Weight Watchers Week 1

I said last week that I was going to make some changes, and the first among those was to switch from calorie counting back to Weight Watchers.

Weight Watchers was how I lost all my weight originally, spanning over the course of a dozen years. I lost the first 50 pounds before I got pregnant, and then I lost the last 35 almost 5 years ago. I settled into about an 80-pound loss, but a little over a year ago, I gained about 7 pounds, and after struggling to shed it, I decided to try something different.  That’s when I switch to calorie counting.  I made that work successfully for about a year, but then I gained that 7 pounds back, and I’ve been struggling with it since last summer.  

I finally decided it was time to shake things up, I again, so back to Weight Watchers I went. The difference this time is that Weight Watchers was not using the “Beyond the Scale” program the last time I used it. I’m not completely unfamiliar with it; when they switched back in December 2015, I toyed with double-tracking for a little while. I actually did it for about 7 weeks, tracking both calories and Smart Points. 😛 Let me tell you, double tracking is not a lot of fun!  Besides all the extra work,WW had changed the eTools (their online tracking program), and I found it very frustrating.  Then, on top of that, I just didn’t like the way the program worked. It was heavily weighted against all the things I love: fat, sugar, and carbs. 😉

This past week, I actually double tracked using both Weight Watchers and My Fitness Pal. I think I deserve a medal just for that. 😉 Here are my observations after a week (back) on Weight Watchers:

• The site definitely works better than it did the last time I used it. I won’t say it’s super-simple to navigate, but I was able to figure it out fairly quickly. I also like the app version, especially its search feature. After so many years on Weight watchers, I have well over 100 recipes already entered, and it was nice to be able to find them again, and easily edit them if needed.
• Tracking my activity points was so much easier this time around. That used to be one of the things that frustrated me even before Beyond the Scale: the “loosey goosey” way of manually entering in activity points. (Sorry, I guess they call them Fit Points now.  Old habits die hard.)  I run five days a week, but it was hard for me to use their “effort level” gauge to calculate my Fit Points. What may feel like moderate to me might be easy to someone else, but who’s to know for sure?  I was thrilled to discover that eTools automatically pulls in the data from my runs using the MapMyRun app. Now, I don’t actually use the MapMyRun app, but I do have it synced to my Garmin, so every time I have a run, it automatically pushes to MMR. Then, I can click the link to sync with MMR in the eTools account, and voilà! Fit Points, no guesswork! 
• Unfortunately, they still don’t like my choices in food. I am heavy into the carbs in the sugar, but I discovered pretty quickly that it was in my best interest to cut it back. I really wanted to try to stay within my Smart Point goals, which is 30 points per day, plus activity points, so after the first day, I made some changes.  Instead of having 1.5 cups of milk in my cappuccino, I took it down to 1.25, decreasing it from 5 points to 4 points.  (Don’t even get me started on how many point fat free milk is worth!) I also decreased my sugar from 1.5 teaspoons to .5 teaspoons. (But that changed: see the next bullet.)  I swapped out those points for something that I figured it was better for me: low-fat cottage cheese and fat free Greek yogurt. Usually, I would only have one or the other each day, but because I was trying to eat healthier, I had both. It did seem to help fill me up. Probably better than the Hershey’s kisses that I had, which I refuse to give up. (See second bullet below.)
• One thing I’d forgotten about with Weight Watchers, after over a year of counting calories, is that there is some fudge-room with the program. When I reduced the sugar in my coffee, I was really sad. It was bad enough that I had less of it to drink, since I’d also reduced the amount of milk, but half a teaspoon of sugar just really didn’t cut it. For the heck of it, I plugged in what a whole teaspoon would be.  To my surprise and delight, it was the same! Of course, if you’re going to offer me twice as much sugar for the same points, I’m going to take twice as much sugar! I did the same thing with my Cornflakes, too. I was originally going to cut it back from three quarters to a half a cup, but when I realized it was the same, I said screw that. 😛
• It really surprised me how heavily Weight Watchers is prejudiced against sugar. The biggest case in point is the five Hershey’s kisses that I have every day after lunch. Those damn things are worth six points! That’s 20% of my daily intake! Meanwhile, they’re only worth 100 cal, which, with my 1300 calorie goal, was worth only about 12% my daily intake. What the hell!? Yeah, I know, they’re bad for you, but sometimes you just have to have a vice. I could smoke or drink to excess, right?! Yeah, I know, not the same.
• I was surprised to find that I like the Connect feature of the app.  It’s basically a mini-social media feed, but they seem to do a really good job of policing it so that it stays positive.  One of the things I disliked about the old WW forums was how very negative and just downright mean some of those folks got. :/  Most of what I’ve seen on Connect when I’ve scrolled through are success stories (with photos) or people who are new and posting their “before” picture and looking for some encouragement. There is lots and lots of positive reinforcement offered, and I have to admit that it’s really motivating and inspiring–yes, even for someone like me, who has been at Lifetime for nearly 5 years. Even us “old timers” like to be inspired and reminded why we stay the course. 🙂  And believe me, it’s hard not to have a smile on your face as you read those posts!

So you’re probably wondering what my results were, right? Well, I’ll start off by saying that I did manage to stay within my points allotment each day. I did swap all the Fit Points it gave me for my runs, and I even entered my steps, too, because 1) they take away two of your Fit Points until you get in 3000 steps, which is supposed to be your standard daily activity just living life, and 2) It turns out I get a lot of steps in even besides my runs! All that running back and forth taking pictures at hockey games makes a difference. 🙂

The next observation I have is this:  in keeping to 30 points per day plus Fit Points (and not using any of my weekly points, of which I get 28), I discovered I ate a lot less calories than I was used to eating. Here’s a chart of how far below my calorie goal I was last week (note that I do add in calories burned as calculated by my Garmin via my heart rate monitor):

Anywhere from 10-25% below my goal!  Hmm…that seems telling, doesn’t it? (I ate exactly 1300 calories on Sunday, which is why it looks like there’s nothing there…it’s perfectly even!)

And finally, the results:

I guess it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that in eating a lot less food, I lost weight! 😉  Even I was surprised I lost three whole pounds, though.  I guess for this week at least, the change worked!

I’m going to give Weight Watchers another chance this week and see how it goes.  I do have one special meal out, but other than that, I’m hopeful I can stay the course.  I’m getting used to my “new” coffee, and I even bought multi-grain English muffins. At first I thought they tasted like cardboard, but I’m getting used to them now, too. 😛

Thanks so much for reading!