MFP vs Weight Watchers..

I did WW and was always hungry while on the program. I think MFP is a better way of doing things - track your calories, workout, etc and you'll lose. I like that better than counting point values on food. I'm NEVER hungry now - I was ALWAYS hungry on WW.

I don't follow weight watchers - but I do use skinnytaste.com for recipes which is weight watcher based. If I am going to track points - I might has well just pay attention to the actual calories in my opinion.

I did WW in the past and think it's pretty much the same thing, but MFP is way cheaper...lol...and to me more realistic. If I have an off day, which I have had a lot of lately, I don't feel as bad as I did with WW. If I gain here I don't feel as bad either, maybe it's because I am not paying for this service and feel more free and not as restricted.

My mom counts her points and has lost 30 lbs in four months. I buy the smart ones and get the ones that are about 6 to 7 points, but I record everything I eat here. Being conscious of the points and everything has gotten me better in tuned with my portion control and has helped me lose a few pounds since I started counting. I feel like WW points are good for when you go into a restaurant and don't know what you should get. A lot of the foods are easy to look up online. Two weeks ago I ate at Chili's for lunch and then went with my boyfriend and his mom to Logan's for dinner and was a pound lighter the next morning because I chose one of those lunch specials at Chili's where they give you half of a sandwich, a small order of fries, and a mini salad and then ate a bun-less burger at Logan's with broccoli. So it just really depends.

I followed WW from May 2010 until two weeks ago. I lost about 45 lbs on WW. I totally support WW & the Points Plan. It worked for me. I have met my weight loss goal & now I am using MFP to maintain. It's free & I think its a little easier to track foods than WW is. This might be because I have made a lifestyle change. I am glad that I started with WW because it gave me realization to my eating habits. Good luck to you!

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!