Weight Watchers is a big business that has a lot of gimmicks. It worked for the first few months because obviously I was overeating. They use a point system that makes them different but they don't have that down pat either. The last three months I have been stagnating going up a pound and down a pound. Initially I cut back on food and it worked. All the while people can say can you really eat all the fruit you want. They finagled the points so it didn't count but it just isn't working anymore for me.
Yesterday on the way back from Florida, I watched what I ate. At the end of the day I counted the calories in my head. Last night at dinner I was just slightly hungry and wanted to work off the weight gain I acquired while feasting in Florida. I had my tried and true peanut butter and jam on two rice cakes and a cup of coffee. I had one square of my favourite dark chocolate. I wasn't up for more and decided not to eat anything after that except a handful of sha-sha cookies. Now had I been counting points that peanut butter would have eaten up my allotment of points. That would have been 6 points alone. The jam would have been nothing. The rice cakes would have been considered almost the same as bread at 1 point a piece. The iced latte would have been 2. They give 3 points to a square of dark chocolate that really is only about 50 calories. They make no differential whether it is 70% dark chocolate or a mass of sugary cheap chocolate. It would have added up to a whole meal of food and blown the budget of points. According to the point system, it added up to 13 points which is way too much for a single meal. Now if I added up calories for all that, I would have been under 280 calories which is well within reason. The current thinking is not to exceed 400 caloies on a meal and that makes sense to me.
I got on the scale this morning and I was down 2 1/2 pounds since yesterday. So I will continue to attend Weight Watchers to weigh in... for now... and I will still keep on tracking but on calories. It was disconcerting to know that I exceeded my budget of points especially when it was lowered to 26. Sometimes I hadn't eaten that much and exceeded my points allowance. The word of advice from Weight Watchers is not to stop tracking and I won't... just not with points.
Weight Watchers has it's good points. It makes you accountable because you have to weigh in and it makes you think about getting enough fruit, veggies and liquids but with the manipulations of converting the list of nutrients into points, it misses the mark in many cases. I still think size matters and the old standby of measuring the amount of meat by the palm of your hand and other things like using your thumb to measure amounts as a visual still remains valid. I am not sure you can eat all the bananas you want and giving 1 point to a teaspoon of sugar that is only 16 calories the same as you would for an ounce of chicken and 1 more than a banana. I am losing the sense of this.
By now I should know good health guidelines. Weight Watchers was a great learning experience but it is time to shift gears. Some of the Weight Watchers rules apply. Protein is the building block of muscle and in order to rev your engine and get your metabolism working better. Filling up on plants helps bump up the burn too. The fibre in produce helps stabilize blood sugar levels. These are a given. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that bread and flour products should be kept to a minimum. Whole grains are better. These are all the easy things and sometimes keeping it simple is the best way.
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