Week One of Tracking SmartPoints

Well, I’ve had one week to get accustomed to the new Beyond the Scale program at Weight Watchers. Just a reminder for those of you who haven’t been around my blog too long, I’m a long time Weight Watchers member who used their program to lose a total of 90 pounds over the course of about 12 years. (Fifty pounds was lost before I started having children, and then another 40 about five years after the birth of my second and final child.) I found that the 90-pound loss was a bit much, even for my small frame, so I was happy to settle in with about an 80 to 85 pound loss. I managed to maintain that loss for about a year before gaining back about seven or eight pounds that stubbornly did not want to come off after my first (or second) marathon.

In September of this year, after a frustrating summer of feeling heavy and unhappy all of the time, with clothes that were uncomfortably tight, I decided to try something different. I switched to counting calories for the first time in my life. Since September 22nd (the day after my current half-marathon PR), I’ve been using My Fitness Pal to track calories and other macronutrients.  I set a goal to stay within 1300 calories per day, plus whatever calories I earn from running (the only real calorie-burning exercise I do).  As of last week, I had lost four of the 7 pounds I was trying to lose.Some people may not agree, but I think that the new Beyond the Scale program is actually a pretty big change from the prior PointsPlus program. Both programs gave you a set amount of points per day, along with a set amount that you could spread out over the week. Under SmartPoints, I’m given more points in a day (30, versus the 26 I used to get), but I’m also given a reduced amount of weekly points (21 total, versus the 49 I used to get). In addition to the points changes, weight watchers also was very clear that they had changed their attitude about what we used to call Activity Points. Under PointsPlus, you would earn Activity Points for a variety of different exercises, some of which weren’t really exercise at all, but were designed to get you active and moving. For instance, besides the running and strength training I did, housework and gardening also earned Activity Points, and I was allowed to swap all of my APs for food.”Fit Points” (the new term under Beyond the Scale) are different, though. According to Weight Watchers, we are supposed to exercise now strictly for the health benefit that it provides, not to eat more food. In other words, no more swapping Activity Points for food.  At all! However, I did notice that the number of Activity Points Fit Points that I earn increased. But I’m not supposed to do anything with them, so…?? I haven’t quite figured out what that’s all about.

When I first logged in on Monday, I had to do an assessment.  I believe the personal assessment is to determine what your daily and weekly point values will be, based on your answers. It does ask you about your fitness level, but from what I understand, that’s only to help you determine what your Fit Points goal is. I think I probably overestimated the amount of activity I usually do, since I said I averaged about 45 minutes a day, and that’s probably not accurate, since I only run five days a week. I’d be interested in knowing how they determine the formula is for calculating the number of Fit Points you’re supposed to earn per day, because mine ended up being 4.  That seems kind of low for somebody who consistently runs five days a week! (For comparison, a 30-minute run that used to earn me 4 Activity Points now earns me 6 Fit Points.)

After I finished my personal assessment and saw what my new numbers were, I was initially rather unimpressed.  I discovered that I was being given four more points per day, but they also cut my weeklies by an average of four points per day, so that it pretty much evened out.  Instead of 26 per day and 49 per week, I was getting 30 per day and 21 per week.  But, the truth is that I never used to use my weeklies, so it seemed to me like my net result would be that I was getting more points in a day. But then…

I started logging my food. :O

It didn’t take long for me to discover that most of the foods that I like to eat had gone up in points. I heard a rumor that foods that are higher in sugar and saturated fat were being “penalized”, as it were. And, as I’ve mentioned before, there aren’t too many things I love in life more than sugar. Some days, I think I love it more than my kids. :p

I quickly discovered that the 5 Hershey’s kisses that I usually have for lunch every day that used to be three points suddenly became five points. Heaven forbid, if I have a rough day, and end up eating, say, 9 of them…yeah, that becomes 10 points. Pardon me, but, WTF?! Ten points for 180 calories worth of Hershey’s kisses??  Alos, that tablespoon of sugar that I was putting in my coffee went from one point to three points. But my sugar habit wasn’t the only issue: it turns out that one of my standbys, the one I can’t live without in the mornings, cappuccino with fat-free milk, went from being three points for 1.5 cups of skim milk to 5 points! Dude, it’s skim milk! >:( The Brummel & Brown yogurt spread (margarine) that used to be worth one point per tablespoon, and zero points per teaspoon, is now worth one point per teaspoon, and two points per tablespoon. With just those few changes, my standard breakfast went from being 8 points to 14 points. Hello, that’s almost half my daily points for breakfast!

It doesn’t get any better for the other meals of the day either.  Yes, it’s true, I tend to be a person who likes to eat sugar and starch. I can’t deny it. However, I’ve lost almost 90 pounds eating sugar and starch! Let us remember that Weight Watchers has always touted itself as a plan that told you you could have anything you wanted. Of course, the understanding was that it was all in moderation, but after doing this new program for a week, I’ve really determined that there are some things you’re just not going to have, because even in moderation, they’re just too many points.

