I am finishing uni this summer and will start my job in autumn....I decided that it is time to finally loose that stone and a half, and thought of joining Weight Watchers. I was wondering the experiences people have had with them, and what the first meeting was like. I am quite scared to go to the first one this Wednesday (!!!)...I really don’t know why- perhaps it’s because I do not know what to expect, and also, I am scared of meeting my fellow students. My reason for joining is that I tend to overeat a lot, and I am hoping to get control over this by realising how much my body actually needs and how much it can work on. I hope somebody can help me contain my anxiety and tell me a little bit about their experience. thanks.

Hey Kirsten,

I can give you two different experiences wth Weight Watchers.  My personal experience was I lost a significant amount of weight and that was with hardly any exercise, if any at all.  I also used them at two different locations and found the results to be very similar.  The only thing I did not like was the waiting in lines to get weighed.  People would practically strip down to their underwear.  So the meeting wouldn’t actually start for 30-40 mins, thus not giving alot of time for the help and support that was needed.

Now my wife’s experience was not nearly as effective.  She actually gained weight even though she was meeting or coming in lower then he daily and weekly point total.  Instead of sitting down with her to try and figure out what the problem is.  They blamed her for the gain.  Saying “well you didn’t need to eat one of our WW icecream sandwiches” or “you didn’t need to eat that peice of string cheese”.  Again she was coming in at or under her points everyday and every week.  She got frustrated and gave up. 

Both of us now, just watch our caloric intake and workout with a Personal Trainer.  She is down over 30 pounds and I was down over 20 pounds (before this week that is).  That is a totally different story, which you’ll just have to read my blog to find out.  My Lifestyle Change

Hope this helps and if you have any specific questions please don’t hesitate to ask.

All the best,
Stu

Thanks Stu. What you wrote is very interesting. I will certainly go on Wednesday and will let you know what I made of it. Hopefully, I will soon experience some success too (had a look at your blog ).

Hey Kristen,
I must say right up front that I’m a huge weight watcher fan. The reason why, is it changed my life for me. 9 Months ago, I was a 19 year old, 230 pound guy. Now that I’m 20, I’m at about 167 on most weeks. Weight watchers was the real motivation that helped me loose all my weight. My mom had lost over 50 pounds with weight watchers, and she got me to come in after school on day. Now I go every week, even now that I’m a lifetime member. The meetings here in Petaluma, CA are great. I’ve seen a few different “teachers” and found my favorite. Find someone who is at your level, and that you can get along with. It’s a real big help to have someone there to motivate you, not intimidate you. When you go to meetings, everyone is very friendly and nice. All the people that I dealt with were people just like me, wanting to help. There wasn’t any bad vibes, and I was amazing how quickly I fit in. Well, fit in might be a big extreme. I was the only male there, and about 9 years younger than everyone else. I was always the youngest, but there were people in there 70’s there as well. I found it just a great melting pot of different people.

For the actual program, I found it quite easy. It’ll take you a week or two to get into the right frame of mind, but once you get it, it sticks. I don’t have to really count points anymore, but I can look at anything and know the point value. The thing that WW really does is help to show you what you eat. By writting it down on the point plan, you can better decide what to eat, and how much you’ve eaten. Making you accountantable for what you do eat teaches you fast to learn to eat good food. And that’s what you should be eating, good food. The thing I love about weight wachers is that your “allowed” to eat anything you want, just as long as you keep track of it. Just like any good diet would let you do, as long as you plan for it, it’s okay for you to eat it. This really changes the way you eat over time, as you begin to find that you eat less and less food that you eat now. I’ve noticed I’m rambling so I’ll cut this off. I would really recommend Weight Watchers if your having a tough time managing your food intake. Though true that exercise isn’t a large part of the program, it will make all the difference in how well you do. Just like anything, start off slow and build up, and when you get to your goal, you’ll be feeling great.

Best of luck!

