Oh, Those Pesky Fit Points!

      2 Comments on Oh, Those Pesky Fit Points!

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a comparison of calorie counting versus Weight Watchers Smart Points tracking. In that post, I offered up a fairly in-depth chart that illustrated my deviation from “goal” in regards to both methods. For easy reference, here it is again:

CalVsSP6Weeks

There were some questions regarding how I was counting, or rather not counting, my exercise under the Weight Watchers program. In the prior post, I mentioned that although I was adding a couple hundred calories per day to my goal under calorie tracking to account for my exercise, I was not, on the other hand, subtracting my “Fit Points” from the Smart Points I tallied each day under the Weight Watchers program. Thus, it may seem as though I wasn’t comparing “apples to apples,” since in one program I accounted for some level of activity, while in the other I one did not.

At the time that I created that chart, I was basing my assumptions on the original information I read when the Beyond the Scale program came out last December. I remember very distinctly reading that it was strongly recommended that we not “swap” our Activity/Fit Points for food. To be honest, I did understand where they were coming from, to a degree. I will be the first to admit that I fell into the trap of over counting my “exercise” under the old program. Yes, I’m a runner, so I’m pretty active in that regard, but I was counting pretty much every movement I made as “activity” and therefore earning points for it. Points that I would then eat. Because I was counting things like gardening, housework, steps earned from grocery shopping, it wasn’t uncommon for me to earn 60 to 70 activity points in a week, and swap every one of them. And, what a surprise, I wasn’t losing weight!

When I started calorie counting with My Fitness Pal, I was quite shocked to discover that you can’t log things like housework and gardening as exercise to earn calories! In fact, I didn’t even earn calories for strength training, which they let me enter, but it didn’t really do me any good. So, I was stuck with just burning calories for my running. And, what do you know, when I wasn’t eating the extra food, I lost weight!

So, yes, I understood where Weight Watchers was coming from back in December. I think they were trying to overcome the habits of people like me, who were logging every minuscule muscle movement as activity, and then eating as if they actually burned the calories when in reality, they probably didn’t. Because my goal in comparing the two methods was to determine which one suited me best, I decided not to count my Fit Points when tracking via Weight Watchers, as an attempt to stay as close as possible to the true spirit of the program.

However, my own personal opinion is that I should be allowed to eat SOME of the calories I burn, because I feel as though they are “true” calories. I’m not talking about activity earned incidentally, such as steps or housework or gardening. I’m talking about actually making a solid effort to be active, which for me means running. That’s why I included the extra calories burned (as calculated with a heart rate monitor) on my charts when comparing to “goal.”

So, with those two assumptions, the chart showed that I was going way over my Smart Points goal every day when not counting Fit Points. But let’s call a spade a spade, here: since I wasn’t actually following the Weight Watchers program, and didn’t pay any attention to my Smart Points goal on any given day as I was making my food choices, the reality is, I was swapping those Fit Points, whether I admitted it or not. :p

Last week, I saw a great blog post over at Less of a Better Me. I really enjoy Kitty’s in-depth analyses, and that particular one was very helpful in making me realize that the Weight Watchers program had actually shifted their thinking somewhat (at least in the US). I’m glad she took the time to do the research, because when I originally went to confirm my belief in the Weight Watchers “no swap” philosophy last week, I was having a hard time reconciling what I had THOUGHT I’d read back in December with what I was reading now…I honestly thought I was crazy, lol! After reading Kitty’s write-up, though, I saw that Weight Watchers has shifted their stance from “We strongly discourage swapping” to “Wellllll…do what’s right for you.” Which, clearly, I already was. 😉

So, after reevaluating my eating habits and the changed Weight Watchers philosophy, I decided to just go ahead and account for the Fit Points I earned through running (I didn’t track any other exercise, though). Interestingly, even with the additional Fit Points added in, I still went over my Smart Points every single day but one!

image

The one day I didn’t go over was when I had (according to My Fitness Pal) a 400-calorie deficit—and that’s taking into account the 371 calories I burned on a 4-mile run that morning. (IE, my total calories for the day were 1271, but my goal was 1671 when the running calories were included.) Other than that day when I purposefully was eating on the low end to save up for my anniversary the next day, I was over my Smart Points every day for 8 weeks. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but over nonetheless.

To be honest, I’m not sure what that says. Since December 7, I’ve lost about 2 pounds. Not exactly the most motivating statistic! :p But then again, December and January saw some of my most challenging eating periods: Christmas and a hockey tournament. Those are two events where food temptation is the highest for me, so maybe the fact that I lost 2 pounds, despite those conditions, and despite the fact that I was OVER my allotted Smart points every day, tells me that maybe I do burn more calories than the average Jane? I don’t know. But then again, if I had eaten less food, ie, not swapped Fit Points/calories for food, how much more weight would I have lost?

Anyway, I just mostly wanted to clear up the confusion regarding my views on Fit Points and swapping, and prove that I CAN be flexible and open to new ideas, lol! I don’t have any answers to the great problems of the (weight loss) world, but I keep plugging along and hoping it all works out in the end! 😉

Thanks for reading!

2 thoughts on “Oh, Those Pesky Fit Points!

  1. Kitty

    Hi, that is really interesting. I am not surprised that you get much closer if you count your FitPoints.

    And, you could also count FitPoints for stuff like weight training. I work with a trainer for 30 minute sessions twice a week doing weights and I get 3 or 4 for each session. And, you can count steps for just your daily steps apart from running. So, if you counted those you might not be over at all.

    By the way, after the post of mine you mentioned, WW sent out an email to people suggesting that we should swap FitPoints. They are basically not going to let us swap our first 3000 steps each day, but after that we can swap. I really like that solution and it will probably work well for most people.

    Reply
    1. steph Post author

      …the heck!?! I didn’t get an email!!

      Geez oh Pete’s, just when I thought I had it all figured out, they going change it again!! 😛 Thanks for the heads up!

      Reply

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