Setting aside the challenges of trying to measure calories burned from activity, I think the biggest issue is that you’re assuming science when in fact what’s happening is marketing. (This is one person's perspective.)

When people talk about issues with points assigned for certain activities or items, I sometimes chime in with my “sin tax” theory. That’s my belief that to offset the fact that there are calories in zero point foods that aren’t reflected as points, WW has “surcharged” some fats and sugars to balance that. It’s like states taxing alcohol and tobacco to fund things like increased medical costs associated with some foods - programs that are colloquially* known as “sin taxes”. If you looked around, you’d find that 6 points of Fiber One Original bran cereal (90 grams by weight) has 2.25 grams of fat and 0 grams of sugar, while the Kind Bar has 15 grams of far and five grams of sugar in 40 grams of weight. In other words, you’re paying twice as many points per gram of food for the Kind bar as you are for the Fiber One, and I presume it’s due to the higher prevalance of fats and sugars

So the scale by which WW assigned points to foods (and presumably activity) isn’t balanced - or at least I’d say WW has a thumb of that scale.

There are similarly imbalances in activity points. A 55 Minute walk at an average hear rate of 100 BPM gets me 2 activity points and my Apple Watch says I burned about 335 active calories. Meanwhile, 26 minutes on the Nordic Track ski machine at the same heart rate gets me 4 activity points, but my Apple Watch says I burned about 225 active calories.

All I can do is try to convince myself that I’m being active for my health and not just for weight or to translate it into food. That philosophy is probably about 60% valid for me, and 40% a crock.

I haven't looked at the latest iteration of WW points, but I did a deep dive into the patents and calculations a number of years ago. Charlie provided a nice summary of the idea that there are "taxes" on foods that they want you to avoid (alcohol used to be the most heavily taxed), and there were "tax breaks" on foods they wanted to encourage (folks used to freak out over the idea that a banana was zero points).

In my incredibly humble opinion, this represented a major conceptual shift for WW, when it stopped being a weight management program, and instead became a health-management program. Over time it seemed as though WW recognized that most folks don't actually do a great job losing weight, even with their program, and so moved the goal posts to encourage "health" rather than a "healthy weight." My cynical side thinks that this was a strategy to keep folks from getting frustrated and leaving the program when they weren't losing weight, because they could justify staying with it by saying "I'm so much healthier now, even though I'm still overweight."

When I rejoined a few years ago to try to take off a few pounds, I found the system so complicated in terms of taxes and tax-breaks, that I couldn't understand the overarching strategy for how I was supposed to be eating (I was already eating pretty "healthy"). So I dropped it.

In my book, if you want to lose weight, you have to take in fewer calories than you burn. It's pretty straightforward. Everything else is not directly aligned with that goal.

steve0mania wrote: »

My cynical side thinks that this was a strategy to keep folks from getting frustrated and leaving the program when they weren't losing weight, because they could justify staying with it by saying "I'm so much healthier now, even though I'm still overweight."
.

My cynical side thought exactly the same thing.

crewahl wrote: »

Yup, WW Points are as much marketing as science. 🤷🏻‍♂️

But as long as it works for me - and given the continued evidence that I can’t do this by myself - I’ll stick with it.

Et tu Brute?