Compare Mfp with WwPurple plan

Twinkles9876
Twinkles9876 Posts: 14 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi I have been looking at the WW purple plan. The approach looks interesting to me as it might be easier to maintain long term. You don’t need to log healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables, lean proteins and whole grains. You only need to log the calories for the additional foods not on this healthy “no-count”list. Each person has a set amount of “additional” calories available each day.

How could I use MFP to do this? I like the idea of not having to log every food but keeping a check on the amount of treats or less healthy foods I eat.

Replies

  • 4legsRbetterthan2
    4legsRbetterthan2 Posts: 19,590 MFP Moderator
    if you only want to log part of your foods you could manually set your daily goal to the amount of calories you want to alot to foods you do plan to count

    home - menu - goals - manually set goal
  • nanastaci2020
    nanastaci2020 Posts: 1,072 Member
    edited January 2021
    Mixing programs can be hard. But if you can approximate the caloric value of your points, use that to set a manual calorie goal for what you want to track.

    And if you want to keep a very simple log of your fruits, grains and such you could create a "meal" category for WW Purple Foods. And also create a custom entry for fruit, veggie, whole grain, etc. If you set them each to 1 serving and 0 cals you could just "track" them as servings.
  • SwtHedgehog
    SwtHedgehog Posts: 175 Member
    Are we talking aboutcombi g the two programs or comparing? MFP has the advantage of knowing your exact calorie intake. I'm not familiar with WW, but MFP has great community support and discussion topics, along with many non scale outcomes of losing weight/fat.
  • Ddsb11
    Ddsb11 Posts: 607 Member
    rheddmobile wrote: »
    Just for the sake of playing Devil’s Advocate, I haven’t found it difficult to log long term - maintaining 125 lb weight loss going on four years now - and I got obese in the first place eating primarily healthy foods which are on WW free list. Something to consider! Logging gets easier as you go along because most of your foods are in your frequent list. I have read several articles recently which claimed counting calories was “impossible to maintain long term” and that is simply a falsehood.

    It’s also possible, if you find that you don’t overeat certain foods, to give yourself a pass on logging those foods strictly, and roughly estimate those foods. Or even skip logging low calorie foods altogether. I never log pickles, for example. There’s a lot of distance between not logging and weighing every gram of mustard. You know yourself best, and you know what will work for you! Just giving my opinion on what has worked for me.

    I gained most of my unwanted weight on Atkins for 10 years, but was terrified if I ate a carb I would gain even more. 🤦🏼‍♀️
  • glassyo
    glassyo Posts: 7,757 Member
    msalicia07 wrote: »
    rheddmobile wrote: »
    Just for the sake of playing Devil’s Advocate, I haven’t found it difficult to log long term - maintaining 125 lb weight loss going on four years now - and I got obese in the first place eating primarily healthy foods which are on WW free list. Something to consider! Logging gets easier as you go along because most of your foods are in your frequent list. I have read several articles recently which claimed counting calories was “impossible to maintain long term” and that is simply a falsehood.

    It’s also possible, if you find that you don’t overeat certain foods, to give yourself a pass on logging those foods strictly, and roughly estimate those foods. Or even skip logging low calorie foods altogether. I never log pickles, for example. There’s a lot of distance between not logging and weighing every gram of mustard. You know yourself best, and you know what will work for you! Just giving my opinion on what has worked for me.

    I gained most of my unwanted weight on Atkins for 10 years, but was terrified if I ate a carb I would gain even more. 🤦🏼‍♀️

    When my doctor suggested I lose weight and I started researching diets, I pretty much didn't get past "At..." before it ended up a hard no. :smiley:

  • Twinkles9876
    Twinkles9876 Posts: 14 Member
    Thanks for your input. I know that I am unlikely to overeat the healthy foods. When I binge it is not on fruits and vegetables or lean meats! I think the principal behind the purple plan is to encourage you to eat these foods more, so that when you are full, treats and high carbs are less tempting. My problem when I try to lose weight is not eating enough, then when I am tired and hungry, totally losing it.
  • TeaBea
    TeaBea Posts: 14,517 Member
    Twinkles9876 wrote: »
    Thanks for your input. I know that I am unlikely to overeat the healthy foods. When I binge it is not on fruits and vegetables or lean meats! I think the principal behind the purple plan is to encourage you to eat these foods more, so that when you are full, treats and high carbs are less tempting. My problem when I try to lose weight is not eating enough, then when I am tired and hungry, totally losing it.

    Yes, the principle is to encourage vegetable and fruit consumption. You start at a low calorie value and then add "free" foods. I don't like games though.

    Foods that WW deems "bad" are given punitive point values, which means you eat even less. "Faster weight loss with Weight Watchers".....under eating will do that.

    One of my problems with WW, is that they keep changing things. The part that used to be based on calories in vs. calories out, went away. But that's exactly what weight loss is. Points based on calories is too simple to make money on year in and year out. Some of WW changes are to keep up with the current weight loss fads.

    If in person meetings and weekly weigh-ins are helpful, then that's a good thing.

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/107250-weight-watchers-support-group

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/718-weight-watchers-points-plus

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/10133-weight-watchers-360-old-points-of-mfp

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