In January 2019, I was feeling pretty low about myself. I had allowed my weight to get out of control, and I was closing in on a number I never want to see on the scale. I decided, purely on a whim, to join Weight Watchers (WW) after a coworker told me that he’d lost 20 lbs without even trying. It wasn’t my first time with WW, but I vowed it would be my last.

But it wasn’t long after I started that I began to have … second thoughts. I was losing weight, but at the same time, I was uncertain about the program. I was doing online exclusively then, and the program was fairly easy to follow, but there were things that made me uncomfortable. Chicken breast (boneless & skinless) was zero points, as long as it was plain. Most fruits and vegetables were zero points, including corn, but not potatoes. Steak could be very high in points, but most fish and seafood was zero.

Didn’t these things have calories???

Well, of course they did, but I was still concerned. Was I eating too much? Was I eating too little? What was the sweet spot? The basic premise of weight loss is simple – eat fewer calories than you burn. The problem was, I wasn’t sure if I was eating fewer calories than I burned, so I turned to another weight loss app – Lose It! Lose It! (LI) is a simple calorie counter. It doesn’t offer you any suggestions on how to lose weight, it doesn’t vilify any foods. All it does is count calories and track your weight. If you pay for the annual upgrade (also available as a lifetime upgrade), you get more features, such as water tracking. There’s also a website in addition to the app, which is nice, and they offer some social interaction. So I started my free account and got set up, and started double tracking in both the WW app and the LI app. What I found was interesting.

Despite all the zero point WW foods, I was still eating less than 1200 calories a day, based on my LI tracking. According to LI, I could eat a lot more calories, and based on my research, there is never a reason to eat fewer than 1200 calories, unless under the direction of a physician. No wonder I was always hungry!

In the fall of 2019, WW changed their plan. What they actually did was add two more plans so that members could choose one of three plans. The green plan offers a few zero point foods – fruits and vegetables; the blue plan offers more zero point foods – boneless skinless chicken breasts, most seafoods; and the purple plan offers a wide variety of zero point foods, including whole grains such as quinoa, oatmeal, and brown rice. I immediately switched to the purple plan (the plan I originally started with in January 2019 was now the blue plan), and watched my calorie intake plummet. I had already been struggling since my birthday in August, but now I was eating 900 calories a day because I found that I really didn’t want to limit most of my eating to that zero point food list. See, the more zero point foods you get, the fewer points you have. A lot of people may find the big zero point list liberating, but I found it limiting. I don’t really eat a lot of the things that were on the list – plain potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, oatmeal … I can’t stand oatmeal to begin with (unless it’s in granola), but I do like the other things – I just don’t eat them that often. I switched to the green plan, and started counting everything. That’s when I found out that according to Green, farmed salmon has 6 points, but wild salmon has only 2. What the actual … ?!?!? I mean, really? Texas Roadhouse 5 oz grilled salmon, which I LOVE and counted for like 2 or 3 points on Blue, was now 9 points!!! NINE! Meanwhile, it has a modest 320 calories. The bread at Texas Roadhouse, which is AWESOME, has 120 calories without the added butter. But it’s 4 WW points.

I began to realize that WW is trying to control my macros, something I’m not all that worried about, and which I think is overblown for general weight loss anyway. I mean, sure, if you have particular fitness goals – if you’re a weight lifter, or you need to be particularly careful because of some dietary constraint from your doctor – macros might be important. But for me, just trying to lose weight and eat a little better, I’m not particularly worried about whether or not I’m eating “too many carbs.” I’m concerned about whether or not I’m eating too many calories.

The long and short of all of this is – I’m struggling to lose weight. I’ve been struggling since last August. I’ve tried the WW approach and I feel stuck. Limited. And like it’s impossible to “do well” on the program if I’m not within my points range each week. Meanwhile, I have a vacation coming up, birthdays on the horizon (mine and the kids), and a desire to still lose more weight, but tired of feeling constrained all the time. Should I really be worried about eating a lean hamburger patty without a bun because the bun is 6 points and I’m out of points for the day (but only 200 calories, and I have plenty of room for that)? What am I gaining from WW?

Before the pandemic crap, I would have said I was getting some social interaction from it. Now … now, I feel like I’m being fleeced because we can’t meet in person, and I’m still paying $45/month for the privilege.

I’m seriously, at this point, considering discontinuing WW and working strictly off calorie counting. Before I cancel, I’m going to give it a few weeks to see if I can stay the course on my own with the calorie counting and see how it works for me. If I do well, and I lose weight, I may drop WW. I’m not being that interactive with it right now anyway, and vacation might be a really good time to see if I can stick with a weight loss program that isn’t too restrictive. I can eat between 1600 to 2100 daily and lose 1 to 2 pounds a week according to LI. Maybe it’s time I put that to the test and see how it goes.