Friday Poll: current approach
steve0mania
Posts: 3,538 Member
OK, so we're in the "reimagined" GOAD world now. It's no longer WW-centric, although at the moment, the majority of GOADies are WW refugees.
On goad we used to have a number of programs and/or approaches, and had a variety of threads over the years that focused on these approaches. There were the "point-counters," the core/SFT/Darksiders, there were some calorie-counters, some intuitive maintainers, and probably other approaches as well.
For fun and curiosity, the question for the day is:
What is your current approach to weight-management and why?
On goad we used to have a number of programs and/or approaches, and had a variety of threads over the years that focused on these approaches. There were the "point-counters," the core/SFT/Darksiders, there were some calorie-counters, some intuitive maintainers, and probably other approaches as well.
For fun and curiosity, the question for the day is:
What is your current approach to weight-management and why?
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Replies
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I took an "intuitive maintenance" approach for a few years (starting a couple of years after getting down to my goal weight on WW, first via point counting, then later by SFT). I really liked that approach, because I didn't love tracking everything I was eating, and although I found SFT to be relatively easy, I thought that the "spirit" of SFT was more important than the details. I got used to limiting my intake, generally making "the better choice" more often than not, and using the scale as a feedback mechanism for when I needed to be more restrictive or when I could be less restrictive.
Over the past couple of weeks I've been tracking on MFP. The reason for this is that I've been hovering at 10-13 pounds over my personal goal weight for years. I never really had the motivation to simply cut back on my intake for the prolonged time that it would take to take off the extra few pounds.
As noted, when GOAD moved to MFP, it became much easier to track when I put the MFP app on my phone! I'm finding the database in MFP to be much easier to deal with than I remember the WW database to be.
Perhaps most importantly, I'm already having a bit of success with MFP tracking.
I figure I'll track my way back down to my personal goal weight, and spend some time getting used to how much food keeps my weight stable. Then I'll probably go back to intuitive maintenance.0 -
Though I still track smart points on paper, I focus mainly on the calories in/out approach since moving to MFP last fall for tracking. I did modify MFP to show Calories/Sat Fat/Sugar/Protein in order to make it easier. With my fitness watch/HRM and band tied in via Garmen, MFP gives me a pretty good all around view of my day and the etools are far superior. But I will admit that working with smart points has helped keep me more focused on the nutritional make up of the day as well and what is helpful and what is not. I don't know if I can do both forever though. I only drop in 1x/month to a lifetime WW meeting since I don't mind paying the fee for a very good meeting. Right now I find I do better doing both, but I think overtime MFP will prevail. We don't live in a smart points world. I am not ready to cut all ties with WW yet. But frankly I don't know what it will look like by the time I get back to goal and free status. Either way, I will likely always track and be aware.0
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I am looking forward to utilizing MFP in conjunction with WW. I have had MFP for 6 months now but haven't used it to my benefit. I am glad to find this community via WW! To manage my weight loss I feel I will need to track for accountability. I like the e methods to paper tracking, I believe it is easier for me. My personal goal is not to cheat my tracker, 100% logging of food and drink. Tracking on both will be a little more time consuming, but if the weight starts to come off it will be worth it.0
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I track my calories daily and try to stay around 2K to lose weight, but I'm pretty flexible with intake since my goal is to have a slow sustainable loss and lose weight eating the exact same things I will eat when I maintain. I plan on tracking for the rest of my life because I definitely need something to keep me accountable and it only takes 2 minutes in the morning to plug things in.
I do miss the in person meetings of weight watchers, but I have a hard time with their new plan being too restrictive for me. The amount of points I'm given doesn't equal up to what I should be eating for my activity level. It's a bit too one size fits all and I hope that weight watchers will work on tailoring it because I do want them to be successful as a company.0 -
SP because I attend meetings and it makes sense to me to do the program I'm paying for, unless or until it isn't working for me.
And counting calories, because as long as I'm here on MFP, I may as well see how things look from this angle. I've always been curious, but too lazy to double track.
And as a side note, the two programs (ww point and MFP calorie limits) were aligning perfectly... until last night. 6 DPs left and 30ish calories left. So I decided I was done eating.0 -
I was very successful with the Simply Filling program because I enjoyed not having to keep track of anything.
Now I am trying a different approach and I'm using the food journal here on MFP and adding up the calories.0 -
My primary approach is WW. I'm tracking points, teaching my weight, trying to stay within bounds, etc. I'm tracking calories here as a matter of curiosity.
Why am I still doing WW? A mix of inertia and fear. The inertia is because they haven't made the program "diety" enough to send me away yet, and I know it still works for me. The fear is because it's the only thing that has worked for me, and I'm afraid of what I'll do outside of that framework.
