Weight Watchers relaunched their points based counting system at the end of last year with Pro Points (PP) evolving into Smart Points (SP). Now I, personally, had a lot of success on Pro Points and found it relatively easy to balance everything within my allowance. My initial impression is that this is going to be a lot harder to do on Smart Points.
For the uninitiated - every Weight Watchers member has a daily points allowance and an additional "bank" of points that can be drawn on throughout the week. Both the daily and the weekly allowances decrease as you lose weight. In addition, exercise earns you "Fit Points" which can be swapped for food once you've earned more than a set amount - which amount rises as you lose weight to make you work harder. With me?
My daily points allowance on SP is about the same as on PP, my weekly bank has decreased by 7. So, overall, fewer points. I think I'm going to be needing those Fit Points, especially as most foods, with the exception of some lean proteins, have gone up.
I wasn't particularly organised today, and had to buy lunch from our on-site shop. I chose fairly wisely - a sandwich that, at 370 calories would have come in at 9-10 PP and a small pot of low fat yoghurt. The sandwich turned out to be 11 SP and the yoghurt a whopping 4 SP. Ouch. Smoked salmon and scrambled eggs for supper came in relatively low though, so it balanced out.
It feels, though, that Weight Watchers really don't want me to consume anything containing any amount of sugar or fat. I adore butter, and used to be able to get 7g for 1 PP, which was enough for decent coverage on a slice of toast. The same amount is now 3 SP. Any and all sweet treats have gone up - a two finger Kit Kat, for example, has gone from 3 PP to 5 SP a bar. All of these increases, combined with the lower allowances, makes it feel a lot more restrictive and "diet-ey".
I've come in bang on my daily allowance today but more by luck than judgement - I need to spend the weekend doing some careful planning to allow me to stretch those Smart Points further.
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Can see my blog for nutritional facts of low fat food at grocery stores.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason it sounds scarier than what I'm doing....not eating at all! Think it's the counting which scares me, was never very good at that!! Keep it up chuck. Lxx
ReplyDeleteGah the whole thing is just so puritan and depressing. A life existing on fruit, veg and lean protein is one devoid of all joy. I'm secretly hoping that Smart Points puts the nail in the WW coffin.
ReplyDeleteI think they might have gone too far...and I also suspect that they've invested too much to do a 180, so we'll see, but you could well be right. x
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