Weight Watchers Points Diet Review
Our series on diet reviews continues with the Weight Watchers Points plan. The Weight Watchers Points Plan assigns points to foods and drinks and grants you to eat whatever you want throughout the day, provided your points don’t exceed your allotted point total. Points are based on calories, grams of fat and dietary fiber. The exact calculation is copyrighted by Weight Watchers so I cant post it but some examples of point totals are:
• One 8oz apple: 2 points
• 3oz piece of grilled chicken: 3 points
• 1/2 cup of Baked Beans: 5 points
• A slice of cheese pizza: 14 points
• Diet Soda: 0 points
Most veggies have either very low point totals or zero points, so you’re essentially granted to eat as many as you want until you’re full, but remember that you need to include everything you eat, including any salad dressings, toppings or dips you eat with your veggies.
The amount of points per person varies, and is assigned to you based on your age, gender and starting weight. If you received 32 points for example, you could eat whatever you wanted throughout the day, provided the daily total does not exceed 32 points. In addition to your daily points, you are given an additional 35 flex points to spend each week. Whether you use them all at once or spread out over the week is entirely up to you.
Weight Watchers offers weekly meetings that help keep you motivated, however these meetings are entirely optional. You also have the additional option to weigh in on your own or while attending a meeting. If meetings aren’t your thing, Weight Watchers also offers an on the internet points tracker but you’ll need to keep track of your weight yourself.
The beauty of the Weight Watchers points plan is that no foods are off-limits. you’re granted to eat anything you want, but since you are only allowed to use a certain amount of points, you need to make choices. For example, a night out for beer and pizza is allowed, but using your points at night means you should opt for a healthy breakfast and a lighter lunch. There are no required foods on the plan, so you design your entire daily menu.
Currently Weight Watchers charges $39.95 a month for their online plan which features a points calculator, a weekly weight tracker with graphs, recipes with point totals and a message board for questions, advice and encouragement. Once you know how to calculate points you really could do this diet on your own, as long as you’re disciplined enough to stick. If you’re like me, being accountable by having to get weighed in person, or at least enter your weight each week does a lot to force you to stick with it.
The Weight Watchers points plan gets criticized a lot but I really like it’s simplicity and effectiveness. The plan is very easy to stick to, allows you to eat whatever you like unlike the so called negative calorie food diet or the Atkins diet, and it doesn’t require you to buy any pre-processed meals like NutriSystem does. If you want pre-processed meals for convenience Weight Watchers does sell their own brand of frozen dinners, deserts, etc.)
You will need to do a Tiny preparation with meal planning and in the beginning you will need to measure portion sizes to count points, but after the first week or two, you’ll have a good idea of how the points system and be able to prepare meals faster.
The ideal feature of this diet is that it instructs us to manage our portions and forces us to make smart decisions, and these decisions stick with us for years long after we’re done counting points. This diet isn’t best for someone looking to lose weight fast, but if you’re looking for a healthy weight loss option that’s easy to stick with, I would suggest the Weight Watchers points plan to anyone.