A little like Richard Gere towards the end of An Officer And A Gentleman, "I got nowhere else to go . . . "1 -
Like Lin, TOL and I are sticking to WW's SPs. We also attend meetings.0
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I'm a lot like my friend Charlie above. Actually lost all my weight and attained goal on the WW Momentum Plan ( the original points). I was able to stay at goal a couple of years using intuitive eating based on what I learned from the program. From the time I went 2 lbs over goal, I went spiraling out of control. I have stayed with WW thru points plus, and smart points. The original points system worked best for me, even when we counted fresh fruit as 1 point. That said, I am now tracking on MFP and seeing how that works for me. As many of us know, this is a journey and there is no finish line.
~~~Rip0 -
Some might call my current approach as "intuitive" and I do post on that thread. I really think of it as more of a "memorized approach". I counted and journaled for over a year in maintenance/ WW lifetime mode before doing essentially more of just SFT approach. I eat way too fast to just use the body cues for the formal version but have always eaten the bulk of my foods as simply filling foods. I still weigh portions of some things even though I don't write them down.0
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I have tracked and counted on every WW plan to come along at least for a couple of weeks to see how it compared to previous ones. For me I haven't needed to change anything to fit in.
I think about it a lot more than if it was jus "intuitive" in my view.0 -
I track with MPF because it is free and because it is working. Not spending the money to track points online with WW.
That said I really like the tracking functionality of MPF better than WW. It seems to offer more for me.0 -
I track with a free app from CalorieKing which is specific to diabetes called HealthEDiabetes, which tracks carbs for each meal as well as calories. The database of foods seems as good as, if not better than, WW.0
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I'm still a member of WW and use SP. The new program works well with the way I eat, and the transition was easy. Like others, I have tracked for a few days here on MFP for comparison. When I stay within my points, I also stay pretty much within the calorie guidelines that MFP set up for me.
I stay with WW for the meetings and the face to face accountability. It's what I need.0 -
I lost 100#+ on PP and then coasted losing 16# in 2015. When SP started I rebooted 1/16, gave myself a big KITA and have lost 32# in 31 weeks. I plan to stick with what's working and explore the MFP App as I get more familiar with it.
I really enjoy my WW Mtg Ldr, the Thursday AM meeting group, facing the metal monster each week to see how I have done, and getting my little tokens. I know it's not for everyone but it works for me.0 -
WW Smart Points was not a difficult transition to me since I was eating along those lines for the most part. Since I am a meeting member and still currently enjoying e-tools (mainly for tracking them points), I'm sticking with that for now. If my meeting leader were to leave, I might do something else but she is really very good and helps make them very worthwhile too.
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I'm still following the original Core Plan (I sound like a broken record), but am now tracking through MFP. While I know which foods are Core, I have slowly gained some weight over time and I think/know it was because I had become a little complacent with my portion sizes.
Since MFP tracks calories, I was interested in seeing a) how many calories a day I would get to lose a pound a week and b) which Core foods I was overindulging in. It's been kind of eye opening for me. I get 1200 calories a day (ugh) and I'm slowly learning which foods I need to really watch my portion sizes with. Obviously, this means that I'm once again weighing and measuring my foods. Which I detest.0 -
MFP. Gave up on WW after trying smartpoints for 3 months. Couldn't make it work. That and the new website drove me away. It was sad to leave, since I'd been on and off WW - and nothing else - since 1971.
But I didn't go away completely. I still weigh-in monthly at my WW center and stay for that meeting. I've entered a free etools voucher for each month since they first started issuing them. I have free etools now until March 2021. Even though I don't use them.0 -
Never did any variant of WW points. Just used the meetings for support and accountability. Eventually, the boards as well as friends that I made through those boards became my substitute for the meetings. I still WI once a month to keep my free eTools and to stay accountable.
I've been a MFP user for over 1,000 days! Prior to that was an iPad app call Tap & Track. Switched to MFP when Tap & Track was no longer compatible with the newer versions of IOS.0 -
I tend to manage my weight intuitively at this point, having lost using the WW-Momentum Program and slowly converted to using PointsPlus during those times I felt a need to use a structured system.
Although it is calorie based, the incentive on PointsPlus to make better choices really works for me. The most effective part of tracking is that, because of a fear of not points available later in the day I make better food choices throughout the entire day. Plus, I seem to think in points, now, much more than calories.
I never did make the transition to SimplePoints. While like the other WW iterations in incentivizing good choices, it is downright punitive when it comes to indulgences. That wouln't work for me. Plus, I really don't want to learn yet another new system right now.
Besides, it's the shared component that makes any of these approach work. That's called tracking.2
This discussion has been closed.