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Post by zazzles on Aug 4, 2018 15:15:44 GMT
I have a feeling we all know what a healthy diet looks like and how much we should really eat. As I said earlier, those of us who are WW veterans of many years over numerous programs, as well as many who have followed other decently balanced diets, probably DO know what a healthy diet looks like. But your comment made me think of my neighors across the street—friends of mine. They have three kids: twin boys who are 17 and a teen daughter who is 14. I have dined with them many times. What a meal looks like for those kids would not make a snack for me. Think a chicken leg. MAYBE one Broccoli florette. Sometimes one to several servings of bread product. The rule in that house has always been, "You must try something and eat a little bit, but if you don't like it you don't have to eat it again." And, "You must eat SOME amount of vegetable"—ONE pea would be acceptable. THOSE kids have NO idea what a healthy diet looks like. One suffers from chronic constipation. Both the boys are rail thin—now—but after they leave home and can free feed on junk food time will tell if that lasts (dad is morbidly obese and Mom was, too, until she had bariatric surgery). So even if the number of folks who don't have a clue is a VERY small percentage of the WW membership, I think that WW has at least a MORAL obligation to provide clear direction about how to create healthy, balanced meals...not by giving recipes that incorporate the correct ingredients, but by showing members who don't know how to construct a day's eating/menus to cover all the bases every 24 hours.
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Post by zazzles on Aug 4, 2018 15:33:05 GMT
I mentioned that IMO WW is send up "opposing and contradictory messages" for success at the scale. Yes, the zero-SPs list can be advantageous. Yes, those are healthy foods. But if one chooses - quite naturally, because they're favorite foods - a menu that has a lot of those foods and at the same time wants to earn that Blue Dot, one may end up consuming way too much food (really, wtm CALORIES) for wtLoss/maintenance to take place. My GF was finding herself with a sh!tload of SPs left at the end of the day and was consuming them - with a resultant wt gain. She is a Rule Follower with many years' tenure in WW, and has always been able to FOLLOW THE PROGRAM AS WRITTEN. But now AS WRITTEN (i.e., earning that Blue Dot) doesn't work because many of her choices "don't have SPs" in her tracker. And while yes, she can adjust her daily points allowance to reflect that, or quick-add all those 0-SPs with the prev SP values, her brain rebels against "rebelling against the Program as written". She's in a tough place - she's been struggling since the first month Freestyle came out. Also, IMO, it's all well and good to say that we should be making BETTER choices - but can someone please tell me where, in the CURRENT program materials, there is ANY guideline/structured plan that explains what they are - what, and how much of it, constitutes a BALANCED menu? Just asking... I shudder at the thought of people striving to earn the Blue Dot. Why? Because all it signifies is that they ate within -10 and +5 points of their daily budget (13 to 28 in the case of those who get the minimum 23 points). To me that has NOTHING to do with defining healthy eating. As for guideline/structure plan materials, I also can't find any. I just looked on the Your Plan page on the web site and poked around, and the only thing I found that claimed to be a sample menu was a page that had pictures of 5 "feedings" totaling 21 points, each "feeding" being a link to a recipe. Here's the link.
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Post by knuckles491 on Aug 4, 2018 15:46:49 GMT
When smart points came out, I was horrified. I emailed Weight Watchers with a suggestion: Why not offer a program where you can choose Points, Points Plus, or Smart Points. People might think that it would be a nightmare to keep everything straight at the meetings, but a while ago people followed Flex or Core and everyone got something from the meeting, no matter which plan they were following. Of course, I never heard from them.
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Post by zazzles on Aug 4, 2018 15:52:11 GMT
When smart points came out, I was horrified. I emailed Weight Watchers with a suggestion: Why not offer a program where you can choose Points, Points Plus, or Smart Points. People might think that it would be a nightmare to keep everything straight at the meetings, but a while ago people followed Flex or Core and everyone got something from the meeting, no matter which plan they were following. Of course, I never heard from them. Many people have made that suggestion over many years. Nobody ever got an answer. The purported reason was that the meetings themselves are focused on the current program. But not that WW has almost totally de-emphasized the food part of the program in meetings, it really seems it would be possible. Well, at least if they were a company with an IT department that wasn't run by novice high-school programmers. And that put another thought into my head. Perhaps in the long term WW's plan to reinvent itself actually has a goal of getting out of the food program business and focusing on all of the head-shrink stuff they are currently fond of as a new type of support business, perhaps parnering with one of their competitors (LoseIt, MFP, etc.) to provide the food program simply based on calories and standard NI. We just have to watch and wait to see what ideas are rattling around in their heads.
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Post by sunshinep396 on Aug 4, 2018 16:43:00 GMT
When smart points came out, I was horrified. I emailed Weight Watchers with a suggestion: Why not offer a program where you can choose Points, Points Plus, or Smart Points. People might think that it would be a nightmare to keep everything straight at the meetings, but a while ago people followed Flex or Core and everyone got something from the meeting, no matter which plan they were following. Of course, I never heard from them. This is one reason (besides lower cost) that so many former WWers are flocking to iTrackBites. You get to choose which of the past 4 WW plans or calorie counting that you want to follow.
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Post by peaceful123 on Aug 4, 2018 23:02:58 GMT
I think some kind of changes are coming. We were notified today they are no longer printing out weigh in stickers for our books. The leader said the receptionists are switching over to tablets and then said something like they didn't want them to be dealing with this and the changes that are coming during their coming busy time after September into January. Someone asked her if there were changes to the plan coming and she just gave us one of those looks that said I can't answer that question.
