Weight Watchers

[AmbulanceDriver]

So my wife has been bugging me for a couple of weeks for us to both get signed up on Weight Watchers.  We're both overweight, and I'm significantly so (about 100 lbs or so).  I was admittedly hesitant to sign up, because of the whole "points" thing.  Well, after one day, I've got to admit that I'm kinda hooked on this thing.  Maybe the novelty will wear off, but it's pretty cool.

The plan we signed up for was their "online only" offering, so everything is done on the web.  Pretty cool in my opinion.  Thousands of foods are already entered in their system, so it's just a matter of finding your foods and entering them in the tracker.  If your food isn't listead, it's just a matter of entering the calories, fat, and fiber for a serving and it automatically calculates the points for you.  Pretty slick, and you can add in your own foods, meals, and even recipes, and it'll save it all for you. 

The single biggest thing I've learned from looking over the material is PORTION CONTROL!  It's amazing how much EXTRA I will eat because it happens to be there.  Or because I don't measure it.  Quick example, my coffee.  I didn't measure the amount of sugar and creamer I added, thinking it wasn't that much.  Until I measured what a 'serving' of the creamer was this morning.  It was a LOT less than what I had been adding.  But the amazing thing is, my coffee still tasted good, just not as sweet.  And I cut the calories in my morning coffee in half! 

My other fear was that I wouldn't get enough food.  Wrong again, just a matter of eating healthier choices.  They have a lot of substitutions that you can use instead of full fat/sugar options, that will DRASTICALLY cut the calories/fat.  And yet still leave you satisfied. 

Finally, the points allowances are surprisingly generous.  By simply exercising a little portion control, I'm well within my budgeted daily points, without feeling like I'm starving myself.  And they even provide a weekly points allowance for the occasional splurge, like a meal out...

[The Annoyed Man]

FWIW, SWMBO has lost about 30 lbs in about 3 months with 'Healthy Inspirations'.  They guarantee something like a 2-3lb loss per week (if you follow the program exactly), and it works.  I think they're a chain/franchise and all over the country.

[DJJ]

Weight Watchers is nothing but portion control and moderate exercise. I'm not criticizing it - I lost 110 lb doing it - but now you see that it's that simple, and because there's no magic, that hard. The program just provides some structure and support.

[AmbulanceDriver]

DJJ, that's the single biggest thing that I need.  Structure and support.  My wife provides awesome support, but I was still lacking the structure.  Hence the jump to WW....

[GigaBuist]

My SO is significantly overweight.  She decided to do something about that a few months ago and signed onto TheDailyPlate.com.  It sounds like it does a lot of what Weight Watchers does, but it's free.

No "point system" though.  It just counts calories.  She enters what she eats and rarely has to manually enter anything.  The database works a bit like CDDB that way.  If somebody else has put in the details it's already there.

She's been doing either Richard Simmon's 'Sweatin' to the Oldies' in the mornings or just sitting on the exercise bike.  Combined with a little portion control she's lost 29 lbs in about 8 weeks.  Not bad.

We just started putting a bit of Indian food in our diet too.  I snagged a recipe book from a local store and it includes a calorie count with every recipe.  There's a LOT of them in there that are really low calorie.

We're also doing some weight training (that started about 6 months ago for me) and consequently she's the smallest she's been in a while and I'm larger than I ever have been.

[coppertales]

If you don't do any exercise along with a diet, you will fail.  It is a good thing you are realizing you  need to lose weight.  I eat my meals backwards, fat food breakfast, moderate lunch, and a bowl of cerial for supper.  I go to bed early, because I have to get up early so I don't get a late night craving for something.  Over the last three months, my belt is two notches tighter.  I also go to the gym at least two times a week and lift.....chris3

[Devonai]

I lost 65 pounds over the course of a year through strict calorie counting and exercise.  I used the website caloriesperhour.com to determine the worth of my exercise and to help judge what I ate at restaurants.

I was working as a subcontract US Postal Service carrier at the time, so most of my exercise was on the job.  I was constantly jumping in and out of a van and delivering full bins through buildings and up stairs.  I probably could not have done it if I had a desk job and had to work out entirely on my own dime.

After I lost that weight I decided to join the National Guard.  I bumped up my running considerably, but curiously enough I did not lose much weight by doing so (maybe 2-3 pounds).  When I got back from basic training I was the same weight as when I left, thanks to the large amount of food available during the latter weeks.  I estimate we were burning 4000-6000 calories per day based on the nutritional information posted outside of the chow hall.  Never again will I be able to have a breaded veal cutlet sandwich with ranch dressing without guilt.

