Do you use your weekly allowance points?
 

First of all, sorry if this topic has already been made a bunch of times!

I was wondering, do you guys use your weekly points?
When I first started WW I thought of them as pretty much bad to use. As in, you were only supposed to use your dailies, and if you use your 'weekly allowance' you're not actually dieting as you're supposed to and will just maintain or even gain weight back. I'm now being told this isn't true and you're actually supposed to use them? WW even advises you to apparently.

For example, I was doing great for the past 2 weeks and then yikes... my sister brings home 2 packs of dough for cookies and a giant pizza. I was like :carrot: and ate like a wild beast(it wasn't pretty omg) but stopped shoveling in time to track everything down to the points and I still managed to use less than what the weekly allowance allowed me to. I don't see how I can still lose weight like that, lol.

What do you guys do? Use them all every week, use half, use them only when you need to, or steer clear of them completely? And what's your experience with it, have you gained weight or lost less then you wanted to by using them?

Thanks guys :dizzy:

I tend to use some of mine, I found when I used all of them I tended to gain. So I had to make the adjustment to just not use all of them. I also make it a point if I know I am going to use them I get some extra ap points in there too

Well, they are there to use if you need them. I can't use all of mine and lose but if I do run into a surprise situation I also do not feel like a failure and fell off the wagon. It is not a diet, it is a lifestyle as long as you are getting to the goals you have set for yourself all is good. :D

It depends on the week whether I use them or not. Most weeks I use maybe half of them. Sometimes I use my AP, and don't use my WP.

I'm still trying to figure out whether I lose more if I don't eat my weekly points, which is probably the case. WW does say that the WP's are there to allow you flexibility and for you to not feel deprived. Only you will be able to see whether you can eat your WP's and feel good in your weight loss. I know some people that eat them and still lose weight, and I know other people who eat some and lose weight. Everyone is different.

This depends. 20 years ago when I became a lifetime member I always used all of mine (they were called something else then but really the same thing).

Now, I'm 20 years older and I don't lose well eating all of them. However, I always use some of them particularly since I find it way too restrictive to have to eat the exact same number of points every day.

With the revisions to the plan you can also now vary your daily points (within a 3 point range) and vary your weekly points.

Anyway, let's say I was at 29 daily points and decided not to use any weekly points. I would have to eat exactly 29 points each day whether I went out to eat or whether it was a holiday or was a day I was home and not very hungry. I find that very restrictive and it isn't livable for me long term. I would eat 203 points that week.

On the other hand, lets say I set my daily points to 26 points (which is the minimum) and I set my weekly points to 21. I would still eat 203 points that week. However, this is to me a far far more livable plan since I could eat, say, 40 points on Saturday when I went out to eat but on days that I am at home or not that hungry eat 26 points.

Right now I have it set that I eat 26 Daily points and have my weekly points set at 33 (although I may drop that done to 25 if I don't lose enough on 33).

It is really all a matter of balance. If you can eat all your weekly points and eat at the top of your 3 point range on daily points and still lose enough for you then that is fine. Or you can say you want to eat at the top of your daily point range (you don't switch daily on this -- I'm talking about setting a target at the top of the 3 point range you can select) and you don't eat weekly points at all. If that works best for you then fine. For me, I would find that too restrictive.

So, in my case I drop my daily points to the minimum but I still eat some of my weekly points but not all of them. I really like how with the new plan you can customize this to what works for you.

I use every single one of mine, every week. At first I just tested it out, to see how many I could use without gaining (taking into account my activity level and whatnot.) I discovered that I am one of the (very) lucky few who can use up all the weeklies and still lose.

I feel awesome about being able to use my weeklies, because I refuse to give up any of the foods I love. I just...won't do it. I don't see the point. So I really feel for people who have to give things up for various reasons.

I use mine in lots of different ways. Some days I am just hungry and need a bit more food, even if I ate good filling foods and lots of veggies. I don't feel deprived. Other days, I get to have a treat, again, prevents me from feeling deprived when others are having a treat.
I like what others have said about not having to stick to an exact number every day, but rounding it out. I have also been reading about members using something called the Wendy plan that PLANS having some days with higher points to get out of stalls. Sounds interesting.

So here is my input as a former WWPPluser. 29 points, w/o weeklies, was too much food for me. I've done better calorie counting and continue to lose.

BUT HERE IS THE POINT: WWPP2012 lowered points. A coworker gets 26 (not 29 anymore). She maintained, literally, for an entire year in 2011. Yes, she was up a little down a little, but she maintained on PP basically.

