This just dawned on me yesterday while driving back home to Columbus from Cincinnati (1.5 hours so I have a lottt of time to think )....

I was think'n ...what if I applied WW's points to my Atkins way of living? It would be a good way to know the appropriate amount of food I should be eating to lose at my current weight. Now please...no lectures from those of you who don't count calories. There are a few of us who need to do this ....so...what do U calorie counters think about this and has anyone else tried this yet?

It sounds interesting, how would we do it?

Well I do have a few unofficial points calculators where you put in the calories, fat and fiber and it calculates the points for you. If you'd like I can PM them to you.

I looked into this a while ago. I even found one website that had the WW points formula written out and discovered that the problem with the WW points formula is that while the point value of the food is based primarily on the calorie count (approximately 1 point per 50 calories of food), you are penalized for the item being high fat. That is, for every 12 grams of fat, you have to count one more WW point. So, let's say you are trying to keep to a 1200 calorie diet. If you are eating low-fat, maybe 20% of your calories come from fat, 144 calories. At 9 calories per gram of fat, you are eating about 16 grams of fat a day. That's only about 1.33 extra WW points. However, if you are eating a low-carb but high fat diet where, say 50% of your calories are coming from fat, you are eating 600 calories in fat, 67 grams of fat and an extra 5.5 WW points. Ignoring the fiber portion (high fiber decreases the point value, but by very little) of the calculation. 1200 calories at 20% fat is about 25 points a day. 1200 calories at 50% fat is about 29-30 points a day. Big difference.

I can see the value of using the point system to control your calories, but I think you'd have to sacrifice either a lot of calories or a lot of fat to do low-carb WW.

Val

Hi,

There are a few ladies at my workplace that go to WW. They are always comparing notes with me and giving me updates to their progress.

From what I understand there is a new way of following weight-watchers called the core program. It seems to follow a points system for some foods, but the plan overall seems rather low-carb to me.

Sorry I don't have any more information, but perhaps this is something that may help.