Talk to me about WW

RedSassyPants

The other plan I was on was ok. I did well for a while, but I’m done with it. I will be joining a gym with my daughter in the next couple of weeks so I’ll have access to a scale again. Thinking of returning to WW but don’t know what the plan looks like now. Any thoughts? Feedback?

Al_Howard

TOL and I have found it good, for us. I can be adjusted for YOUR likes. Heck, for us, chicken and potatoes are zero points. There is an online questioner which you go through, which will then adjust the points to YOUR plan. And you can change your answers to fit YOUR likes. The leader should walk you through it after the meeting.
Any questions. DM me on FB Messenger.

steve0mania

I tried it for awhile a couple of years ago, but personally found it hard to understand the underlying "spirit" of the program. I couldn't really understand how it was meant to work.

crewahl

I’m curious to see the replies, because I think it’s gonna be a bit like the blind men and the elephant - everyone interprets the program based on their own experiences and practices. And yes, so far I guess that makes me the third of the blind mice. 😉

At the purely conceptual level, WW today is essentially the same WW that I joined around 2008. The basic message is “move a bit more, eat a bit less”. They give you a range of daily points based on your personal info, and you live within those points (and weekly and activity points) to lose weight. Lose some weight, and you’ll lose a point from your budget. On the plus side, it’s up to you how you spend your points budget. You can have eight pounds of tofu, or three snickers bars.

So all that is essentially as it has been. Some of the “how to” is different when you start drilling down a level, and WW has continued to push boundaries in terms of the points they assign to foods to incentivize or disincentivize you to choose or by-pass a given food. They still penalize most fats, and reward stuff that’s more fiber. They’ve created a concept of “zero point foods” that aren’t charged to your daily budget, and given you some control over those definitions. (Of course, zero point foods still have calories, so you still need some awareness.

At the nitty-gritty level, the new (11/21)Personal Points program lets you define the foods that will be zero points for you. The key, of course, is that the more zero point foods you add, the lower your daily points budget goes. In essence, if you want something like corn (and it’s other incarnations
Ike popcorn) to be zero points, you’ll be prepaying for those foods by having a smaller daily budget. They’re also encouraging you to eat non-starchy vegetables by giving you back a daily point for every cup of veggies you eat. That, of course, has complicated things for people who are vegetarian. 🤯

Last thing in the past few years? They added “blue dots” that show up in your tracker when you are in the “healthy eating range”. That range is defined as not more than ten points over your daily budget, nor more than eight points below that number. It’s a silly thing, but for me, it’s beneficial to see “well, I’ve gone over my daily budget, but I’m still doing okay.”

I’m sure I’ve left out some important stuff, but the three levels of detail may help. For me, I’ve got non-starchy veggies, eggs, most fruit, fish and poultry as zero points. It leaves me with a reasonable daily budget, but some filling options - particularly when eating out.