Welcome to the club, Katherine.
Thanks, Paul!
Katherine and Meryl, can you give a quick blurb on how the WW point thingie works?
In Weight Watchers, you count points, not calories. You pretty much need a WW book (or two, or a membership on their website) to get the exact points for any particular item, and the formula supposedly based on calories, fat grams and fiber grams. But one point roughly translates to about 50 calories. Vegetables, broth, tea, coffee, and a few other things are zero points.
You get assigned a daily points goal based on your weight, age, gender and level of activity. The idea is to eat exactly that many points a day. You also get 35 points a week to use whenever you'd like (5 a day, 35 all at once -- whatever). Excercise earns you more points.
You're encouraged to consume a certain amount of dairy, a certain amount of healthy fats and a certain amount of water every day. Other than that, there are few dietary guidelines. You could eat all your points in chocolate, if you wanted. But you'd quickly realize that you don't get much food that way -- you have to be creative to get satisfying amounts of food while staying within your points allocation.
Members also may weigh in once a week and attend a half-hour WW meeting. I do that, because the meetings can be kind of fun and showing up helps me feel a sense of responsibility and commitment that I can't summon as well on my own.
But you can also do it all online, at
www.weighwatchers.com (I feel like I'm posting spam!
).
All of this you can do on your own, of course, and I always feel a bit resentful that I'm having to pay for it. But it does work.