She rejoined at-work program on 1/3/12. On 26 daily points, using all of her weeklies, she has as of this week lost 1.4 or 1.6 pounds (can't remember which). Basically, she is averaging 33 points per day by using all her weeklies. Says she doesn't touch activity points, but is now exercising 4 Xs per week. My advice to her was...stop using the weeklies for just one week and see if it makes a difference. At 29 dailies, she was hardly using the weeklies. At 26 daily shes using them all -- which makes no sense to me.

Meanwhile, she's a bit urked that my weight loss has left her efforts in the dust, and I keep telling her to eat less.

I have no problem eating between 1200 - 1400 daily calories. Yes, I am occasionally over 1400 once in a great while under 1200. However, when I did the WWPPlus math vs. 1200 and 1400 calories, I always had leftover points that had I eaten would have stayed stuck in 2011 WWPPlus "maintenance" mode.

My advice to you is....test the waters. If you can lose eating the weeklies, good for you. If you see a significant difference in your progress, then you know where the problem is.

one of the things I have been thinking of, as I have been reading posts on different parts of this site for a couple of years now, is that the weekly points and using them gives us a good flexibility. We can lose slowly and keep it off, but if we stall, its reasonable to give some up to break a stall. If you are losing faster not using the weekly points, fine, but nothing to drop if you hit a stall.
I like the weeklies because they give me the flexibility to keep on doing this for a long time. As a new member I am still at the beginning stages of this plan, so don't have the experience that others have with these issues.

I normally vary it on a weekly basis - some weeks, I don't use any weekly or activity points, followed by a week where I'll have one big meal dipping into my weekly points, followed by a week where I dip into them on a daily basis. No rhyme or reason, it just depends how I feel that day/week!

My experience, though, has consistently been that I lose more weight the weeks I do not use them. Some people are at a point where adding more food into their diets boosts their weight loss, but I've done a lot of experimenting over the last year and that is my experience.

For example, 3 weeks ago I was spot-on -- no weekly or activity points used. I exercised every day and earned 50 activity points and I lost 3.9 pounds.

The following week I had a bad week - I exercised every day, earned 49 activity points but I ate ALL my weekly and ALL my activity points. I think I was at -1 and I gained .4 pounds.

Last week, I earned 49 activity points but didn't use any of them - I used all my weekly points and I lost 2.2 pounds.

That's how it has been all along for me.

Hi,

New to the forum here (actually learned today that I joined back in September 2011- but I'd forgotten that I actually signed up!) but have been a WWPPlus member since Dec 2010. I am currently at goal, but finding maintenance hard. While losing, I never used the 49 points. Well, I can't say never. But I certainly never planned to! I also got lots of activity points and rarely dug into them. That was on the 29 point plan. I was stuck for a while at the end of the summer, and I switched to calorie counting and then lost the last 10 lbs. I kept thinking to myself that the one flaw of the points plus plan was that the points didn't get reduced as our bodies would get smaller. A smaller person burns less calories (in general, on average) and it seemed to me that the same amount of calories that allowed me to lose well in the beginning would not continue to work when I'm now 50 lbs lighter.

But that doesn't address the weekly points question posed by the OP. I guess I'd just say I agree with those on here who say you have to play with it a bit and figure out what works for you. That means being willing to have some weeks which may not have been as great as they could have been, but at least they will have been informational and that is very important. Maybe if I'd been willing to experiment more, I would've discovered that I actually could have eaten a little more in a planned and regulated way, and then I probably would not have had the times when I overate in an out of control way because I'd let myself get too hungry, or felt guilty dipping into those weekly or activity points.

I use mine if I need to. I stay within my points during the weekdays. On weekends I try to eat accordingly. But I usually have to dip into my bonus points a little. I generally do not use all of them. I found for myself,if I restrict too much I don't lose at all. I was stuck at a plateau for a while so I kept lowering points,and restricting myself like crazy. I didn't lose a pound. So,I went back and looked at what I did in the beginning of my journey,to be so successful. So I ate more and I lost weight immediately. Weight loss is a guessing game,you need to kinda treat yourself as a guinea pig,and figure out what works best for you.

I have a "cheat" day every week, and while I don't track my points that day, it probably comes close to eating up my full 49 weekly points. (Some weeks it might be less, but on average it's probably close). I have averaged about 1.8lbs per week, and I'm happy with that. If my weight loss stalls, then the first thing I will do is cut out my cheat day, at least for awhile. But so far it hasn't been hurting me, and it didn't hurt me during my past experiences with WW.

For the past 3 months I haven't used them at all. I've only used my activity points and although I'm pleased with the scale, I'm worried that I'm losing too fast (read losing muscle, not fat) so I will have to tweak this a bit and get over my fear of using the weekly allowance points.

