How to succeed at Weight Watchers....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 9-21-2010

For some people, Weight Watchers is ideal or at least fits what they most need to lose weight and fat.

First the good news.:

Several things about their approach are sound and test as working.

My memory is that when they tested Weight Watchers, about half the people who began were still going after 6 months to a year and had lost enough weight to make a difference. Most systems they tested were no where near as effective.

1. You can upgrade your food to healthy choices only and get regular exercise and not lose much weight if you have no cutback in your total weekly intake of calories. I should know. I did that myself.

Weight Watchers point system gives you some real leverage on beginning to lose fat and weight because you DO cut back your total weekly intake of food.

There are many ways that have succeeded to help people cut their total intake of calories. Weight Watchers point system works and has been developed and tested to be pretty accurate. It’s easier to use than many other ways of doing it. It isn’t perfect; but it does work.

2. Ongoing support that you actually will use doubles your chances of success – both in losing the weight and in keeping it off.

Weight Watchers meetings do that job well for some people. Not everyone can make a weekly meeting. But if you can, Weight Watchers likely has a meeting near enough to you to get to it.

3. This is particularly true if you tend to have emotional eating triggers that cause you to overeat or eat the wrong things in excess.

The better Weight Watchers meeting leaders do a superb job of giving emotional eaters doable ways to think about this problem and are good at tutoring people well enough they can get control of this problem if they keep working at it. And, with the weekly meetings, that IS available.

4. They have health guidelines now and include some emphasis on exercise too. That’s an upgrade. They used to do neither.

However, their point system was accurate in assessing exercise even before that.

Regular exercise is more important to losing fat weight, keeping it off, and improving and protecting your health than they yet teach – even with the upgrade. But, it takes far more exercise to burn net calories than most people have a clue is the case. Weight Watchers point system has had that nailed for many years now.

So, what to do to be even more likely to succeed if you do attend their meetings?

Here are my suggestions.

1. Stress exercise way more than they do. By itself, it only works to lose fat and weight if you do very large amounts of it.

BUT even 10 or 15 minute sessions of vigorous exercise, particularly interval cardio and strength training just about double your chances of success in losing fat and may as much as make your success in keeping off the fat you lose as much as four times greater.

It helps ensure all or most of the weight you lose is fat instead of bone or muscle.

Even better, by itself it will improve your health as much as the weight loss. In fact, in the early stages when you still have more fat to lose than you’d like, by getting this exercise, your health will gradually get far better than sedentary skinny people have! Why leave a way to double your chances of success on the shelf? Be SURE to include exercise even if you start at a very easy level with super-brief sessions.

The minimum to shoot for is three days of interval cardio and two of strength training and alternating them so you get one day of rest between sessions of the strength training. Even 10 to 15 minute sessions can work.

As long as you can reliably fit it in each week, more is better. So is also doing several sessions of walking each week in addition to the interval cardio and strength training if you can fit it in. (Some people get that done by using transit and making it part of each workday. Others do any TV watching while riding an exercise bike at a walking pace.)

The trick to doing it is to start very easy and progress very gradually. It also helps to do your exercise at home so you need not add travel time each time.
And, doing it in the morning before the varying demands of the day show up is proven to help people keep doing regular exercise.

2. Be even stricter with the health orientation and the low glycemic orientation than they suggest.

a) Sugar, high fructose corn syrup, refined grain foods, and even to some extent 100 % whole grain foods tend to both make you fat directly when you eat them and then cause rebound hunger on top of that. Diet soft drinks and artificial sweeteners tend to act like a very effective appetite booster for sugary foods.

One of the keys to losing fat successfully and keeping it off is stop ingesting things that make you fat or hungrier.

So, stop them all except very occasional treats with real sugar and a low moderate intake of 100% whole grain foods or even less.

That’s stricter than Weight Watchers suggests. It will also improve your fat loss and make your permanent success more likely.

Why leave a tool on the table that makes fat loss easier and more certain?

b) Another way to succeed at fat loss and make it permanent is to be even more strict than they suggest in eliminating foods that are harmful to you.

Every time you decline to eat something with some amount of hydrogenated oils or MSG or oils high in omega 6 or high fructose corn syrup or preservatives or artificial colors or refined grains, you have more real food choices without overdoing your need to restrict calories or limit your Weight Watchers points.

Since these foods are money-makers for the companies that provide them, they are made to taste addictively good on purpose. (The ingredients are cheap!) So NOT eating them gives you much MORE control over your appetites and food cravings.

c) And, Weight Watchers health OK foods are a bit dated.

The health supporting oils and fats include extra virgin olive oil, olive oil, nuts, avocados, wild caught fish and purified fish oil or omega 3 supplements. They probably include some coconut oil and/or some fats from grass fed and pasture fed animals.

Safflower oil, and canola oil are too high in omega 6 oils. Flax oil tends to be consumed in much smaller amounts and used that way may not do too much harm. But these foods mostly belong on your do not eat list. Weight Watchers doesn’t yet show they know that as of my visit to their website just a few minutes ago. They listed them still as health OK foods. The current research proves they are NOT.

The excessive amounts of omega 6 oils most Americans eat tend to make them fat. But, even worse, they have been implicated in causing heart disease and cancer.

3. My third suggestion is somewhat counter-intuitive.

Cut back a bit LESS than they recommend on your total points.

Do be TOTALLY sure to cut back some every single week.

Cut out 100 % or approach 98 % by at least editing out all the bad things we’ve listed and eating MORE natural foods such as health OK fats, protein foods, nonstarchy vegetables, whole fruit, and spices.

As soon as you can possibly do so, begin at least SOME regular exercise – and then gradually keep doing a bit more.

That’s the formula for success. You’ll lose fat without being much hungrier than is bearable.

You’ll stop eating appetite increasers and ingesting things like soft drinks that add calories without lowering your hunger and then boosting it with rebound hunger.

And, the exercise will gradually help you lose fat in addition to the calorie cut back.

But what all too often happens, and where some of their 50% who drop out go, is that the initial point totals they often suggest leave people too hungry.

That is wearing psychologically. It makes you think of the lifestyle upgrades as a temporary evil instead of a permanent lifestyle improvement. (THAT slashes your chances of keeping your lost fat off!)

Even worse, some people trigger their body’s famine response. This STOPS your fat loss cold. You get uncontrollably hungry – and for sugary and fatty foods. Your feeling of well being and energy drop like a rock. Your metabolism slows. And your body uses several biochemical means besides all that to prevent ANY fat loss at all!

So the solution is simple. Decline to go there. Unless you have been eating outrageously too much, cut back by 5 or 10 % --NOT 15 or 20%.

This makes their program more doable for you and more than doubles your chance of taking off fat and increases your odds of keeping it off even more.