By heavy exercisers, I'm asking about people who work out a lot - either from their job requirements or that's just their lifestyle. I have a question about how many exercise points you actually give yourself to eat over a week. Here's my situation - my weight loss has been very slow (last 4 weeks - .9, 1.2, 1.0, and at last night's weigh in - .6). I am suppose to be in the 20 - 25 points range. In an effort to see if I could lose a little more a week, this week I made absolutely sure I ate in the lower part of my range (20 - 22), skipped my evening snacking (nothing after 5 p.m.) and drank tons of extra water. I know I wasn't underestimating a thing - I got out my points calculator and figured it out meal by meal even if I thought I knew. Point six has been my lowest loss per week so far. Needless to say, I found that a little discouraging. SO - this week, I want to try the opposite approach and eat my maximum points with some of the points I earn exercising. HOWEVER - I am a heavy exerciser. Daily, I walk my dog at a moderate pace for 30 minutes, ride my bike back and forth to work 20 - 25 minutes each way five days a week, attend either a 60 minute step or low impact aerobics class five days a week and do three hour long weight training sessions a week. On the weekends, I usually take an extra long bike ride (couple of hours), ski on my ski machine, or go for a long power walk (couple of hours at an advanced pace - 145 to 155 BPM). This is my lifestyle and I've been doing it for a long time (with time out in the winter on the bike riding because of the COLD!!!!).
SO - I've been re-reading our information booklets about exercise points and want to add some - the problem I'm having is how many??? Do any of you folks who love to exercise have a standard add per day (4 pts?), do you not add any? do you eat them all? Do you make sure they come from protein, carbs, fat, what?
I have no intention of quiting (I've done that too many times and I'm here to stay, slow weight loss or not), but anything I can do to aide my efforts, I'll do, especially if it entails eating more! I've figured at this rate, I'll be paying weight watchers $15.00 per pound - much more than my fats worth in today's market!!!!!

Hi MillieB, I also love to exercise but I have a desk job so any activity I can fit in is a plus. You sound like a very active person who is not eating enough to fuel your body. Alot of people think that less is better. Not true. You are burning alot of calories a day, sometimes that can work against you if you are not eating enough. Try eating at the top of your range everyday with a few days of eating your activity points. You can also add some calories by eating the free veggies.
I have always eaten at the top of my range. Because I am a regular exerciser I was always feeling hungry and if I needed to I ate my activity points also. It took me a year to loose 58lbs which is approximately a lb. a week.
It was slow but it is better that way in the long run.
Another thing you might want to try is to vary your workout. Instead of and aerobics try kickboxing or take a spinning class. Also the weight training can slow weight loss because you are trading denser muscle for fat, this is good though. Gaining muscle mass increases your metabolizism and I read somewhere that more muscle you have the more calories you need to maintain good muscle tone and definition.
I've done the FIRM workouts from the beginning of my weight loss with some variations thrown in there. The FIRM is aerobic weight training which specializes in muscle confusion to give better results. I've had very good luck with this but I am thinking about incorporating running in my routine to shake things up and try to loose the remaining fat on my stomach and upper thighs.
Any way I hope some of this is helpful. It seems like the whole issue of calories in versus calories burned can be contradictory but hang in there. Eat in the high range for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

Good Luck
Carrie Ann

I also average between 1 1/2 and 2 hours per day of moderate to strenuous exercise. I find I
have better results when I eat toward the top of my range & also use the activity points
as needed. I don't pay particular attention to whether the additional points go to carbs
or protein. A few weeks ago I decided to follow someone's suggestion to make sure that I got a
point or two of fat ... olive oil, real salad dressing ... and it seems to help. It also seems
to help with winter dry skin, dry hair, dry nails.

I usually figure an additional 2-3 points per hour, depending on how strenuous the activity -
2 for walking, 3 for the Nordic track.

I am currently fighting medication-related pounds, so the loss has been slow but
steady.

Good luck

I personally DO NOT count points for exercising. I disagree w/WW on this. I exercise because I should, not to allow myself to eat more food, afterall, that's the reason I'm going to WW-rewarding myself w/food .
Exercise for your health and for yourself!
.....just my two cents worth
debbie

Absolutely. But the body is a complex piece of machinery that runs sub-optimally without adequate nutrition if heavy exercise is being performed. I just finished reading the Lance Armstrong book "It's Not About the Bike" and feel even more impressed by how smart our bodies are and how adequate nutrition is essential. (BTW, this is not a weight loss book, it's a book about his cancer survivorship.)