When I plug in what I've eaten to achieve my 27 points per day into a calorie counter, I'm coming up at around 1000 calories a day which is bad. When I add exercise to the mix, its even worse. I wish I could drink protein shakes but for some reason they make me extremely nauseous. Wil figure something out.

For me, I always use some of the points, but not all of them. The two weeks I used all of them, I lost still, however it was not as much as I hoped for based on the other weeks. My advice is to test it out (like others have said) and then add in more exercise if you want to use them! Whatever you do, don't go to bed hungry!

I always do :( and I am trying to work on not using them; I have had a rough start with the plan, a picky household definitely doesn't help with this, but I am just sucking it up and going to start making myself something seperate if I need to, while still trying to feed my picky guys as healthy as possible

Yep I usually do......and routinely on friday/saturday (days when we end up eating more than usual).

I've only in my 7th week and use maybe 4 or 5 of the WP's every week. Only 4 weeks into it I started stalling after staying w/in points and racking up lots (for me) of AP's and so cut my DP's back from 42 to 29 - 32 for 3 or 4 days. So I know I won't be able to use the WP's, although I like having them there for the inevitable time when I'll go off the deep end!

With 2012 PP+, I usually eat 2-6 WPAs everyday, and have 1 semi-high day where I use a good chunk. I usually never eat all the points + APs by the end of the week. Losses are decent (~1lb on avg a week) but are consistent thus far.

I just started WW yesterday and was wondering the same thing about the weekly points. My leader said that you should absolutely eat all of your daily points, and eat all of your earned Activity points but that the weekly points are optional. Even eating my daily points feel like I'm eating too much food. But, I'm still going to give it a shot for a few weeks and see how it goes. My doctor told me that reason I was having difficulty losing before was that I probably wasn't eating ENOUGH food and my body was going into starvation mode so maybe this will work better. I'm just so used to feeling deprived on a diet that I feel like something is wrong because I'm not starving all the time!

After they pushed us down to 26 points a day, I upped them back to 29 and almost always use my weekly points. I have lost 70 lbs in since Feb 2011 and I am very pleased with the results. For me, the weight loss is probably slower, but I'm also not experiencing excess skin problems and have lost and average of 1.3 lbs a week. The first few weeks of ww I lost NOTHING and I have hit a couple of plateaus, but kept on truckin' and eventually broke through them. I think the important thing to do is figure out what makes YOU comfortable. Personally, I feel like I would starve if I was limited to less than 29 points a day. :dizzy: and I would have given up if I felt deprived in any way. My personal goal now is to always have at least 20 activity points left in my cache, so it is good to have points up there, but when I first started getting 20 activity points was a hardship (now I get anywhere between 25 to 40 depending on my ability to get to the gym) So that might be a factor as well. Just keep at it, girl, the lifestyle lessons will be worth it! I gave myself a week off of point counting but continued many of the healthy habits I had learned and didn't gain (slipped up with McyD's and a heavy night of drinking)!

I use them, but I don't use all of them. Last week I had 9 left, and this week I should have 25-30 left. I would rather increase my activity level and indulge a little. Otherwise, I'm falling off the wagon and into a Cold Stone Creamery (Sp?) (I know this because when I started I was super strict about how I ate then I relapsed for about 1 1/2 months).

Excess Skin
 

That's a fear of mine. Excess skin. I don't want to have plastic surgery (because I can't really afford it), but I will. Thank you for mentioning this! It gives me hope that maybe it won't be so bad.

I don't use them and had forgotten about them. I actually never take note of the saved points anymore, though if I exercise during the day and gain a few extra points and I'm dying for something else to eat after dinner, then I will use those.

I eat mine!
 

I eat my weekly allowance points, but usually on the weekend!
I only eat my activity points on the days I work (on my feet and walk 4+ miles at work) and the days I workout. On the days I do both my fit bit has my calorie burn close to 3,700 calories. So, I definitely eat them.
I've only been on WW again for month and have about 20lbs to lose. I lost 3lbs the first week and 1-2 lbs the last three. So far so good!
If I stall I'll prob stop eating the weekly extras but continue to eat activity. :)

Looks like you are doing well. Currently I have elected to swap my FitPoints before swapping Weekly Points. Now that there is a baseline with FitPoints I feel safe doing that. As a practical matter it means I end up using few, if any, weekly points but use all of my FitPoints (above the baseline).

I eat all my weekly allowance points (usually on week-ends) and every day I use my FitPoints. So today I added +4 FitPoints to my 30 SmartPoints. I will eat 34 SP and during the weekend will eat all of my 35 allowance points. I don't want to starve myself because I exercise a lot every day.