4 Tips to Lose Weight With Weight Watchers

Fitness coach Kendra Fletcher shares 4 tips that can help us follow Weight Watchers successfully. She joined Weight Watchers in October 2011 after having her second child and realizing that she needed a structured system to help her lose weight. She lost 20 lbs within 6 months and today she is a Weight Watchers Lifetime Member. That means she has free access to the plan for as long as she manages to keep her weight within 2lbs of her ideal weight. Her goal is to help people achieve their fitness, nutrition, and well-being goals.

1. Track Your Points

At the beginning, since you don’t know the points of most foods, it’s going to take you around 15 minutes a day to track your points. Some people think it takes a lot of time to track points, but that’s not true. Are you willing to invest 15 minutes a day to have higher chances of success and to be able to lose weight? I think most of us can find that time and make tracking points a priority.

There are some tools that can help you track your points. In the Weight Watchers website, there is a recipe builder where you enter the different components of a recipe (the amounts of carbs, protein, fat, and fiber) and the tool calculates the points. There is also a huge database of foods, including restaurant foods, and their points values. All this is accessible online from your computer or Smartphone. Make sure you use the Weight Watchers Scanner. This is a separate app that you can download. When you scan the barcode of a food item in the grocery store, the app will give you the points value.

2. Weigh and Measure Your Food

In order to track your points correctly, you need to weigh or measure your food. I encourage you to invest in a food scale because this will help you more accurately measure your portion sizes. You can also use measuring cups and a measuring spoon. For example, when I put olive oil in my pan, I measure exactly how much I am using with a measuring spoon.

Of course, don’t track your food to the point you get obsessed with it. If you start counting points with the expectation that you will always be able to track with absolute precision, you will get disappointed and eventually quit. The truth is you can’t always know exactly how much you are eating. But even if you can’t be precise, it’s still better to track than not to track, because this will still give you an idea of where you stand with your points. And if sometimes, at the end of the week, your estimated points are 10-15 points off of your actual points, this will not prevent you from losing weight.

You can understand the importance of tracking points if you think of the credit and debit card analogy. A credit card allows you to spend money without a conscious limit. The expenses build up every day, and at the end of the month you wonder where all this money was spent. This is what happens when you don’t track what you eat. You go through life, day after day, eating food, and a couple of months down the road you ask yourself “how did I gain this weight?”. Tracking your points is more like using a debit card. You start with a pre-determined spending limit, you see what you have left for the day, and you stay on track.

3. Focus on the Power Foods

Power foods are lower in fat and carbohydrates but higher in fiber and protein. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy, and lean meats are Power Foods. They keep you fuller longer because. They make you feel satisfied. Power Foods are marked with a green triangle in the little pocket guide you got when you signed up for Weight Watchers. Being healthy and nutritious food, Power Foods give you a good nutritional value for your points. In other words, they have few points but they keep you full. All fruits and most vegetables are free on Weight Watchers so make sure you eat plenty of them, as they will keep you full.

As you are trying to shift your eating to Power Foods and healthier foods, some of the Weight Watchers Cookbooks that you can buy online or get them from your Meetings will help you.

4. Start to Exercise

Take small steps toward exercising every day. Can you walk 15 minutes a day? Start really small and then add some more exercise into your routine as you progress. Exercise will rev up your metabolism. It’s going to make you feel good about yourself. It will make you stronger and healthier.

When you exercise you earn extra Weight Watchers Points. This is a great motivation as this 2-point Hersheys miniature you are craving may only be 30 minutes of walking away.

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