Millie, I really think that the points level you're eating is too low for your level of physical activity. Unfortunately, I don't know of anything other than experimentation that will enable you to find the right point for you. Here's what I would do (and it probably won't be a very popular idea)...I would go into a maintenance phase for a few months. Take the time to find the point at which you can maintain and then stay there for a few months, all the while keeping up your physical activity level. Then, after the break, I would start up the effort to lose the weight again, but this time I would start the effort by eating only a few points a day less than my maintenance level to get the weight loss ball rolling again to slowly lose the weight.

The only reason that I think this approach could possibly work is because of my own experience. My body seems to be very good at adapting to lower caloric levels, and yours might be too even with your activity level?

Just another perspective. I'm sure it won't be a popular idea, but the standard approach to weight loss seems to fail me. Taking a different approach to the problem and keeping my body guessing seems to work better for me.

Thank you all for your input! What I did (and it's sort of what you suggested, Rupertsmom!) is sit down over the weekend, get out a journal I was keeping before I returned to weight watchers and figured out the points I was eating. It came to somewhere between 35 and 40 per day. SO - I've decided to cut five points off the 35, make that the top of my range for awhile and see how that goes. Actually, if I'm going to experiment with point levels, I think it was easier to eat very low first and then go back to higher than the other way around. Now, those extra 5 to 10 points a day seem like an enormous amount of food instead of cutting 5 to 10 points a day and seem like I'm depriving myself. I also agree Rupertsmom with my body adapting easily to lower calorie levels - I know my metabolism is slow because my heart rate, blood pressure, etc. are in the "athlete's level" according to my doctor - a great benefit of regular, sustained exercise, but it takes A LOT to get my system into the "zone".

Debp - I agree with exercising for yourself - for me, it all has more to do with my stress level and the fact that I just love my aerobics classes (moving to music and the interaction with the other ladies) than it does with weight loss. And I really didn't want to sit down every day, write down what I was doing, agonize over how many points I was earning and try and figure out how many to use. That's why I was looking for some personal experience of other exercise junkies - thanks for your input!

THANKS EVERYONE FOR YOUR ADVICE - if anybody has any more, I'd love to hear it. We'll see how it goes on weigh in this Thursday - just a pound a week, that's all I ask!!!!!!

Good for you on the exercise! My question is: Are you (like me) exercising so much because you love it or just because you want to enhance your weight loss efforts? I exercise a lot because I love it. I run 3-4 miles a few times a week, do Tae Bo Advanced, jump rope, and lift free weights. I also ride and groom two horses. I figure I rack up 5-8 Points a day for Activity. When I read SHAPE magazine, it said that a person with a high activity level should eat no less than 1600-1800 calories. So if you choose to eat 30-32 Points, you'll be at an accurate calorie intake for your activity and you'll probably end up losing faster. Last year my losses were really slowing down when I was eating 25-27 Points (or less). Then one week I ate mostly 32-38 Points and I lost 3.6 in one week! I knew then that I needed to fuel my body for all this exercise. Your body needs it. When you're eating only 20-22 Points, you're only eating 1000-1200 calories (maybe less?) and that's just not enough to fuel an active body. Your probably expend at least 400 calories a day with your activity (at least!) That leaves your body with 600-800 calories for its basic needs. That is just not enough! Your body probably needs 1000-1200 calories just to work on laying around all day.
I hope the extra Points work well for you. When in doubt, use your Points booster for your activity or calculate your Points as 2 Points for every 20 minutes (for moderate intensity). For every Point you earn over two Points a day, add that to the top and bottom of your Point range. If you earn five Points, your Point range becomes 25-30 instead of 20-25. Give it a try and see what works. If it doesn't work, at least you tried. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Weeesa - I exercise for a lot of reasons - none of which really involve weight loss. I read a long time ago that exercise can help you keep weight off once you've lost it, but to lose weight, you need to modify your eating. I think that's pretty much true - especially for me, or I wouldn't be exercising as much as I do and still have a weight problem. Mostly, I exercise because of the way it affects my moods - or I should say, the way my mood's are affected if I don't exercise! I get real depressed and sometimes even a little weepy.

