How to Lose Weight with Weight Watchers

Now incorporating WW's current green points, blue points (formerly called Freestyle) and purple points plus their zero-point free foods and Weight Watchers recipes sorted by points.

When I first lost 30 pounds with Weight Watchers, I collected the "secrets" to my success. It's time to brush them off again, especially to reflect Weight Watchers' latest trio of myWW point-counting systems, the green plan, the blue plan (formerly called Freestyle) and the purple plan.

Straight Talk About How to Successfully Lose Weight With Weight Watchers. Dozens of Practical Tips for Getting Started, Sticking With It, Eating Out, Taking Advantage of the Zero-Point Free Foods.

~ Skip Straight to the Tips ~

Yes, It's That Time of Year. Again.

Well, well, if it’s not that time of year again, the time for weight loss resolutions.

Determination soars, doesn't it?

"This is the year," we tell ourselves.

"This is the year," we resolve, when we'll take off the pounds that collect on our thighs and hips and waists.

"This is the year," we promise, when we’ll really make the food and exercise changes that we know we need – we know! – to live long and healthful lives.

This is the year we’ll finally lose that excess weight.

We will, really we will.

Maybe It's Not You. But It Is Me.

Ahem. Yes. To keep this real, let me switch from third person to first person, even if I’m pretty sure I’m not alone here.

You see, I Alanna, I’ve made myself this same promise for the past three years. And three years in a row, I’ve broken it within a few weeks. (And many Mondays, too. Do we all start our diets anew on Mondays?)

So the words of Lyn, a beautiful writer from the inspiring blog Escape from Obesity, really resonate.

Lyn wrote recently,
here in her own words:

"On New Year's Day, the Internet will abound with people searching for things like "lose weight fast", "cookie diet", "how to drop 20 pounds in 20 days", "cabbage soup diet", and "magic weight loss pill".

I know, because I used to be one of those people.

I was desperate, longing to change what seemed impossible. How on earth can anyone lose 100+ pounds??

It sounds insurmountable. It will take forever. One pound at a time.

And I want that weight gone NOW.

FAST. IMMEDIATELY. TODAY.

Ah, well, we can dream ...

But the reality is,
we just have to work for it,
moment by moment."

So Here I Am, Working For It. Again.

So here I am again, I Alanna, making myself a promise – but the truth is, already, in the back of my mind, I wonder if I’ll keep it.

Sure, just after my mother died, I lost 30 pounds on Weight Watchers.

For more than two years, I kept it off, maintaining a healthy weight at the bottom of the range for my height and age. Then came five pounds, then another five … we know how this goes, right?

One year, I even signed back up for Weight Watchers: it was the Monday (there’s those Mondays again) the week before Thanksgiving. I weighed in once and never went back. (Something about the online software not working right, I explained. Yeah, right.)

Now I’m at the top of the range for my height and age.

So – as much for myself as for the many readers who flock to the Weight Watchers recipes, low-carb recipes and low-calorie recipes here on Kitchen Parade and the Weight Watchers recipes and low-carb recipes on A Veggie Venture, I’m dusting off my old notes, my own tips for making the Weight Watchers program work for me. With any luck, my tips will help others too.

This is my year.

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Quick Links to This Page

~ Getting Started with Weight Watchers ~
~ Sticking to a Weight Watchers Program ~
~ Free Foods Are So Helpful ~
~ Strategies for Eating Out While on Weight Watchers ~
~ Weight Watchers Recipe Resources ~

JUST SO YOU KNOW This post contains links to useful Resources. I personally selected these items —and if you buy something through these links, Kitchen Parade may earn a small commission, no extra cost to you. Every bit helps, so thank you! My Disclosure Promise

YOUR OWN WEIGHT LOSS TIPS When this page was first published, I asked readers to add their own Weight Watchers tips in the comments to register for a give-away for a kitchen scale. That contest is now over but please do keep adding your weight loss tips, they're inspiring for me and for other readers!

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Getting Started with Weight Watchers

COUNT POINTS – Every day, every meal, no matter what.

FOR A WEEK, GIVE YOURSELF A REALITY CHECK – For those who haven't used the Weight Watchers system before (or who are switching from one point system to another, say), I think it's smart to use the first week to get a grip on the reality of your current eating.

So that first week, don't change your eating – in fact, go for it, make your favorites, go back for seconds, keep drinking soda, grab an extra cookie, snack in front of the TV, etc. Don't hold back and definitely don't "diet".

But DO count the points.

Trust me, just counting points will give you plenty to work on, that first week. Figure out the app. Figure out how many points are in the foods you eat most often. Learn how to enter recipes. Ingrain the habit of tracking each meal. Get comfortable with how it all works.