Hi Skyler, thanks for your encouraging message! It gave me that last bit of motivation to actually go to the meeting today (I was quite scared to be honest). I found it quite ok, though it appeared that many of the people there were not as motivated as I had hoped them to be. Anyway, perhaps that may be an advantage since I can get quite competitive, and this might just make me work that extra little bit harder. I would not say that I am terribly overweight...tubby would probably describe me quite well (145 pounds, and 6’4’’). My aim is to go down to 128 pounds until this summer to look nice in skirts and dresses when I go to Italy (if you have ever been there, you will know that everyone is dressed so fashionably there, and hardly anyone is overweight or chubby)- and I have to admit that my bum is too big at the moment for those outfits… :-(
Anyway, I am quite motivated to just get this done and over with and not be too emotional about it (one of my A-HA moments from Scotts shows-probably the best ever to me since I tend to get all funny about exercise and weight loss, or rather the lack of it). I know that my problem is not the kind of food I eat ( generally quite healthy) but the amount I eat- and I think (from the replies that I got) that weight watchers can help me with that by showing how large a portion size actually is, and with what amounts my body can function well.
There is just one aspect that bothered me a little...the leader told us not to do too much exercise! I asked why, and she said that it is because we will build up muscle mass and therefore not loose weight. So I am wondering...how much exercise or weights does one have to do that it is detrimental to weight loss? Isn’t it an advantage to built up more muscles (=increased metabolism)...though weight loss would occur slower?!? I am confused…
Skyler- how did you combine exercise with WW? I thought I could continue with some exercise (I thought perhaps 1 hour, 4 times a week) focusing on cardio, then once I am down to 128 pounds, I will focus more on weights. Do you have any advice for me Scott?
Also...I was wondering how much weight do people tend to loose with WW (per week)? What can I expect?
Let me thank you all so much for responding to my messages and being so helpful.
I will keep you updated on my progress over the next few weeks and hopefully have good news on most of the days!

Hey Kirsten -

Congrats on getting to that meeting.  It’s always easier once you get there huh?

About that exercise.  I’m not totally up to speed on the WW program although I have traineed several clients on WW.

As a rule…

4, one-hour sessions per week are a great way to burn the fat.  The challenge comes in keeping your muscle.

If you do TOO much Cardio with TOO much intesity - you’ll begin to burn muscle instead.  It’s the same problem body builders face when they want to lose weight but keep muscle. 

At 4 hours you are right on the edge of the weekly max for beginning to burn muscle.  Now… you can do that, and more, if you have enough protein in your body to build muscle too.  So… make sure you WW diet has enough protein and keep your Cardio sessions in the fat burning zone.

Here’s what I mean by fat buring zone.  It’s all based on your Maximum Target Heart Rate.

Here’s the calculation:

220 - Age X 70%

For me -

220 - 46 = 174 X 70% = 121.8 heart beats per minute. 

To calulate your workout range, do the same with 55% and 85%.  55% is minimum for working out, less and you get no results.

70% - 75% is for burning fat.

85% is for kicking butt! 

Over 85% may put you out of the Aerobic fat burning zone.  That’s not a bad thing - it’s just that you’ll be working muscle and not burning fat.

Jump on it and go for it!  And good job Skyler - thanks for jumping and and sharing your success and tips with everybody.

Congrads for taking your first WW steps Kirsten.

Now to answer what you asked me. How did I do WW and exercise? Well, I didn’t exercise as much. I just went on walks often, doing some running once in a while as well. I had never been into exercising much. Now that I’m not on the program, I exercise often. Its something that I had to get myself up to a certain level for me to do it. Anyway, about how much you should loose each week. For me, it was a range from .2 to 2.5. And 2 weeks I gained a little. With your weight loss, you’ll see cycles when you loose a lot, then for 2 weeks, you hold still. Don’t let it discourage you, it happens to everyone.

Yeah, its funny how exercise is not a big part of WW, or at least they never really talked about it around here. It was more, “get moving”. Since I was in a class full of mid-aged women, my teacher tried to get them to get out and do things that were active. Maybe things like take a walk, do dancing, do some cleaning project, but nothing like what I’m doing now. Thats why I listen to Scott for what I do now, and still go to the WW meetings every week to get motivated to eat good. I must say that once you do loose all that weight, people look up to you for inspiration. It happens to me all the time now. Then it becomes inspiration for me to be more like myself, if you get what I mean.

Stick with it Kirsten, and keep us posted!

Scott- thanks for your advice! I am certainly sticking to it- exercise is an important part of my life and I do not want to miss it under any circumstances. (by the way, have you noticed that the message board not only encourages people to engage in more exercise, but also enhances inter-cultural understanding- I am referring back to your post on the super-bowl! isnt it brilliant?)

Skyler- thanks for your continuous encouragement...it’s been quite hard these first few days, trying to figure out how to distribute the points without overeating and consequently not having any points left for the second half of the day. It appears, though, that it has already achieved something remarkable which I thought I would share with you and the rest of the MTM group. I would be very interested if these experiences were similar to the ones you have gone through...?!?