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Post by cathygeha on Aug 5, 2018 5:41:32 GMT
diva49, I agree with your comment
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Post by cathygeha on Aug 5, 2018 5:43:12 GMT
zazzles, My mom had the same rule about the one bite thing. I had foods I did not like, for sure. I wonder if they even teach nutrition in school any more? I remember the four basic food groups from grade school. No idea what they teach now. I do think there is a disconnect for many and wonder how it will or can be resolved.
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Kitty
Transcendent Member
Posts: 1,448
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Post by Kitty on Aug 5, 2018 9:16:08 GMT
When smart points came out, I was horrified. I emailed Weight Watchers with a suggestion: Why not offer a program where you can choose Points, Points Plus, or Smart Points. People might think that it would be a nightmare to keep everything straight at the meetings, but a while ago people followed Flex or Core and everyone got something from the meeting, no matter which plan they were following. Of course, I never heard from them. Many people have made that suggestion over many years. Nobody ever got an answer. The purported reason was that the meetings themselves are focused on the current program. But not that WW has almost totally de-emphasized the food part of the program in meetings, it really seems it would be possible. Well, at least if they were a company with an IT department that wasn't run by novice high-school programmers. And that put another thought into my head. Perhaps in the long term WW's plan to reinvent itself actually has a goal of getting out of the food program business and focusing on all of the head-shrink stuff they are currently fond of as a new type of support business, perhaps parnering with one of their competitors (LoseIt, MFP, etc.) to provide the food program simply based on calories and standard NI. We just have to watch and wait to see what ideas are rattling around in their heads. The other explanation I always heard was that this was progress and WW offering the best program. That is, if WW comes out and says that SP is a great program and the best one ever then how do they possibly offer PP which they have just said is not as good as SP. And, if they go to Freestyle how do they then offer SP since Freestyle is presented as better than SP. I am not saying it has to be that way. I think they could offer a range of different programs and present them all as good with some variation for person preference. They do that with Simply Filling. They could expand that. The reality is that choice of food plan is honestly one of the least important things to weight loss. Having a calorie deficit is, of course, very important. But, lots of food plans can work....
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Post by alias123 on Aug 5, 2018 19:39:43 GMT
THOSE kids have NO idea what a healthy diet looks like. One suffers from chronic constipation. Americans are always banging on about protein. The fact is the majority have no problem meeting the daily protein requirement and in fact exceed it by a lot. What they do lack is Fiber ! On average, american's eat half the amount that they should. Most need to eat way more veggies, beans and whole grains. Personally, I think the popular high protein/low carb diets are going to be problem down the road with a rise in kidney disease, colon cancer etc. Time will tell.
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Post by 76trojan on Aug 5, 2018 21:59:49 GMT
Personally, I think the popular high protein/low carb diets are going to be problem down the road with a rise in kidney disease, colon cancer etc. Time will tell.  [/quote]
A friend of mine’s annual kidney blood test results were off, and she was referred to a kidney specialist. The first thing the kidney specialist asked her was whether she had ever done a low carb diet.
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Post by 76trojan on Aug 5, 2018 23:12:18 GMT
“I shudder at the thought of people striving to earn the Blue Dot. Why? Because all it signifies is that they ate within -10 and +5 points of their daily budget (13 to 28 in the case of those who get the minimum 23 points). To me that has NOTHING to do with defining healthy eating.”
Thanks for clarifying that. I see that trying to earn the blue dot could theoretically invite overeating if one has already eaten a ton of zero point foods that day.
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Post by itsrad on Aug 5, 2018 23:59:33 GMT
I just downloaded Itrackbites. PP again for this girl. Balanced diet, GHG's, free app, points you can figure in your head. What could be bad?
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Post by borntexan on Aug 6, 2018 1:15:43 GMT
Another good app if you are wanting to do PP is Ultimate Food Value Diary(UFVD). It's really easy to track on and you have the GHG's on it also.I am going to use that instead of ITB for awhile and double track on MFP b/c I also like to know if I have enough calories.
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Post by linda72 on Aug 6, 2018 1:28:02 GMT
After reading through all of the posts, I realize I'm not really following FS either. The blue dots never made sense to me and I felt a disconnect with all of the zero-point foods because at the end of the day, I know it's still about calories. I talked to my leader in 2012 because I could not understand how a young woman (around 30) in my meeting, who is 5'10" could have the same number of points as me: a short (5'), older (now 69!)woman. The leader kept saying it all "works out", whatever that means. I went to a BMR calculator on-line and saw that I really only need around 1300 calories/day to live so to lose weight was very slow. My exercising is minimal but I often get close to 8000 steps/day. All the websites caution against eating less than 1200 calories a day but that is not enough of a deficit for me to lose. I heard finreporter talk about "intermittent fasting" and I read up on that. I started doing that in February by changing my eating window to 8 hours a day. I lost 3 pounds in February and have maintained that loss and am now 2# below goal. I'm trying to choose healthier foods since my calorie total is lower. Some days it works out to 23 SP, other days it is 17 SP. On MFP, some days are around 1200 and other days are 900 but over a weeks time, I average around 1000/day. I really tried to follow WW and all of their GHGs, etc. but the program doesn't fit me well. I did learn about portion control and healthier eating choices when I started WW in 2011 and that has served me well. Going through the Beck review 6 or 7 times has also given me more tools to use. I'll never be an intuitive eater because over-eating is what got me to be 50 pounds over a healthy BMI. I don't want to go back to that ever. Everyone has to follow the path that helps them. I'm sorry that WW is no longer helping many of us. I want to see what they do in January, 2019 but I doubt it will be much of a change. And, that worries me as more people will decide the program doesn't work for them.
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