Why?

Counting your "before WW diet" just might be a real eye-opener. If Weight Watchers gives you 23 points per day and you're consuming 40 or 50 or even more? You'll see, viscerally, what our eating habits are doing to our bodies. You'll begin to understand, truly, that Weight Watchers isn't a "diet for a a few weeks or a few months" – it's building the daily habits and practices that we can follow for the rest of our lives.

Counting points for your "before WW diet" could expose some small changes will get you down into your healthy allotted points. For example, one small change for me? I still use half & half in my morning coffee, just not every day and definitely not every cup.

Most importantly, counting points for your "before WW diet" means you'll know where you're starting from, your personal baseline.

GET A FAST START – In the beginning, when you're highly motivated, take advantage of that "fresh start" adrenaline. How? Skip the bread, baked goods and sweets entirely for the first while, consuming protein, vegetables and healthy carbs for your meals. Later, sure, you can add additional carbs and even sweets in modest portions. But in the mean time, you've built in some healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner mealtime habits.

CALCULATE POINTS BEFORE TAKING A BITE – By the time Kitchen Parade recipes are published online, nutrition information and Weight Watchers points are all neat and packaged. But me, I really must-must-must calculate points before I cook. Weight Watchers, of course, makes this easier than ever with the recipe builder on its app, also the bar code reader that keeps you honest, right next to the broccoli bin ice cream freezer.

RESOURCES This is the software that I use for calculating nutrition. These days, running your own application is probably only for the most hard-core cooks who want to develop and maintain their own database of nutrition information and point values. But the big benefit to developing your own is that it's yours, no monthly fees, no re-entering everything to make small changes every time you adapt a recipe. I also maintain that keeping your own information will make you a better cook. What's the difference between sautéeing a pound of vegetables in 1 tablespoon of olive oil instead of the 4 tablespoons that many magazine recipes specify? Huge. With your own information, you'll see the difference instantly.

DON'T COUNT POINTS for BREAKFAST or LUNCH – What??? Didn't I just say to count points every day, every meal? Well, yes.

But I take the work and calculating out of two meals by eating the same things again and again. For years and years, my favorite breakfast was Microwave Creamy Oatmeal with Peanut Butter, now during the winter it's often Creamy Oatmeal and most recently, I've yet to tire of this two-point Everything Bagel Breakfast Salad.

Now, if you need more variety, no problem. Just build up an arsenal of breakfasts and lunches and memorize the point values over time. But make them rote. Make it so you don't need to calculate points for either breakfast or lunch 90% of the time.

START YOUR NEW WEIGHT WATCHERS DAY WITH DINNER – This tip comes from my sister and is a bit confusing at first. But wow, what a difference it makes!

It starts with the recognition that dinner is probably the meal that's hardest to control: maybe your spouse cooks, maybe you go out.

But in contrast, it's super-easy to control breakfasts and lunches, even to eat "zero" points" or "just a few points" without starving ourselves. Or if dinner is light, then you know you've got extra points to spend/invest for breakfast and lunch.

So let's say it's Monday. On the app, apply what you actually eat for dinner on Monday into Tuesday. Tuesday morning, get up and count your breakfast and lunch and everything you eat up until five o'clock (or your own cut-off time, whatever makes sense) to Tuesday's breakfast, lunch and snacks.

Now it's Tuesday and time for dinner. On the app, put what you actually eat for dinner on Tuesday into Wednesday.

Now track and repeat! Do it a few days, it becomes absolutely natural and even, dare I say, easier to follow the Weight Watchers program. Eat what you want for dinner (within reason, making healthy choices, etc.) and then use the next day's breakfast and lunch to reach your point allotment for 24 hours.

But let's say it's mid-afternoon and you're feeling a little hungry but are out of points. Can you wait until five o'clock when the next day starts? You bet you can.

For my sister, for me, this gives the whole Weight Watchers program a flexibility that's really, truly useful and effective. It's worth figuring it out!

GET A KITCHEN SCALE – If you don’t have a kitchen scale, get one. Otherwise it’s all guesswork. The average chicken breast? It weighs 3/4 of a pound even though a serving of (uncooked) chicken is a 1/4 pound. The average baked potato? It weighs a pound. We just don't know how super-sized foods have become until we weigh them!

RESOURCES This is the kitchen scale I've used for years and years. My Disclosure Promise

EAT A LOT – It’s no good to go around hungry. Especially in the first couple of weeks, if you do feel hungry, eat lots of bulk, use no-point and low-point foods to fill up. As you continue on and your body and your palate adjusts, eating less will feel good. You won't need all that bulk to "fill up".

