Weight Watchers' "Points"

As I mentioned, this is not the first time I've joined Weight Watchers. Over a number of years. And different programs. When I was first introduced to the "points" system, I thought it was a pretty clever way to track what I eat. Much easier than counting calories and paying attention to food groups, etc. Evidently other people weren't that crazy about counting calories, either, and WW came up with the idea of assigning point values to specific portions of each food, based of course on their content of calories, fiber and fat.

One of the really nice things about this now-not-so-new plan is that there are no forbidden foods. You can eat anything you want. You just have to count its points and stay within your points limit for the day. Your personal points limit is determined by using an easy formula based on current weight, age, activity level. Your allowed number of points per day slowly drops as your body shrinks. Seems fair.

I remember my first encounter with Weight Watchers as a participant. The weigh in was no problem. It's private and no one yells out, "Wow!" when they see the number on the scale. They just quietly write down the secret number in your own private record that you take with you. The weigh-in girl always has kind and encouraging words whether you've been "good" or "bad" or lost or gained. Easy for the weigh-ee think of those revealing moments as a judgment of "good or "bad", but that dear weigh-or is totally non-judgmental. After all, she was once in my position, too. I could be wrong but I think all Weight Watcher employees are Life Members, having had their own weight-loss struggles, failures, and ultimate success. So the weigh in is as painless as possible.

What surprised me was the meeting, the little pep rally I attended each week. All they talked about was FOOD. Gad-zooks! I'm trying not to think about food, and all they could do was talk about it -- what to eat, tricks to not eat. How to survive Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and all the best foods to eat at those occasions. "Great" recipes. This was not my idea of how to lose weight. I don't know what I expected, but all this talk about food was making me hungry.

Enter the points plan. Several years later, at a different place, I again found myself at Weight Watchers. Much had changed. Most noticeably, they had a new formula for weight loss. It was the Points plan I described above. Yes, we still talked about food in the meetings, but this time around the discussions seemed more helpful. After a few weeks of counting points, an amazing thing happened to me. I quit thinking about food. I was thinking about points. Food lost the increased importance it seemed in the past to take on when I was trying to lose weight. Nothing was forbidden, so nothing was craved. If I wanted it, I ate it. But counted the points and did without something else. I no longer thought of food with its intrinsic taste and hunger satisfying qualities, I thought of it as a number of points. And it worked. That go-around, I lost 30 pounds. That was my success. My failure was not staying with it until I reached my goal weight.

This time I will. Thank goodness for points. I had 5 for breakfast and savored every one.