Some of you may be wondering what all this points and Weight Watchers garbage is about. I haven't really gotten into how it all works so here is your crash course. When I joined Weight Watchers online I learned what all this "point" talk was about. All food is given a point value determined by calories, fat, and fiber. You are also given a target point value for the day. You must eat food and track how much of what you are eating to add up to your target point value for the day. You are not supposed to eat less than your target point value or it won't work. Believe me, been there, tried that.When you eat less than your target point value you are in a sense starving yourself-your not eating enough-therefor your body goes into starvation mode and won't budge. Obviously you shouldn't be eating more than your target point value either. You also get an EXTRA 35 points a week to use any way you like it. You can use them on a night out, throughout the week, on drinks, on whatever your little heart desires. If you don't use your weekly points it does help you shed weight faster, but it does become harder to not use those points as time continues.
All the food you ever need to look up is in the weight watchers food bank. If you can't find the food you are eating, you can still find out the point value of it by entering the calories, fat, and fiber into the points calculator. Then you add it to your day! So simple. After awhile, you learn how many calories and fat roughly equal how many points. I'm not to bad at guesstimating the points values when I'm out on the go and aren't close to a computer to look it up. I think that's the point. In all this tracking and figuring out points, you learn yourself what is good to eat and drink and what is less desirable.
If I know I'm going somewhere specific I like to plan ahead. I look at their website and get an idea of the menu and calories and fat of the items and then figure out what I like, how many points I can spare, and what I'm going to order. This is very helpful when eating out because most places don't include calories and fat on their menus. Weight watchers is ALL about planning ahead. Planning is very important for me now. When I used to just eat on the fly or grab something from the store for lunch, now I have a highly thought out eating plan. It doesn't take much effort, just a little time.
Weight watchers is all about learning to eat healthy and learning to get healthy. It also encourages exercise. For all the moving you do you get points to. Every activity point you earn is determined by how long you did it for and your current weight. I'm not exactly sure how they figure this out using these two things, but that is what happens. If you use all of your 35 extra weekly points, you then can use your activity points you've earned. I always find, for me, that if I use my extra points AND some of my activity points I don't ultimately lose a lot. BUT if I rack up activity points and I don't use them, I lose more.
Finally, I want to say that for every 10 lbs I lose, I lose another point value. So for example, if my target point value was 23 and i went down to the next weight bracket, I would lose 1 point making my new target point value 22. Then I would stay at the point value of 22 until I lost another ten pounds and then it would go down to 21. Losing ten pounds doesn't happen overnight for most so your body has time to get used to this adjustment just fine. Now, I'm still losing weight so I'm not sure what happens when you are in the maintaining phase, but I will do a little update, when I get there!
So there you have it, the basic idea of weight watchers online! If you are thinking of joining, I highly suggest it. It has really helped me to become an all around healthier person and happier.
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