FIND A FAST SNACK – It does take awhile for our bodies to become accustomed to less food volume. During this period, make sure to have "free foods" readily available to snack on fast, little preparation. Believe it or not, my go-to snack is canned green beans for zero Weight Watchers points. I buy them by the case at Sam’s Club!

WATER & MILK – Measure out the day’s quota of water and milk in the morning, drink them throughout the day. (FYI, it used to be that WW plans specified a cup of milk. I think it was a cup per day? I'm not sure why this no longer is the case, I remember Weight Watchers saying back then that there was a correlation between weight loss and milk. Perhaps it was the calcium? Anyway, milk is a habit I keep up.) In the current point plans, plain non-fat yogurt and non-fat Greek yogurt are the only dairy foods that count as "free". Women, especially, need calcium so perhaps you set a daily quote of water and yogurt?

FEELING HUNGRY? IT MIGHT BE THIRST NOT HUNGER I've learned that lots of times when I think I'm hungry, I'm actually thirsty. A glass of water really helps. In addition, when I cook supper, instead of sipping on a glass of wine while cooking, I fill a tall glass with ice and club soda, then sprinkle it with bitters. That way, if we're having wine for dinner, then I'm happy to stop after a single glass.

RESOURCES Thirst-Quenching, Low-Cal, Low-Alcohol Drinks

ARE YOU REALLY HUNGRY? I heard somebody say once, if you're really hungry, you'll eat an apple. So the trick is to ask yourself, "Am I so hungry that I'd eat an apple? or is it that cheesy quesadilla that's calling out to me?" And if the answer is you really want the quesadilla, then you're not really hungry.

Well, hey, what about the apple lovers in the crowd?! Me, I could eat an apple almost any hour of any day. So instead, I've found that my question is, Am I so hungry that I'd make a salad? If not, then, well, I'm not really hungry.

The point is to quickly assess whether you're really hungry or if it's something else.

PREPARE for WEAK MOMENTS – I have three and need strategies to deal with each one. I bet you can list your own. So do that. Write them down. And write down how you'll respond to each one.

• Second helpings
• Losing vigilance after a second glass of wine
• The "hungries" before bed

EXERCISE FIRST – Otherwise it doesn’t / won’t happen, no matter what I tell myself.

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Sticking to a Weight Watchers Program

STAY WITHIN A TIGHT POINT RANGE – Weight Watchers taught me that eating too little is as much a problem for weight gain as eating too much. Work really hard to go no more than two or three points above the daily point goal. It's also super-important to never go below the daily point goal. The tight range seems to be important, training our bodies to expect a certain number of calories, no more, no less. The tighter the range, the more your metabolism self-regulates. I work really hard to never dip into the Weekly Remaining Points.

PORTION SIZE MATTERS – This doesn’t mean that all portions must be small.

• Weight Watchers taught me to think "big" portions of broccoli, spinach, asparagus and other low calorie / high fiber foods and "small" portions of everything else.
• Weight Watchers taught me to think this way: a meat serving is 4 ounces, a main course stew is 1 cup, a soup is 1 cup, a vegetable serving is 1 cup, drinks are 4 ounces, etc.
• Consistency truly helps. That way, there's no debating how big a serving is. There's no remembering the serving sizes for different foods and recipes.

FOOD CHOICES MATTER – It’s possible (though stupid) to maintain and even lose weight eating only cream and butter, calories in and all. But body tone is tighter, firmer, when calorie intake is based only or largely on protein and vegetables.

FRUIT – Weight Watchers and I part paths on fruit.

Officially, fruit is "free" in Weight Watchers now. And maybe point-free fruit works for members who before Weight Watchers snacked on cookies and chips: yes, fruit would of course be the better choice. WW does reward members for choosing whole fruit versus the dense calories of dried fruit (dried fruit is not free in WW) or fruit juice (fruit juice is also not free) or even sugar-free jams. Whole fruit offers more fiber, more moisture and more volume per calorie.

But for me, fruit is a danger zone, it just can't be "free".

Even with whole fruit, I realized that just like fast-food fries, even fruit is super-sized. Just look!

• An average banana weighs 9 ounces, that’s the equivalent of 10 SmartPoints!
• The average apple from the loose fruit bin would rack up 7 SmartPoints! That said, my supermarket DOES sell small apples in three-pound bags (they’re cheaper too).
• FULL DISCLOSURE & REMINDER The official WW program calls bananas, apples and other whole fruits "free". My stance on free fruit is different than what the nutritionists/others at Weight Watchers say.

