[silvertint]

Hi Everyone, I have been on Weight Watchers for a little over 1 month now. This is my first post, but I’ve been lurking for a while

A little about my self; I am a 37yo male 6'1" tall. When I started WW I was 341lbs and now I am 333lbs. I have NEVER EVER attempted to lose weight my entire life and it came to point for health reasons, and having a young family that I HAD to make a change.

I love the WW program, especially the ease of use of iPhone app and etools (yes, I am a geek)

Here's my problem;

I was attributed 68 points per day, which I find hard to use up all of them in healthy sensible way. On average I am left with 8-10 pts per day and of course I do not touch my weekly points, nor activity points. I am not particularly hungry and I tend to eat often to keep my metabolism going. I know the program says I should be losing .5-2 lbs per week which I have been doing but I fel like I should be losing more especially since I am not using up all my points.

• Should I be using up all my points ??
• Should I be losing more weight ??
• What different choices should I make to maybe use up more points but still be healthy ??
• Can exercise help me go the extra mile, or is just sticking to the “food” portion of the program sufficient ???

I am sure I am missing details above, I would be more than happy to fill them in.

Can anyone shed some light on this for me please ???

Thanks
Steve

[nancylmrn]

Hi Steve and welcome to ww! It sounds like you have jumped right in and have the motivation to keep going

Well I don't have all the answers and I am sure there are more chicks who know much more than me but I will put my 2cents in and see if I can help.

Should you be using up all your points? - if you are not hungry don't force yourself to eat and eating 'junk' just for the sake of using up points does not make sense when you are learning to eat and maintain a healthy lifestyle

Should you be losing more weight? - everyone loses at a different rate, some more than others and ww guidelines are just that a guideline. Many on here can tell you they are doing everything right and gain! or really messing up and lose...during your journey you will have ups/downs/and the non moving scale. It's just a fact don't let it make you cazy

As for different choices - without knowing what you already do I have no suggestions

Exercise - should be part of your daily routine for life unless your dr. has told you otherwise. Will it help in the journey? you bet! Think of it this way the more muscle you gain the more efficient your body is and the better it can burn calories faster...plus it just makes you look better overall

I am sure more will post and have some great advice for you...Post often

[mahtha]

Originally Posted by silvertint

I know the program says I should be losing .5-2 lbs per week which I have been doing but I feel like I should be losing more especially since I am not using up all my points.

Weight loss math is different from regular math, you don't necessarily lose more by eating less. I wasn't using all my points for the same reason - most days I just wasn't hungry enough. I lost for a while and then came to a dead stop and stayed there. When I posted about my dilemma, someone asked if I had any idea how many calories I was consuming. I honestly had no idea, but the question got me curious so I calculated the previous 7 days of my food journal. I learned I was regularly eating below 1000 calories a day! When I did some research I learned I should be eating 1250-1550/day. Once I increased my calories to 1350-1400/day I started to lose more!

That was a long-winded way to say this: eat all your daily points and a handful of your weeklies. Trade some low fat salad dressing for full fat, add a little peanut butter to your apple, dip those carrots in some hummus. I'm not suggesting you eat bags of chips and cookies, but my guess is your body is in shock right now and not getting the fuel it needs so it's kicking into conservation mode.

I know it's counter-intuitive and I understand it seems crazy to eat more if you want to lose weight, but as a WW veteran who lost more than 50 pounds on the program before I got sloppy I can assure you it does work if you follow it. It does not work if you try to end-run it to lose a little faster. Trust me on this

[Somni]

Hi Steve, welcome!

Yes, you should be at least trying to eat all your points. You might need to be planning things out more than you are currently. If you have the occasional day where you plan for blahblah points at dinner and then you are only hungry enough to eat half your dinner, I wouldn't stress about that. But that should be the occasional thing, not the norm.