I am going to increase my points as I described in my last post, what I'm struggling with is my tendency to want to eat them in junk instead of healthy food. This was especially hard over the weekend. I got to the end of the day yesterday (Sunday) with only 23 points eaten, said what the heck, and had a homemade sundae of ice milk (chocolate chunk), walnuts and chocolate chips - there went 10 more points, in a very small bowl! I know that behavior like that in the past has led to binging for me, so what I need to do is plan more "pointy" meals with extra servings of protein, carbs, veggies, fruit, etc. I don't think I should feel bad about an occassional "Sunday sundae", my problem will be not making it a habit. I guess I'm getting to know myself pretty good around the dinner table!!!!

Millie, I hear you--I mostly exercise to keep my moods more even and to reduce stress, as well as to keep my muscle and bone mass up, per my doctor. A few months ago I joined a new fitness center, and now I go 3 times a week to lift weights (circuit training, I can't afford a trainer) and do 30-40 minutes on an elliptical trainer, plus a 20 minute warm-up on a bike. I also do yoga twice a week, and try for a long walk or bike ride on the weekend. Oh yes, and I have a walking partner at work, and we do laps around our buildings for 20-30 minutes a few times a week.

Anyhow, when I started weight training, I went into a maintenance mode for a while because I was building muscle so fast at first. I let myself eat a little over my maximum at first, but at some point stopped tracking points--not very smart, but I just decided to let my body do what it wanted for a while. I ended up building muscle under my fat and gaining a few pounds; now, as of last week, I'm back to tracking and staying within my points range (18-25) PLUS whatever bonus points I've earned.

I find it too hard to use the new bonus points finder. I mean, I tend to lift aerobically (I move from machine to machine quickly enough to keep my heart rate over 130 bpm), but I often forget to keep track of how long my workout lasts. So I estimate the amount of time I've worked out and give myself a point for every 20 minutes over the first 20 minutes. You-all who've been here a while will recognize that as the old program. I just like it better than the new one, which seems too punitive. 23 points is just not enough to survive on from day to day, even if you get extra points for 'strenuous' exercise!!

Another tip is to build in healthy snacks during the day. I take a tasteless protein powder, mix it with a few teaspoons sugar and some cocoa, and have a 3-point chocolate shake in the afternoon before I work out. I also make sure I get about a teaspoon of good oil sometime during the day, usually on my evening salad. This takes care of a lot of late-night cravings for junk food. It still takes an effort to leave the ice cream in the freezer, but then again, it always will. The shake just takes away that deep physical craving.

It's taken me a few days to write this because I was SO DEPRESSED about it. I gained .8 pounds at weigh in this week. I know it's not much - but with the loss of only .6 the week before, I've basically not lost anything in three weeks. I have been reading other people's thoughts on the difference between 123 and Winning Points - do you think it could be that? I had a pretty bad weekend food-wise (why do we want to overeat when we show a gain - what's up with that!!!!), so I'm not expecting much this week at weigh in either. However, I only had two days of eating about 40 points a day, and now I'm back to averaging 25. Any ideas as to the next step or "tweek" I could do????? I have read all the threads on dealing with a plateau - I honestly do think I already do all those things already. AND - at 171 pounds at 5'3" don't really think I should be stuck - in other words, this is definitely not a goal weight for me - not any where close to a range even if I am pretty muscular. I guess I am venting some - but any help of someone who's been in this situation would BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!!!!!

MillieB it sounds like you and I have the same body. You are where I was a week ago. Two weeks of gains! Big ones--1.5 and 2.25! I left my meeting last week in tears and cried the whole way home. I realized my 'diet' wasnt doing anything. I wasn't dieting yet I got mad at myself for not just losing....Ya that's sane right!!! So I dug out my WW123 stuff and reread everything! At last nights meeting after just one week I lost 6.75! More important than that was that I got back some excitement about why I was here in the first place!

Reread your stuff! Get re-motivated. Right down some goals...and be firm!!! You and I have weekend problems..(noted in some of my other posts...) You know it's coming so you have to be on EXTRA alert. Give yourself one good week. Beginning to end. You'll find that spark and get over that hump.

Good luck!

Amy T

Hi,

This may be an answer that you've come across before, but have you taken your measurements and seen improvement there instead of on the scale?

Might be worth a try!
Hang in there!

MillieB -

I agree with the others that you probably need to eat the extra points to fuel your body.

But maybe you upped your points too quickly. And the shock caused the gain. 25 --> 40 points is a big jump in one week. Maybe you should try upping your points slowly over time. Eat one week eat 28-30 pts per day, the next 32-34, and so on. It took a long time for your body to adjust and stop losing weight at 20-25 points, so it makes sense that it will take a while to re-adjust the other way.

Good Luck and do not get discouraged.