Anyone follow Weight Watchers and do Cathe?

C

Crumpgirl

Member
I was wondering if anyone is following WW while doing Cathe workouts. I purchased the Shock Cardio series at Christmas and have the Gym Styles and several other of her videos. Just wondering if anyone thinks the point system will provide enough calories to get through a 6-day-a-week rotation. I really need to lose weight but don't want to lose my muscle. I've been on it for 5 weeks now and have lost 10 lbs so I'm really excited about that. I just know that even wearing a heart rate monitor, you burn alot more calories strength training that what a monitor shows due to the afterburn affect. I suppose if I start getting overtraining symptoms I can back off some or either eat more.
Any thoughts?
TIA Karen
 
WW and STS

I am not on a strict WW program right now. I have done it in the past with some of Cathe's other DVDs and got toned and lost weight! Just remember, as I am sure you know, muscles weighs more than fat. So it would probably be a good idea to measure yourself before you get started. I have the points chart at home to determine the points for everthing and I have been trying to do that some, just to keep myself in check. I think it would be fine to do WW w/STS. I know the WW program gives you more points depending on how long you workout everyday. You may want to check that out in the start up booklet or if you go to meetings as your leader about that. I know you will have great results with it....best of luck to you!
mhunt
 
The base WW plan doesn't provide enough calories for this activity level, but you can experiment and find out how many points you need. If you are always hungry, first try drinking more water, eating more vegetables & making sure you are getting protein. If that doesn't help, you should add points. My answers to the WW quiz indicate that I should have 21 points per day (plus the 35 additional points per week). However, that is nowhere near enough for me, and I lose weight quite nicely on 30 points per day (plus those 35 additional per week). I can even go up to 35 points per day and still lose weight, although it is much slower (only up to 1/2 lb per week). It all depends on your activity level and how much muscle you have, as well as genetic factors.

When you work out as hard as we do, you need to make sure you're fueling your body, and you need a lot more food than an inactive person.
 
I'm doing WW and Cathe. I did find that I had to increase my protein because my energy levels were low. I do the Gym Styles DVDs and alternate step DVDs and Butts & Guts.
 
I agree with Stebby and couldn't have said it better myself! On WW, I was eating about 1400 calories a day which is WAY too low to support my activity levels. I lost a lot of weight at first but then I plateaued for a few weeks and then I started gaining weight! The frustrating part was that the leaders don't seem to know much about incorporating heavy training with the program; they told me to stop weight training, decrease my activity levels, and not to add more than 4 extra points no matter how hard or how often I worked out. This was actually the consensus among 3 different leaders and I knew those things were not right for me, so I stopped doing the program. Someone on the Cathe forums suggested SparkPeople.com, which I absolutely love! You can log in what you eat & your activities, like WW, but it's based off of calories rather than points. I find this program works much better for me than WW did.
 
Ha, ha, Melissa ... I also had a WW leader tell me to stop doing weight training, and not to count more than 4 activity points per day! They must be trained to suggest that as a solution for people who work out. Another leader told me she couldn't believe how much I weighed because I sure didn't look it. At that point I stopped going to WW meetings because the leaders weren't doing anything for me, and I felt I was much more knowledgeable about exercise than they were. Right now I am doing WW online and modifying the limits to meet my own needs. I can set my points target at whatever I want, and it lets me use all the activity points I earn.

Stebby
 
Thanks so much for the replies! I kind of feel like Stebby is on to what I'm thinking. I did P90x two years ago and ate approx 1500 to 1800 cal. a day and lost 24 lbs in 90 days so I know that when you workout with a heavy intensity, you have to eat more in order not to plateau or get wore down from overtraining. Although I love WW and have had great success thus far, I still want to keep my muscle mass. I don't just want to be a smaller version of my current self. I want to be cut and ripped like Cathe. I think the WW program is designed to be for more sedendary people and that the intense exercise needs more protein (pts) than the average person on the program would need. I think I may be ok with my current DP range and with my AP's but as I lose, I may need to keep where I am until I plateau rather than lose points.
Thanks everyone that replied!
Karen
 
STOP wt training???!!! how silly. well, my dil has lost close to 20#'s on WW, so i decided to try it. i don't go, she just helps me. and, i am 55 and only 5' tall, so i only get 19 points a day, and there are some days where i am starving. but, i have lost 5#'s. i was wondering exactly what ya'll have been talking about. since we do such intense workouts, should i eat a little more.
i will not quit wt. training. that is not smart.

so, any older women on here doing WW and cathe?
 
