Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Day Four on Weight Watchers

What an eye opener! I used up my points FAST the first few days, eating much less than I normally do. Those little snacks add up really quickly. It took a few days to get the hang of it, and I've used up every activity point and all the allotted optional weekly points (I'm dividing the 35 evenly into 7 days for now) but I am getting into the swing now. The scale is starting to move and I am very optimistic. I'm hungryish, but I feel I can work with this way of eating and the structure and limits are better for me right now than South Beach or some self-devised plan. And the points are dead easy to track.

The new tools online are almost perfect - they work really well and have lots of gadgets and gizmos. Two comlaints: they don't give you a fat/carb/protein breakdown like on FitDay, and I tink the points values they assign to running ar bogus. EVERYONE (almost) does it this way: the amount of calories you burn is supposed to be related to how fast you go - so a 9 minute mile burns more than a 10 minute mile. To me that makes no sense - if I' m running AS FAST AS I CAN, and it's only an 11:30 mile, surely that burns more calories than for someone else who is doing 10 minute mile but it's a comfortable jog for them. Right? I've seen one or two sites that measure by miles covered - that seems a little better, but I think the best way is via effort. I don't know how to do that in the WW etools. Also their estimate for how many calories burned by swimming doesnt' seem to match up with other sites.

Small beefs though - in general I' m very pleased with the whole program and glad I finally took the plunge.

3 comments:

LBTEPA said...

Well done, sounds as though it's going well :)

Calyx Meredith said...

Good job! Sounds like you're really adjusting! Keep it up, friend.

Herself, the GeekGirl said...

I know what you mean by the breakdown - I have to track my protein/carb ratio seperately. I use a program called LifeForm.
The cool thing about WW online is that you are more motivated to train; it's so exciting entering your exercise and then seeing how many points you earned and figuring out how to "spend" them!