I had trouble eating all my points in the beginning, and I found the points breakdown in the starting materials super helpful. Looks like in the "Meet PointsPlus 2012" it's on page 56. They have 69 pts a day broken down as: B: 11, L: 20, D: 24, Snack #1: 8, Snack #2: 6, so you would just need to take 1 point off one of those meals to make it 68 daily, plus shuffle things around if you would prefer a little more for certain parts of the day, and just focus on getting each meal or snack close to the suggested breakdown. There's no rush to take off extra points, they will get adjusted down as you lose.

Fuller fat dairy products, salad dressings can help without adding bulk, and nuts/nut butter are also a great way to add points fast without adding too much food. Like 2 Tbsp of peanut butter is 5 pp, and goes well with many things. Slivered almonds with green beans, walnuts over a salad, etc. I had a fat free greek yogurt this morning that was 3 pp for the container but one time I accidentally bought the full fat container - same size - and it was 6 pp for the same amount of yogurt.

You may find that activity helps with the hunger, and it will help your energy levels and mood overall. I did not have much of an appetite when I started WW, especially for breakfast which I almost never ate. Now if someone tried to take my breakfast away I would get all stabby with my fork. It doesn't have to be taking up running or sitting on an elliptical bored for 30 minutes. Try to make room for what you enjoy. I love being in the water so I started with water aerobics, and I knew I wanted to run someday so I also did some walking on the treadmill. On the weekends I would try to pick out different forest preserves and parks in the area we'd never visited and just walk around the paths there. I found some beautiful places I couldn't believe I had never been to after living in the area for several years. It made activity kind of a little regular weekend project - find undiscovered places to explore.

My husband isn't too heavy but has been pretty inactive and started getting active when I did. He hates running, hates exercise classes, working out at home, etc, but he loves hockey. So instead he took up refresher lessons for ice skating when he started out and now takes hockey classes. Now his routine is weekly hockey classes, some skate time during open skates when he's free, and doing cardio intervals at the gym to work on his endurance - finding something he loved keeps him on track with exercise.

Oh and last thing - make sure you are getting enough sleep when you can. Regular activity can help with that too if that's a problem area. Lack of sleep can really drag your numbers on the scale. You are doing great so far, but it's surprising that these factors completely unrelated to calories you are taking in or burning can also have a profound impact on your loss.

[silvertint]

Hey Guys, Just wanted to give you all a little follow up.

I did 1 week of where I forced myself to eat ALL my points, even at times I was not hungry but would eat just to reach my number. That week I gained 1lb.

After more research I realized that I need to stabilize my intake, some days I was finishing 12pts under and some others I was right on the mark, very unstable. Now I decided to drop my points by 10 per day (58) and stick to that every day. So far so good, last week I had a loss of 4.8lbs.

I am into week 2 of this, and I will follow up again soon.

Thanks

[pointspluspioneer]

My boyfriend just joined and he gets 49 points a day and is also having a hard time eating them all and doesn't eat his weeklies. He mentioned this to our leader and she said as long as he wasn't going under the 26 points a day that he was fine. She said he should eat until satisfied and NOT until he was stuffed.

[electrongirl]

Make sure you are getting in your healthy checks, the oils, dairy etc. Those can eat up a good amount of points.

Also don't fill up on the 0 point foods.

Secondly, it's kind of normal to not be able to eat all your points in the beginning, it's a honeymoon phase. Trust me I know!!

I started on 30 points and went down to 26 so I am envious of people who have a bunch of points!!

[NynaeveCeleste]

Wow....I had a hard time eating my 31 points (switched to a different diet plan)...I can't imagine having over 60 to work with! Good luck!

[Abigail Louise]

Hey! Ive been on ww for a while now like 9 weeks and i too find it hard to eat all my points. what i think of ww its not a diet its a life plan. so those extra points you have you can treat yourself. But dont do it to often. the way ww works is it calculates points in accordance to what you should be having and technically you should eat them all but dont over eat. as long as your on target losing 2-5lb a week then you have nothing to worry about. the harder it is to lose the weight the longer its going to stay off. Slow and steady ,, Good luck