GigaBust is absolute right about weight training.  Lean muscle is extremely important for burning calories and shrinking fat reserves.  I keep a few freeweights in front of my TV so I will never forget to use them, and I've adopted a philosophy of "just do one set" to get my off my butt.  95% of the time that one set leads to all of them for a particular exercise.  I've also had a lot of success with the medium weight/medium reps/high sets technique.  As an example, I am currently doing 7-10 sets of barbell curls, 25 pounds per bar, 21 reps per set.  Using this technique has gotten me toned, not huge, which was the point.

[Brad Johnson]

Weight Watchers does a good job of teaching how to eat properly.  The points system is their way of giving you a tool to help you with the day-to-day of proper eating habits.  It works best for people who struggle with inward self-control.  The points are an objective indicator of their daily dietary practices.  It takes "maybe" out of the equation.

Brad

[DJJ]

For the curious, here's WW's formula for calculating points for a serving of food. They'd prefer it not be posted, and they delete any thread from their own message boards that gives it, but it's patented, and therefore public information. I actually got it from a .pdf of their patent application from the Patent Office website.

Points = (calories/50)+(fat/12)-(fiber/4)

where fat and fiber are in grams, and fiber is a maximum of 4. Fat weighs in (no pun intended) and fiber gives you up to a 1 point break so as to encourage eating low fat, high fiber foods. Allowable points used to be based solely on your current weight, but they recently introduced a more complicated formula that takes into account sex, weight, age, job type, etc. Allowable point values went up. I still use the weight-based, and I get 24 points/day, plus a weekly "slush fund" of 35 to use or not.

[AmbulanceDriver]

Well, I figured I'd post a progress report on here...  And yes, I'm bragging, because I'm darn proud of myself. 

2 weeks.  12 pounds off.  And it's definitely not "water weight" as I've been drinking a lot more water than I ever had before.  Wife is already saying that she sees the difference.   

[Vodka7]

Congratulations, AD.  What's your goal?

[Devonai]

Congrats, AD!

I am concerned, however, about your dramatic weight loss.  Losing six pounds of fat per week would have required you to subtract 3,000 calories per day from your diet.  If you started off at +100 pounds, then I can imagine your normal daily resting burn rate is around 3,000 calories, so this begs the question: did you eat nothing for two weeks?

I am not a doctor or an expert, but my gut reaction (pun intended) is that you should slow down or risk developing related health problems.

[AmbulanceDriver]

I'm shooting for about 100 lbs...  Would like to get down to about 240....   But that's the long term goal.

Right now, I'm *really* gunning to get under the 300 mark....  That'll be awesome.


Devonai, I was kinda shocked myself.  But I'm definitely still eating, just not quite as much and not so much processed crap.  Cut out a lot of sugar, didn't realize just how much I was putting in my morning coffee until I measured out what I should be using, stuff like that.  The other big thing is that both my wife and I have markedly increased our activity level.  Going for walks, bike rides, etc. instead of sitting around the house and watching the idiot box. 

And yes, I've been talking w/ my doctor, he's keeping an eye on me too.. 

[Devonai]

Gotcha.  Good luck.  By the way, how's the diet treating you?  When I was doing 1lb-per-week I was practically comatose for the first few weeks.

[AmbulanceDriver]

I'm doing surprisingly well.  I suspect the rapid loss is partially due to my body being shocked from getting lots of extra calories to being in a calorie deficit on a normal basis.   While I'm a little more tired than usual, I'm not feeling bad per se.  I suspect that by the next couple weeks I'll be down to the 1-2 lb per week rate.  First week was 7 lbs, this week was 5.  I suspect that i'll be in more "sane" territory next week. 

[Brad Johnson]

I am concerned, however, about your dramatic weight loss.  Losing six pounds of fat per week would have required you to subtract 3,000 calories per day from your diet.  If you started off at +100 pounds, then I can imagine your normal daily resting burn rate is around 3,000 calories, so this begs the question: did you eat nothing for two weeks?

A fair bit of that weight was water weight.  Most of us are mildly dehydrated without realizing it.  As a defense mechanism the body retains more water.  When your fluid intake rises to what your body considers adequate it reacts by shedding excess fluid.  It's not surprising that he lost 12 pounds in two weeks.  Of that, probably five or six is actual fat loss.  The remainder is fluid weight.

If I do not drink enough water for even a single day my weight will shoot up by as much as three or four pounds the next day.  It takes another full day of adequate hydration for the retained fluid to begin flushing (i.e. at some point you suddenly start peeing like a racehorse every couple of minutes).

Brad