For my first day on Beyond the Scale, in addition to the daily points I was given, I used up all but one of my weekly points. Yikes. 😮  Still, although I planned to continue to follow my calorie-counting for the week, I determined I would also track with Weight Watchers, just to see how it compared.  At the end of the week, I made a little chart for myself. Under the old program, Weight Watchers used to give me a nice little progress report chart that would allow me to see graphically how my point stacked up for the week on a daily basis. They’re having some rather monumental issues with their website right now, so I suspect the progress reports are low on their priority list. That’s OK, because I know how to use Excel just as well as the next girl!

So what do you think? I’ll tell you what I think: I think that the new Weight Watchers program is prejudiced against my eating style. :/ It turns out that I averaged 48 SmartPoints a day. A DAY. That means that I was eating more than one and a half times my allotted daily points, every day, for seven days. 😮

And yet, as you can tell, my calories were pretty steady at just a little over 1500 a day. I did have one rough day on Thursday where I just couldn’t stop eating. Because I didn’t run that day, the 1500+ calories that I ate were more than my daily goal, but still, the average for the week was right within where I was supposed to be, assuming I counted the calories I burned, which, I personally feel I need to. I have had several conversations in actual Weight Watchers meetings with leaders where they encouraged us to swap our Activity Points for food, because the more you exercise, the more fuel your body needs. I was told that for me, that’s especially true, because when I run, I’m actually doing hard work!

I have to tell you, by about day four on the new program, I was really discouraged. I didn’t feel like I was eating to excess, and yet, by the time I was done with my week, I had this shocking discovery when I logged the last of my food on Sunday night:

Pardon my language but…holy f’ng shit. :O My weeklies where at -105?? For a girl who never used her weeklies, that was just shocking to me.  Especially since all that was just me eating normally. There wasn’t a day when I went crazy and did what I would call “over eating.”  There was no binging on pizza or stuffing my face with an entire package of Oreos; even on my one “bad” day, it was just a matter of me eating those five Hersheys kisses and then another three Oreos on top of that, for a total of 300 extra calories.

So, after all this data, I’m sure you’re wondering: how did my week turn out on the scale? As you may remember, the last four weeks I have lost exactly .2 pounds every week, ending with a weight of 121.6 on Monday, December 7. After my week of double tracking, where I was shocked to learn that I was 105 points in the hole, my weight was…

OK, I’m not going to lie. After how discouraged I was all week, when I saw that I had actually lost a pound, despite Weight Watchers making me feel like I was a glutton, I actually looked at the scale and said out loud, “Ha! Take that, Weight Watchers!” 😉

Now, before you get all up in arms about me being negative about Weight Watchers after being such a proponent of the program for so long, please know that I’m not completely against the Beyond the Scale program. Without a doubt, I felt that the old PointsPlus program needed to be changed. That was one of the reasons why I stopped using it in September. Once I changed my focus to calories and macronutrients, it didn’t take me long to realize that the program wasn’t restrictive enough, especially when he came to foods with sugar, or swapping exercise points.  When I started counting calories, those were two big changes that I made: I began to eat less sugar, because I realized just how much I was eating when I was counting my macronutrients, and I also stopped counting every little movement as exercise to be swapped for food. So yes, the program needed to be changed.

On the other hand, I do feel that they may have gone a little too far in the other direction. Granted, I have only been tracking in their new system for a week, but it really seems unlikely that I was eating too much food last week. Even if I hadn’t lost a pound, I would’ve still pointed out that I was only averaging about 1500 calories a day, and that’s really not that much! Yes, I’m a pretty petite person, so I don’t need to eat that much, but I think, with the exercise that I do, 1500 calories was about right.

I am well aware that the reason why my points were so high on the new program is because I tend towards foods with sugar. The first step is admitting you have a problem. 😉 I’ve gotten better since September, but clearly, there is still room for improvement. To that end, I’m trying to cut back on my sugar even more.  I’ve cut the amount of sugar in my daily coffee by half, and I have also cut the amount of milk in my cappuccino by a third. (My morning coffee isn’t nearly as enjoyable, but whatever… 😛 ) I haven’t been able to stop with my daily Hershey kisses regimen, but I’m at least forcing myself to stop at five. No excuses–no day is so bad that I need more than five!

For this week, I’m going to continue to track under both programs, and I’m going to try to make a conscious effort to curb my sugar and fat intake, and eat more protein if I can. Of course, this is going to be especially challenging when my sister delivers her annual cookie tray. But you know what? I don’t care. I live for that damn cookie tray!! 😉

So that’s my report for week one. But before you think I’m Suzy Sourpuss over here, let’s all stop and take a moment to focus on the one big positive from this week: I am less than a pound from goal!! Honestly, I’m so close, with only .6 pounds to go, it’s practically like I’m already at goal. Duuuude!!! That is such a great feeling. This week, I discovered that my black belt, the smallest one I have, was loose at the second-to-last notch. So I thought, what the heck, let’s see what happens, and I put it on the farthest notch. And I wore it like that all day, and the next day, too! I feel really good, my clothes fit great, and I’m really happy when I look in the mirror. And, regardless of what the scale, the calorie tracker, or the Weight Watchers points calculator says, THAT’S how it’s supposed to be! 😀

Thanks for reading!