1) Hunger. I am hungry. Something I have not experienced in a while. My first reaction for the first three days (in fact even now at times) was panic. I didn’t know how to handle it...when to identify the optimum point when I should feed myself, the quantity, etc ...its been a steep learning curve

2) Taste. Wow. Food tastes good! I am going back to the basics. Today I had rice, veg and fish cooked in a bit of vegetable stock. No more, no less. The colours of the food were amazing and it tasted so good. Hunger really makes a difference.

3) Frame of Mind. Knowing that I can only eat a certain amount of food a day, I have automatically stopped eating in front of the TV in order to make the most of the food that I can have.

4) Portion Sizes. What an eye opener. I usually have the large (large as defined by WW) portion (60g) of rice and it is tiny...it is sooo little compared to what I used to have. I leave the table still a little hungry...but somehow the hunger disappears after about 30 minutes to an hour.

Great job Kirsten.

Seems that all the thing you’ve noticed are things that happened to me right away as well. Here’s my opinion on how to deal with the issues you’ve raised.

1) You’ll learn a lot about hungry with WW. You learn to change your hunger bar. What I mean by hunger bar, is lets say, you draw a line on the piece of paper (or see below) and call it your “hunger line”. You label on one end of the line, “starving”, and on the other end, “full”. See ex. 1

ex. 1
The Hunger Line
“starving” |---------------------------| “full”

Most people will have a bar line on that “hunger line” that is closer to the full line. I’m using the “/” to represent the hunger bar line.

ex. 2
The Hunger Line
“starving” |------------------\--------| “full”

Maybe from 3/4 of the way tto full, or closer to half-way, this is where most people in there lives sit. What I learned in weight watchers was to shift this line. If you think about this, most people who gain wait easily have that “hungry bar line” closer to the full section. These people, or the old us, will eat more often, cause they reach that bar line quicker. Say you eat lunch, and you find yourself mostly full.

ex 3.
After Lunch
“starving” |-----------------------\---| “full”

Over time, that bar line starts to come back to the middle.

ex. 4
After Lunch
“starving” |-----------------\---------| “full”

At this point, most people will eat again, cause they feel they are hungry again. Its funny cause most people don’t even know this. They just think they are hungry. But they don’t know is that they choose where they are hungry. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t eat, far from it. I’m just saying that in order to learn how to maxamize your food, you have to change your hungry line. Bring it down a notch. My level line on most days is where I feel I need food cause of a small growl in my stomach. It’s not a visual hunger. The difference here is that my eyes (while looking at food) are not telling me I’m hungry, my body is telling me I need more food. I find this really an easy way to understand how to best eat.

Oh yeah, drink lots of water, it makes you more full feeling without getting any more calories! :-D

2) I noticed right away how good food really is when it is as simple as you can get it. I have grown up in this kind of eating condition, so it wasn’t untill I ate at other places that I noticed how much “process” food doesn’t taste as good. The longer you change what you eat, your pallete will change along with it. You won’t find yourself liking the taste of fatty foods. I don’t even like the taste of 100% real ice-cream anymore. It just tastes “funny” to me now.

3) Framing of mind is a big thing that goes along with your 1) topic.

4) Portion size does make a big difference. I eat half a cup of rice. In the begining, I’m like, where did the rice go. I can’t eat just this! Give yourself a week, you be loving your portion size. We can adapt so well, that after a while, it becomes normal, and I feel weird when I get more than a cup full of rice at any time. And yes, you will fill full after 30 minutes, cause it takes your stomach that long to tell your brain to stop eating. Crazy.

Skyler - you are one knowledgeable Weight Watcher! Congrats on all your successes and thank you for taking the time in sharing all your tips and tricks and real life experiences.

Scott - I think it would be helpful to have a specific Weight Watchers forum? It seems to me that there are many people that follow this way of life and Skyler really seems to be passionate about this.

I think a Weight Watchers forum is a great idea.  Before I make the change, now that we’ve got a couple of weeks under our belt, why don’t we open up the “floor” to suggestions about other changes we can make to MTM Land.  Are the catagories working?  Do we need more?  Should we drop some? Let me know Carrie and I’ll also run over and start a thread on the topic.  http://www.motivationtomove.com/forums/viewthread/22/

WW is great. Of all the ways I have tried to loose weight I have had the most success with WW. WW gives you the tools to make better choices when eating and still eat things you like.