So I began to think of fruits in one-point volumes and that's what I'd eat, just a point's worth. When I first started Weight Watchers, that meant a cup of blackberries, a cup of blueberries, a cup of cherries, a cup of orange sections, a cup of watermelon, 1-1/2 cups of raspberries and strawberries, a 5-ounce orange, a 6-ounce peach, a 6-ounce pear, a 6-ounce tangerine, etc.

But with SmartPoints? A mere 1.5 ounces of fruit, on average, is all you get for a single SmartPoints.

So if your weight loss has stalled and you thinking fruit might be the culprit, join me in counting points for fruit. I've learned the hard way that free fruit just doesn't work for me.

RESOURCES Want to learn more about my thoughts on free fruit? Read Rethinking Fruit for Weight Watchers, it's completely up to date with Weight Watchers' current myWW point system, the green, blue and purple plans.

COUNT POINTS – Points matter. I can’t say this often enough. Track them on the Weight Watchers app. Write them down. Whatever tracking system you can stick with, use it. Don't let not having a smartphone get in your way!

INSPIRATION – Blog watchers, I love sites like Smitten Kitchen, The Pioneer Woman and Joy the Baker (no links, you notice!) as much as anyone. But for the next while, I’m going to stop visiting because frankly, I know I’ll get sucked in because the recipes look so good. But I am going to pay attention to food bloggers who publish nutrition analysis and calculate Weight Watchers points.

WAKE UP HUNGRY – When I wake up hungry, I know that the Weight Watchers program is working, that my body actually needs calories to get going for the day. This is a good thing – and there's no skipping breakfast!

SPECIAL OCCASIONS – For me, special occasions are all about the occasion, not my weight issues so I choose to give myself a "day off" or "evening off" to just enjoy.

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Free Foods Are So Helpful

When I first started Weight Watchers, all foods had points. But for some years now, Weight Watchers has selected certain foods that are "free" – that's right, no points.

This is a brilliant strategy!

The big thing is that the free foods teach us to incorporate particularly healthful foods into our diets. We fill our fridges and pantries with these healthful foods. We choose recipes that include the free foods. This is so good, building healthy cooking and eating habits.

But once we learn which foods are free, if we can't count points for some reason (lunch out? on vacation? just tired of counting points?), we can just choose the free foods and we're good to go.

WHICH FOODS ARE FREE? Sorry, there's no a quick answer.

• First, there are hundreds of free foods, mostly vegetables and fruit but also some dairy, some protein and so on.
• Second, which foods are free depends on which plan you're following. The "green" plan has many (but the fewest) free foods; the "blue" plan has more (and so many) free foods; the "purple" plan has the most (and so so many

But I'm here to help! I created this condensed list to quickly show which foods are free in each plan. Here you go, Weight Watchers Zero Point "Free" Food Lists.

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Strategies for Eating Out While on Weight Watchers

EAT MINIMAL POINTS BEFOREHAND – If there’s a big dinner that I really want to enjoy, I eat minimal points during the day and so head to dinner having consumed maybe four points total. But I'm also not hungry, I've had a big glass of water and a hearty no-point or low-point salad just before leaving. That way I won't stuff myself from the get go.

EAT HALF – Rather than estimating points at a restaurant, I order what I want but eat only half of what’s served. The exception is salads and vegetables.

So let's say my husband orders an appetizer, he's big on appetizers! I mentally split what arrives at the table in half (his half and my half) and then I eat half of my half aka a quarter of the entire dish. I do this without mentioning it, talking about it, just enjoying the portion I've eyeballed and allotted.

So let's say then I order lasagna that comes with a salad and a roll. I eat all the salad but half the lasagna and half the roll, enjoying every bite!

This "eat half" strategy worked beautifully on a two-week trip last year when we ate out three times a day. But I've also been using it out, ever since. I never go hungry but I don’t come away stuffed either. It’s wonderful!

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Weight Watchers Resources

~ Weight Watchers recipes ~
(sorted by Weight Watchers blue points, formerly called Freestyle)

~ Weight Watchers, Meet Michael Pollan ~
(how my friend Ann lost thirty pounds in three months)
~ My Everyday Creamy Herb Salad Dressing ~
(how does cooking fit into weight loss?)
~ Rethinking Fruit for Weight Watchers ~
~ Low-Carb Recipes ~
~ Low-Calorie Recipes ~

~ About Kitchen Parade & Weight Watchers ~
~ About Kitchen Parade ~
from Kitchen Parade, my food column

~ Weight Watchers Recipes ~
(vegetable recipes sorted by points,
including the famous Weight Watchers Zero-Point Soup Recipes)
~ Low-Carb Vegetable Recipes ~
from A Veggie Venture, my food blog about vegetables

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Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, for more scratch cooking recipes using whole, healthful ingredients, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. If these tips are useful for you, I'd love to know! Just leave a comment below.

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