This plan compared to Weight Watcher points

DebraB2544

Just coming off Weight Watchers. Would love your input on this plan comparison. Yes..No?

jayceecervenka

Weight Watchers gives you a basic point system that keeps you bound to their foods and restrictions. MFP, you have control of what you eat and how you use your macros. Here is my rule of thumb: find your BMR, eat in a deficit, but not Every Day. Give yourself two non-consecutive days to eat at or right above your BMR so you do not wreck your metabolism. Do some level two cardio and educate yourself on the new science that is coming out about women's weight (especially if you are over 40). Tracking your food works. It really is the only thing that has ever worked for me. Adjust your daily calories the way you want them and eat a gram of protein for every pound of your goal weight every day, within 10 grams. Losing muscle will not help you lose weight and stay healthy; just lose weight and age your body.

I'm not sure how long you did Weight Watchers, but this will help you get an idea of what you are putting into your body. I use a personal trainer for the accountability and to fine-tune my macros. MFP is the tool that helps me know how well I am doing on my goal on a daily basis. After 6 months of tracking, I can now eat at parties and know I am within my daily macros because I know how to adjust my day to accommodate a party.

AnnPT77

Generally, I agree with the PP.

Weight Watchers points are designed to push you toward eating more whole foods, more nutrient dense foods, more filling foods, etc. Calories are what directly drive body weight, so calorie counting is in a way more basic and more flexible. However, smart people want to be healthy, not just thin, so they still pay attention to eating in health-promoting ways for the majority of their routine.

When applied in a common sense way, calorie counting can put treat foods in perspective as "sometimes foods" in reasonable portions, without assigning them a moral value like giving them lots of points to highlight them as bad for a person. Calorie counting helped me reach my goals because it's the right tool for my personality and needs.

If you're using MFP Premium+ with the meal plans, it will give you more specifics about what to eat, though in a different way from Weight Watchers. I haven't used that, so I can't comment on it. I suspect structured meal plans like that will help some people, but be annoying or difficult for others.

A couple of things where I disagree with the PP above:

• BMR isn't the right number. BMR is basal metabolic rate, the number of calories we'd burn flat on our back in a coma, alive but not even digesting food. A sensible number of calories is our TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) minus a moderate number of calories to create a deficit. TDEE includes BMR, daily life activity (NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis), exercise (EAT, execise activity thermogenesis), and TEF (thermic effect of food, the number of calories we burn digesting/metabolizing what we eat). That list is close to the order of magnitude for most people, BMR the biggest number, and either EAT or TEF the smallest.
• A sensibly moderate calorie deficit won't "wreck metabolism", even if continued for a while. Periodically eating at maintenance calories can be helpful for various reasons, but it doesn't have to be 2 days a week in all cases, even all "40s and over woman" cases. (NB, I'm a woman way over 40 who lost 50ish pounds and kept it off for 9+ years so far.) Two days a week at maintenance is fine, if it works for an individual. It wouldn't compensate for the downsides of eating crazy-low calories as a weekly average, though. Extremely low calories is always a bad plan for various reasons, but the definition of "extreme" varies with circumstances.
• Level 2 cardio? I'm assuming we're talking heart rate zone 2 in a 3-5 zone scheme. It's fine. For most people - in the appropriate dosage - it creates fitness progress and burns some calories while not being exhausting enough that they drag through the rest of the day, burning fewer calories than expected in other ways to the detriment of health and weight loss. For someone with fitness aspirations, zone 2 alone and forever won't deliver optimal cardiovascular results, but not everyone needs optimal cardiovascular results. The key thing is that the so-called "fat burning zone" isn't the only thing that burns calories, fosters fitness improvement, etc. Any added movement burns calories. Overdoing for current fitness level (to the point of persistent fatigue) is counterproductive for either of fitness progress or weight management.

Either Weight Watchers or calorie counting can lead to success, for a person it suits. (Some of my friends have lost a lot of weight on Weight Watchers, and kept it off. I did it by calorie counting.) In either case, committing to the process and using comon sense is necessary.

I'm wishing you success: From my experience, the quality of life improvement that results is more than worth the effort it takes to accomplish.