Where on earth did she get this "advice"? I get that much from walking my dog let alone water aerobics, weight lifting and bike intervals. I earn about 9 AP per day and I still see room for improvement.

This is one of my biggest complaints for the f2f meetings. I have heard people relate the weirdest stuff their leader told them and believe it as if it was gospel. That leader needs to be retrained. Of course maybe she was relating what she does but see how, coming from the leader, that translates into advice?

As for using WP and AP, I try not to use either of them. I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables so I am rarely hungry enough to use them for overages. However, during the holidays, I used every one of them and then some!:o

I was also told to not exceed using 4 activity points earned in a single day. I googled this to find out if it was just my leader but from what I found on a few different message boards, there are a lot of people who were told the same thing.

I try not to use my activity points but I workout so much and so hard that I end up using about 4 everyday.

Yeah, this was on the old plan - where it was "harder" to earn AP but I'm with you. If I only earn 8 AP I'm like wow, you were lazy today!

But you know, I've been eating some (or all) of my AP and I've been losing this week, so I think maybe I'm okay.

I am thinking I might not be able to eat my AP. I can eat my WP, but maybe not my AP.

Hmm. My leader also said it was great to earn more than four, but to stick to using no more than four.

Thanks for the tip about changing where the extra points come from -- that's a great thing!

See, here's the thing that's going to make me disagree with it.

If you're earning 15 AP - THAT'S A LOT. A lot. In order to give your body fuel in order to recover and function, you need to eat some of them. 4 points is NOTHING after a 2 hour spin class. Even if I want to have a Luna Bar, that's 5 points, so I think these leaders who are saying this are NOT people who exercise a great deal...

If you talked to someone who ran marathons or did triathlons, I think they'd have a different opinion.

But then again, maybe its different for very active people vs. so-so active people.

Who knows...

I think that is the difference right there in your bolded statement!

APs are calculated on intensity. If you are not in the best shape, a simpler workout will actually be at a higher intensity for you. If you did 30 minutes of activity as a less fit person it is likely that your heart rate will elevate to the point where that activity will be high intensity (30 minutes at high intensity = ~8 AP). I don't see the need for that person to eat back all 8 of those AP. Their body would refuel just fine with 4 or fewer points eaten back.

I think it's also come to be a good rule of thumb to prevent people from eating larger numbers of points with poorer food choices. It's WW advice for the masses....playing it safe so that people are still successful and losing weight.

Yeah, absolutely. I just get annoyed when my leader (or other leaders) use the "under no circumstances should you eat more than 4 AP..." That's not applicable to everyone.

I still remember when my leader argued with me that a 45 minute spin class was 8 AP. She found it completely ridiculous that it was more AP than her running a 5K in 50 minutes. My response to her was "did you ever take a spin class?" She hadn't, so of course she wouldn't understand.

But right - I guess we all have to take the advice and be conscious that its for the masses - the rule, not the exception.

ugghhh. i was on the old ww several years ago and i remember i had trouble figuring out my ap then. now i try to go by what i think the intensity is. i dont have a hrm but i'd like to have one. i count most things as moderate, some on high when i do my loaded backpack on the elliptical, low things like the warm ups and cool downs. some other exercises i do are low too. i ended the week with about a day's points in ap that i didnt eat. i chose to eat the wp first because those are points that have been allocated for everybody to have, and no doubt have been subtracted from what your daily allowance would otherwise be. the ap are slightly subjective also. so i'm wary about using too many of them.

my first official week online it said to earn 2-4 per day, and to eventually get to earn 4-6. so that would be up to 42 per week as a goal. but i also thought i saw somewhere it said in maintenance to have something like 24 as a goal or something. i can't find that info again. so what is everybody else being told about what ap to shoot for on maintenance?