Weight watchers vs. MFP?!!

kd10680

I posted this on an earlier thread, so this is just copied and pasted!

I'm actually (kind of) doing both now.

I have been doing WW online since December. I lost pretty rapidly in the beginning because I was really following the plan perfectly. After a few months, I started gaining just because I wasn't motivated anymore. I would stop tracking for a few days at a time, then halfway track what I felt like tracking. In total, I lost about 30lbs on WW. As you lose weight, your target point goal gets significantly smaller, and it's pretty small to begin with. I got back to seriously doing WW in May, but found that I wasn't losing any weight anymore while tracking everything and staying below my point goal. I lost maybe 1lb the entire month, and was constantly hungry and cranky. I'm not much fun to be around when I'm hungry and cranky! Especially in a NC summer where it's hot!! :]

I found MFP on my cell phone and started to do it a few weeks ago. Since then, I've lost 6lbs. I started out tracking with both WW and MFP just to see the difference, and I was always WAY over in my WW points, but under in my MFP calories. This week I've decided not to track with WW during the week, and instead just go by MFP. I find when I track with both, I would always pay more attention to WW... so if I were over in points, I would stop eating, regardless of how many calories I had left on MFP. At the end of the week, I'll track everything on WW to see what my point total was. I weighed myself this morning, and I've already lost 2lbs since Sunday morning's weigh in solely using MFP.

So: why I think MFP is a better program -
1)Tracking food: the MFP food catalog is FULL of brands, restaurants, etc. where the WW food catalog is much, much smaller. This also accounted for my lack of motivation to track some foods. If you eat at a restaurant, when you use WW, you have to figure out all the nutritional values yourself and add them in manually (which is REALLY more of a pain than it seems considering a lot of restaurants don't even put their nutritional info where it's easy to find). But I've yet to run into a restaurant that I've eaten at that I can't find in the MFP food catalog.
2)Hungry (all.the.time): I realized, while doing both WW and MFP that WW severely limits your caloric intake, so if you exercise on top of eating your small allotment of points, your body is severely malnourished. Which just leads to me being cranky!
3)Convenience: I love the MFP phone app. I have an android phone, and the WW app was just released for android. It's slow and buggy still, making it a pain to actually need to be on your computer to track most foods. MFP's android app is good for tracking... although I wish that it did more than JUST track (but that's for another post!).
4)Cost: When I signed up for WW, I got some deal with some months free or something (I can't remember that long ago). I just saw on my credit card statement that now, my monthly fee is less than $20. I don't remember the exact amount, maybe $16-17? That's only for online access... to a tracker, blogs, recipes, etc. but no face-to-face meetings. It's not too bad of a deal, but why pay when MFP is free!?! :]

Anyway, I didn't intend on writing a book here, sorry! I can update you with my total weight loss using MFP after I compare the WW points this week if anyone would like to hear the difference. I might actually cancel my WW membership after this week if I end up losing a lot only using MFP (which looks like it might be the case).

Good luck!

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And to whoever asked, yes, you can include exercise on WW, but I've found that exercising doesn't give you too many extra points to use.

I was doing the same thing that you are doing with WW and MFP and I agree MFP is much better and it is free! With WW I don't feel like I am really learning about foods and all of the components with them, such as fat grams, sodium, protein, etc.- all I would focus on was POINTS, POINTS, POINTS! I like the database for MFP SOOOOO much better and the support on here is much better as well. I have lost more weight with MFP than with WW too...I think that is mostly because this site is more inspiring and you can view other people's food diaries to get ideas and stay accountable with each other. Also, I love the fact that there are lots of people on MFP that have the same exercise interests that I do!

dkk1953

I've compared the two for the past 2 days

Wednesday: 1613 calories - 30 WW points (from my book of 2004 - Turnaround program)
Thursday: 1412 calories - 24 WW points

Down 1# this morning

I'll be away from home this weekend but will try to still log on my phone here at MFP to continue this experiment !

annameier8706

From what I understand of weight watchers, the program is more of a way to help you change HOW you eat. Making you aware of good and bad food choices with their point system. Where MFP is for understanding how MUCH you eat.