I've been on WW a couple of times. (repeat offender)

The 1st time I started about 10 years ago I lost about 30+ lbs. The plan was 'different' then. There was no core plan, momentum, flex points for example. (BTW the plan has evolved a lot over the years. Some members in our group would talk about the old days when you had to eat X amount of liver or spinach each week, blech.)

We had a points range. Mine was 18-25 points per day. I could eat up to 25pt per day. If I didn't eat all my points I could "Bank" them but you had to use them that week, you could not carrythem over. Banking is just like Flex points in reverse. The Flex points are kind of like credit in advance. So I liked the banking concept better.

The exercise points worked like this. On the old plan you had to exercise for at least 20 minutes per day. You did not earn any extra points for this. But for any exercise beyond that initial 20 minutes you would earn 1 point for each 20 minutes of exercise. So for a Cathe work out of 60 minutes a person would only earn an extra 2 points on that old plan. The old plan really did not take in consideration intensity of the activity. Back then I didnt do anything other than walking. So this worked pretty well for me then. Not so much with the intensity of Cathe.

Not sure how the points are calculated now. I had bought a gadget from WW a few years back that figured points and exercise points. It looked liked a checkbook/calculator. You programmed the minutes and the intensity (hi, moderate, low) into it and I think an intense Cathe workout for example of 1 hour would be like 5 points. A yoga workout or light stretching you might earn only 1 point for 30 minutes.

I think the person who said WW was created for Sedentary people is correct. After all, I for one can attest to the fact that I got overweight in the first place by overeating and being too sedentary. Some people want to lose weight but don't want to exercise at all. my sister is one of those people. She said to me once "I hate, hate hate exercise". I think the idea is if they can get those people to move for that mandatory 20 minutes per day that they might decide they actually like the way exercise feels and stick with it and maybe end up doing an hour one day.

Our leader told us to not eat our activity points if we could help it just because it would be faster.

One thing that helped was zigzagging my points for example one day i would eat 18 points the next day maybe 26points, the 3rd day maybe 22, the 4th day 30 points etc. It may have kept the body guessing and by giving it 1 or 2 days of higher points during the week may have kept from hitting a plateau.
 
I'm currently doing WW online & do Cathe DVDs also. I tried the meetings a couple of years ago & was frustrated that the leader said that if I worked out, I couldn't use activity points. I've found the information and guidance on the WW website is far more accurate. Once you become an online subscriber, there is a wealth of information as to how to earn and use activity points correctly. The ball park figure is that 1 food point equals 50 calories & that 1 activity point equals 100 calories. The online point calculator for activity is pretty accurate. I doubted it for awhile, but then invested in a heart rate monitor that also showed calories burned. I wore it while doing Cathe DVDs and compared it to the activity point calculator online & it was right on. For example, doing 4DS HIS+ chest & back, my HRM said I burned right over 600 calories; when I went online to calculate my activity points (done by selecting the activity done & the amt of time spent doing it), it calculated 6 activity points, which is equal to 600 calories. It takes in account your current recorded weight on the WW website. It does adjust as your weight changes, e.g. when I weighed a few pounds lighter, the 30 minutes of aerobics earned less activity points, whereas now that those pounds have returned for an unexpected visit (after the holiday season munch madness), I earn more activity points for the same amt of exercise. If you use the points tracker online (also available as a iPhone or iTouch app if you are a subscriber) it really does well at figuring out how many points you have used/earned. All you really have to do is record your food points and your activity points & then just don't exceed your the amt of points available for you to use.

I agree with Stebby that just eating your daily food point limit is not enough calories if you are exercising. But you do have your extra 35 weekly points to use & then your activity points that you earn. I've restarted doing WW online at the beginning of the month, while doing a STS +shock cardio rotation. I've lost weight each week so far, with eating around 30-35 points/day. There's even been a day or two that I went above that. I successfully lost 20lbs on WW online back in 2007 while exercising regularly. I gained most of it back, but I wasn't eating anywhere close to healthy & was consuming way more than 30-35 points/day & had stretches of not exercising. However, when I follow WW faithfully and exercise, I have had good results. :)

Tara
 
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