After a couple months of success I've been stuck at the same weight for a while. I'm allowed 29 points a day and usually end the day around 28. I rarely touch my weeklies (I think the most I've ever used is 5) and don't exercise enough to bother counting APs. (brisk walk 3 times a week or so).
A few chicks suggested I might not be eating enough and asked if I had any idea how many calories I'm consuming. Honestly, I never bothered with calories because I was really successful with points in the past. The question got me thinking, so yesterday I translated my food journal from points to calories for the past 7 days. I ranged from a low of 857 calories (not feeling well) to a high of 1453 with an average of 1258/day. My points ranged from 22 to 32 with an average of 28.4. According to this, for me a point is "worth" about 44 calories.
My calorie target should be 1200-1550/day. According to all of this, with the exception my my really low day I'm right on target for calories, carbs, fat, protein, sodium, etc.
Today, however with the menu planned out for the day I'll end at 30 points and 1224 total calories. It seems way out of whack that I can be at the bare minimum of calories yet dipping into my weekly points.
Anyway, my questions to the WW crew is do you ever count calories and compare the two? Does the comparison seem to jive for you? I have to admit I'm gettting really frustrated eating within targets, drinking all my water, exercising more than before and still not losing any weight in about a month. Maybe I need to take another run at his from a different angle...
Yes, I've done both. The kinda sorta almost average calories per point is 40ish, 45ish but it depends on the macro nutrients, carbs, protein, fiber and fat. WW has a formula for this. If you really want to know you could duplicate your food intake from WW to something like MyFitnessPal or Spark People.
I wouldn't stress too much if I were you. The weeklies are there so if you have a high day, you don't freak out about it but you're still within your average daily calorie goal. Play with your numbers and see what will work best for you, eat all your weeklies or half, it's not the same for everyone. See if it'll kick your weight out of its rut. Good luck!
I started doing both when I felt like I wasn't eating enough using my old WW plan (Winning Points). Almost immediately I transitioned completely to calorie counting, because I realized that my instincts were correct. Like you, even on my higher point days, I was barely scraping the bottom of a healthy calorie range.
I've been tracking calories now for several months via LoseIt and I love it! I entered all my foods as custom foods while I was getting started, and gave myself the ability to enter them in grams so I can be as accurate as possible. My favorite part is being able to effectively track my macronutrients (I pay close attention to my protein and sugar intake now), where with WW points I didn't have that information at my fingertips.
My losses stalled out for a little bit as my body adjusted to the new range, but it's been so good for me overall. Combined with heavy weight training 2-3 times per week, I now average around 2,000 calories per day and am losing slowly but steadily.
I do both since I us myfitnesspal to track In the note section of the food tracker I put down how many points each meal was and they seem to be pretty close together. I like to be able to look at the nutrients I chose to track beyond ww especially the sodium which is a factor for me
I do count both calories and WW points. How many calories, say, 30 points equates to will have some variability depending on what you eat.
Fruit makes a big difference. I don't eat a lot of fruit (more of a veggie person) so I eat less calories for my 30 points than would someone who ate 30 points plus ate a lot of zero point fruit.
Also, I tend to be a lower carb eater which means I eat more fat. Fat is more heavily punished in the WW formula so, for example, a meal that is, say, 70% fat would be a few more points than the same calorie meal that is 30% fat.
I don't worry about any particular day and how it turns out but I do have a somewhat lose goal for how many calories per day that I want to average over the course of the week.
Counting one thing is enough for me, I also think that if you try to figure it out all by comparing two programs you will go bonkers. I stick to one, and I add exercise, different foods, this and that until the scales finally move. As long as I know I am eating healthy foods and moving, I know the scales have to give in eventually. I also don't have a date that this will end, it will never end for me, so I just plug along.
Well, I haven't gone bonkers and don't find it particularly difficult to count both points and calories. I get different things from doing each one and find it fine to do both.
Thanks for all your responses. I tend to eat a lot of veggies and few fruits so I wasn't expecting any surprises comparing the two. I'm tracking calories in spark people and finding it really interesting to see all the data not available when I only counted points. I'll continue to track both for a while and see if I can learn what the secret is to my body letting go of this weight.
Have you counted points AND calories?
