Weight Watchers Canada

Here's the thing. I pay $20/month for access to Weight Watcher's Canada's website, including their calculators, recipes, trackers, really everything but meetings.

And I have a hard time with it. No reason to, really, other than that list I put together yesterday. (See post Once more into the breach...)

The premise of Weight Watchers is actually quite simple:

1. Based on your age, height, and weight you are allowed to eat a certain amount of points every week. This number resets with no carry overs on a weekly basis. They have a calculator for this, and it is updated automatically as you track your weight loss/gain on the website.
2. You can increase the amount of points available for eating by exercising. Every point gained by exercise is another point you can eat. They have a calculator for this, and a tracker with a nice little "Click Here" button to transfer activity points into additional food points.
3. Everything you eat is worth a certain number of points, based on a formula that uses the fat, carbohydrate, dietary fibre and protein values of the food. They have a calculator for this, and for foods that you might not be have a Nutrition Facts label for, they have a very comprehensive database of foods with known values that you can search for. There is a tracker for this as well, with an app that will even remind you to track your food as often as you like. As you add food, it automatically calculates how many points you have left to eat that week.

As I said, simple. You input your basic data once, update your weight weekly, track your food and activity daily, and as long as you stick with their guidelines, you lose weight.

Again, not really sure why this hasn't worked for me.

A few other pertinent details:

• Food tracker has four times for eating: Morning, Midday, Evening, and Anytime. There is also a Hunger tracker embedded into the food tracker that lets you guage how "well" you're eating - I believe this plugs into the science of the glucomic index, but they have dummied the language waaay down.
• Activity tracker simply tracks what you did, how long you did it for (in minutes), and how intense the activity was. There are three options for intensity:
• Low: You can talk or sing, your breathing is regular and you are not sweating.
• Moderate: You can talk, but you can't sing. You breathe often and deeply and begin sweating after 10 minutes.
• High: You can talk briefly, but you can't sing. You breathe rapidly and deeply and begin sweating after 3-5 minutes.