RE: So Carol, you did WW online?
Wow, thanks!!
What you do online is join, and then you have access to everything on the site. There are over 60,000 foods in the database so you can look up the points of what you eat, including name brand foods. Also, you can look up the points of anything as long as you know the calories, fat grams, and fiber grams of the portion size. You have access to recipes, and you can plug in the ingredients and portion sizes of any recipe of your own, and it will calculate the point value of each serving. You can swap and post recipes too. You have access to hundreds of articles, a BMI calculator, a safe weight range calculator, and tons of self-assessment quizes to help you find your exercise type, help you with identifying triggers that make you overeat, etc. There are more resourcs on that site than I've had time to explore! There is also an extensive eating out guide, with foods from dozens of restaurants listed, along with their point values. They add new ones all the time. There are success stories, and stories from Sarah Ferguson, who is one of their spokespeople now. You can buy her books from the site, as well as some WW cookbooks. You also have access to the message boards, although you don't need to join WW to post on them, so you have to be selective about what you read and believe on there. They get a lot of trolls. They are NOT like this forum at all, and that's all I feel comfortable saying about that particular topic ... LOL!
You log in your weight once a week, on the day you choose, and the computer keeps track of it. There's a progress chart so you can see that line going down - LOL - and you set your own goal weight. You do get information about maintenance when you reach the goal you've set (and you can change that goal anytime you want, as well as your weigh-in day if you want), but you don't reach Lifetime as you do in meetings, because there is no way for them to verify the weight online. It's kind of like an honor system.
Paying for WW online gives you your online journal, or Points Tracker as they now call it. You plug in your food each day, and your exercise, and it calculates your points, whether or not you've gone over your target (which is set according to the points range for your weight), how many activity points you've used (they call them AP's, and you can earn as many as you want in a day, but they can only be used on that day), and any points you use over that. Right now, they have the Flex Points system, which gives you 35 extra points to use per week, anyway you want, or not at all, and still be considered within your point range. Some people like it, some don't. I kept using the journal the same way when they changed to the new system in August, so I don't see any difference.
For instance, for my weight I'm supposed to eat 18 to 23 points a day. A point comes out to roughly 50 calories, but lots of veggies and things are zero points, so you're eating more than 900 to 1100 calories a day. My target points for this range is set by WW at 20. If I eat over 20 points a day (which I almost always do), any AP's I earn that day are used first. After that, if I still eat points over that number (I typically earn between 5 and 7 AP's a day, depending on which Cathe workout(s) I do!), my Flex Points start to be used. I typically average 23 to 24 points a day still. I found that when I tried to eat in that 18 to 23 a day range, I wasn't losing weight. Remember ... you need to fuel your body when you workout vigorously, or it think it's "starving" and your metabolism will shut down. I wasn't losing weight at the lower end of points, so I went back to what was working for me. It's not as complicated as it sounds, and the computer does the math for me, but I track my points in an Excel spreadsheet, so if I run into a couple of weeks where I don't lose weight (which has happened two times now), I can identify patterns and see what I need to adjust.
There is a formula for AP's that I use, because it takes into account intensity. I don't use the pre-set AP's for specific exercises built into the Points Tracker, because it sets the intensity the same for any exercise, and when I do Cathe's workouts, I am working at HIGH intensity!! There is also a formula for points, so even if I'm out somewhere and I can't get online to check the points for something, as long as I have a rough estimate of the calories, fat and fiber in a food, I can estimate the points. I've found that I'm usually right on target with it. It becomes easy and second nature after a while, and as long as you're honest about journaling EVERYTHING, the program will work!
I hope this answers your questions! If anyone has any more questions, please just ask and I'll be happy to try and answer them!!
Carol
