Perricone Fans

The main aspect of the Weight Watchers program is their proprietary points system. You are assigned a number of daily points based on your weight, height, age and gender. If you are a woman between 38 and 47 years old, between 5'1'' and 5'10" who weights between 150 and 160 pounds and sits down most of the time you recieve a total of 20 points daily. Add a point for every 10 pounds if your weight is more than 160 pound or subtract a point for each 10 pounds if you weight less than 150. Add 1 point if you are taller than 5'10" or subtract 1 point if your height is under 5'1". Add 2 points if you are mostly staying at work, 4 points if you are mostly walking at work and 6 points if you are doing physically hard work. Finally, if you are a man add 6 points.
Daily point allowance never goes below 18 points or above 44 points. If for your point canculations resulted in a number lower than 18 points, use 18; if your number is higher than 44 points, use 44.
On top of your daily points you are getting 35 weekly points, which you can use any way you want. You can spend them all for a dibber out or you can add 5 points to your daily limit. You can gain additional points by exercising. If you weight 155 pounds, 30 minutes of running will give you 4 points.
You can eat anything you want but your daily food intake has to be limited by your daily point allowance. It's a lot of information on the web that can help you to figure out point values of food. Weight Watchers proprietary formula is also widely published:

p = c/50 + f/12 - min{r,4}/ 5

Where:
p = Points
c = Calories
f = Fat Grams
r = Dietary fiber Grams
min{r, 4} means that only the first 4 grams of fiber count.

I think the best thing about the Weight Watchers is support you are getting from the meetings. I've heard people saying that thinking of fellow Weight Watchers helped them to get up early in the morning to go to gym or to avoid the second cookie on Christmas dinner. So if you can join Weight Watchers group meetings by any means do so.

In the mean time you can print a portable reference card that can help you to calculate points. You can scroll down and open the attachment (points_all.JPG file).

To demonstrate how the reference card works, let's look at the nutritional information for cooked white rice on the left. For one serving (1 cup) you need to check the number of calories (169), number of grams of fat (0 g) and the number of grams of fiber (1.7 g). Based on the number of grams of fiber grams (0, 1, 2, 3 or 4) find the appropriate section in the reference card. In our case this would be the section for 2 gram of fiber.

Locate the number of calories in the up-down direction. The closest number on the chart to 169 calories is 175. Then locate the number of grams of fats in left to right direction - 0 in our example. Finally, locate the number of points where calorie and fat lines cross. You should get 3 points. This means that 1 cup of cooked white rice "costs" 3 points.

To reduce the number of points, you can eat 1/2 cup (1.5 points) or 1/3 cup (1 point). You can mix your rice with steamed vegetables - they are points-free!

To download WW points reference card scroll to the end of the page and download the file "points_all.JPG"

What do you need to start?

You need to track your progress so you need to know how much weight did you loose. We recommend to buy a good scale (like this one: Weight Watchers WW60X Weight Tracking Scale), check your weight every morning before breakfast and write it down. Your weight will not go down every day, maybe even not every week but if you follow the program you will see the downwards trend. You also have to write down everything you eat.

We find measiring cups (KitchenAid Cook For The Cure Measuring Tool Set, Pink) very useful. Food Scale (Newline Electronic Digital Kitchen Food Scale, SAK4162-Silver) is optional but some people find it very handy.