

Once in a while I switch tracking from MFP to iTrackBites. It offers a copy cat for free of the old WW programs Momentum and Points Plus. I do PP on there - it's the program that I maintained on until Smart Points came along.

I don't think you can use any kind of short cut to compute points from calories. The way that points are assigned now, with little relevance to calories, doesn't facilitate that. Not like on Momentum, where if I recall correctly, 40 calories = 1 point, and something similar on Points Plus.

crewahl

whathapnd wrote: »

When my friend told me points values of a couple of foods, it sounded like the 38 calorie/point rule might apply, so I wondered about other plans.

I'd be interested to know if this is true . . .

Okay, so you got me thinking.

I decided to try double-tracking, and I started in January. I've got about two weeks in. It's interesting because it did help me see how my sodium consumption was trending. As Susan The Lurker said above, it's a bit hard to do a clean calculation because of the way that WW assigns points. There's a bit of a penalty for fats, and a bit of a reward for protein.

But I was still curious, and decided to get a little more analytic. Here are the calculations per points along with the R-Square value. R-Square tells you the predictive power - how much of the result (points) is predicted by the value. Lower is less predictive, and higher is more predictive.

Cal 52 0.306
Carb. 5.7. 0.275
Fat. 1.42. 0.508
Prot. 3.59. 0.217
Sod. 76.3. 0.162
Sug. 1.54 0.199

As you can see, the most predictive item on Blue is fat, which can explain about half the result in terms of points. And this is based on my eating, which may have more or less zero point foods than yours. Your mileage may vary.

whathapnd

Thanks for looking back on this, Charlie. I'd forgotten to circle back with @linmueller to ask more questions.

I'm interested to know:

1) Are the point values for the Blue and Green plans the same? (I seem to remember that both SmartPoints and Freestyle had penalties for fat and sugar.)

2) Do the point values for Purple equate to 38 calories per point? (From a friend's description, Purple seems to be a hybrid of PointsPlus and Simply Filling where you get fewer daily points than the PointsPlus plan but more than the SFT weekly allotment. Plus all the Power Foods (zero point foods.)

linmueller

The points for foods are calculated the same for all plans unless they are a 0 SP food. Green has the fewest 0 SP foods and you get the most DPs. Purple has the most 0 SP foods and you get the fewest DPs. Blue us in the middle.

Purple is close to simply filling.

Green and blue to PP and SF. I'm not sure which is which, I've been on 💜 for so long!

Since all SPs are computed the same for all 3 programs, no, purple is not based on 38 cals. There's penalties for fat and sugar, they raise the SPs. Protein powder the SPs. I will post a few examples in a few.

linmueller

Pork tenderloin, 3 oz 122 cal 2SP
Potato chips 7/8 oz 130 cal 4SP
Bacon 1 oz. 132 cal 4SP
Hard candy 1 1/8 oz 124 cal 6SP
Caramels 1 1/8 oz 122 cal 6SP

Just a side note, 4 oz of pork tenderloin is also 2 SPs

whathapnd

Thanks for the specifics, Lin! This helped me determine that I don't want to try going back to WW, even at reduced Lifetime rate. ( At least for now. ) If I start struggling, I may give it a try.

Al_Howard

For me, it's the "in-person" meetings. We have a 7-8 person core, that share each others burdens, be they weight related or not (one gal lost her husband early last year).
I still feel that my creep upwards in the early 1980's was due to not finding a good meeting, after they cut our in-town meeting. Drifted from 189# up to 245-255.
Meetings really have helped me to slide down from my 335# top to my current 240+/-.

newmantjn

crewahl wrote: »

whathapnd wrote: »

When my friend told me points values of a couple of foods, it sounded like the 38 calorie/point rule might apply, so I wondered about other plans.

I'd be interested to know if this is true . . .

Okay, so you got me thinking.

I decided to try double-tracking, and I started in January. I've got about two weeks in. It's interesting because it did help me see how my sodium consumption was trending. As Susan The Lurker said above, it's a bit hard to do a clean calculation because of the way that WW assigns points. There's a bit of a penalty for fats, and a bit of a reward for protein.

But I was still curious, and decided to get a little more analytic. Here are the calculations per points along with the R-Square value. R-Square tells you the predictive power - how much of the result (points) is predicted by the value. Lower is less predictive, and higher is more predictive.

Cal 52 0.306
Carb. 5.7. 0.275
Fat. 1.42. 0.508
Prot. 3.59. 0.217
Sod. 76.3. 0.162
Sug. 1.54 0.199

As you can see, the most predictive item on Blue is fat, which can explain about half the result in terms of points. And this is based on my eating, which may have more or less zero point foods than yours. Your mileage may vary.

Have you tried running a multiple regression with your highest R^2 values in the equation? So, maybe with the top 4?

crewahl

Nope - two reasons.

First, at that point I had fourteen observations. That’s enough for a quick peek, but not enough for any meaningful confidence in the result.

Second, and more important, I think there’s a lack of independence between the variables. Carbs include sugars and fibers, and calories include carbs, proteins and fats. Based on that, only one variable with a high R-squared - fat - has any independence to stand alone.

I may return to this at some point, but probably not. The reality is that I’ve gotten a result that aligns with my preconceptions, and so my desire to research further is diminished. (So much for objective analysis, huh?) 😉