Understanding Propoints

[IDugUpADiamond]

Hi. I am new to WW, only started a week ago, never been before. I have managed to lose 2.5lbs on the first week but I want to learn more about the 'make up' of propoints. Unfortunately I find the weekly meetings a complete waste of time. The leader is utterly useless, has absolutely nothing of any use to say and spends the time going through each page of the magazine as if we were little kids that can't read and trying to sell food, calculators, books, pedometers, etc. I can see me going just to get weighed and not staying for the meeting because it is an absolute waste of my time and it makes me quite irate as you can probably tell. I really could have done with an inspirational leader, or at least someone who seems to know a bit about the system but anyway.

I am on 26 points a day. I'd like to lose just below 2st. I can't get my head around the fact that fruit doesn't have any points. Why on earth is that? Bananas and grapes/ Really??? Also, if my 26 points consist of chocolate, will I still lose weight as long as I don't go over the 26 points. I do have some common sense of my own so I know that eating 26 points worth of chocolate is silly, but we just don't seem to get any guidance beyond buying WW products which I am not going to do. I am used to cooking my food from scratch and this seems to be really difficult to manage with propoints. Any words of wisdom would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[Armadale]

Hi, I did it earlier in the year for 4 months and I am going back on it on Saturday if you want a buddy . It was really working well for me until I fell off the wagon.

My understanding of the points is that the 'fruit' is really calculated in the days allowance e.g. they make assumptions about how much fruit you are likely to eat in a day and add it in.

If you eat all chocolate with your 26 points, you will lose weight, as you will be eating about 1200 cals a day (plus whatever of your weekly allowance you use).
However, (a) you won't be very healthy and (b) you will find it hard to stick at because chocolate is a lot of points for what you get - things that are high in fat are more points for the calories than things that are low in fat iyswim, (so a chicken breast containing the same amount of calories as a twix bar might be half the points of a twix).

I know what you mean about the meetings, the banality of it was astonishing....grown women sitting round discussing whether to have one slice of bread less for lunch so they can have a packet of quavers FOR TWENTY MINUTES got a bit wearing. I went to a daytime one which I think probably didn't help, no-one seemed to have quite enough to do iyswim...

What I did find was google can throw up some good WW stuff...for example I learnt that high protein food will give you the most food for the points as they skew it to give meat, fish etc low points values as they figure it will keep you fuller and take time to digest. I also found out if you need to 'guess' the propoint value of anything when you are out, just look at the calories, each 40 calories will give you roughly 1 point. So if your sandwich is 320 cals, you can guess it will be 8pp....occasionally this rough cal will be out slightly if you put all the numbers into e source, but this is rare and it is useful little thing when you are out. (for some reason they do not tell you this at meetings under any circumstances and when I tried to discuss it in the group got shushed up very quickly!)

WRT cooking for yourself, I agree it is a bit of a pain. I tend to do each recipe on esource to work out the points and then write them in the cook book etc so if I want to cook it again I can remember how many points per portion. I tended to get a lot of recipes off BBC GOOD FOOD website as they are tasty and have the nutritional info on there....I didn't get on with a lot of the ww own ones from their books, I didn't think many of them were worth the effort..

Anyway thats my twopenniworth, hope it helps & good luck with the weight loss.

[IDugUpADiamond]

Yes it does help Armadale, many thanks. I'm not necessarily busy during the day myself but that doesn't mean I like to waste my time being patronised on the receiving end of a clumsy sales pitch by someone who has failed to really understand the system and her role in it. Perhaps I should look for an evening group .

I did suspect that the 26 points amounted to essentially 1200 calories. I think I'm going to run WW tracker and my fitness pal consecutively and see what happens. I was also thinking about integrating the 5:2 diet with WW. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Thanks again

[Armadale]

I've thought about MFP too, what put me off was people saying that a lot of the estimated food values on it are totally wrong, which kind of put me off, have you any experience of using it?

WRT to 5:2 Diet- I've never tried it- I wonder if you are planning to do any activity as well? I think if you were exercising as well you would be very hungry as I think fasting days you would be on about 15 points a day (600/40?) which would not be a lot considering you aren't replacing them with more food on non-fasting days the way you would be if not dieting iyswim

I found if I ate my points and about half the 49 a week & did 5x exercise sessions a week, I lost 3lbs a week, every week, which I was happy with (my WW leader was not, she wanted me to eat the activity points I was generating which would have taken my loss down to 2 a week, but to be honest I felt I had enough food, so why should I not lose 3 rather than 2? I wasn't exactly popular for this idea, though!)

So I'd be tempted to either not bother with 5:2 if you are excercising, or maybe incorperate if you can't do any activity?

Hopefully someone might come along whose tried 5:2 on WW and can fill us in!

[IDugUpADiamond]

Apart from walking lots and yoga, I don't really do any exercise.