How tall are you?
Will~

Doug, presuming that you are sitting most of the day in the office, on
the UK system you'd be on 28 points per day only: NO flex points on our
system!  Then you can earn as many exercise points as you like in the
week, but you may only consume 14 of them: the rest go down to weight
loss.  And you can consume those points at any time in the week, not
just on the day you earn them, so you can save them up for a party or
meal out if you like!  :)

It could be any number of things: your body needs time to catch up, you are
eating more processed foods than before causing water retension (this is not
just a female problem) or you are eating some hidden calories that you not
accounting for.

I'm at the same point myself so I can understand your frustration.

You might try gradually lowering it down to 1500. WW lowers the daily point
target by 1 or 2 points with each 25 pounds lost. I don't think you have
done that since you started. It probably is necessary to do that if you wish
to continue losing. You may have found your ideal # of calories to maintain
your current weight and it is going to take reducing the calories some more
in order to get the scale moving again. I would check with a site like this
to see what your ideal # of calories required each day:
http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html that will give you an idea
of what you should be eating.

You are doing much better than I am in the exercise department. WW says
30-60 min a day is good. Maybe increase it a few days by 15 minutes would
help. I know I do better with my weight loss efforts when the weather is
nice. I like to supplement my water aerobics (3x a week) with walking but
its still too cold and windy to start that routine up again.

Do you "eat" those "points"? Maybe you need to only eat a limited number of
those calories burned to get the weight loss going again.

I agree. This is a way of life/way of eating not a diet. Don't make a change
that you can't live with for the rest of your life or you won't be
sucessful.

WW gives us 1 point per 100 calories burned. 1 point eaten is roughly 50
calories. The idea here is that exercise is for losing weight and by eating
only half of the calories burned we contribute to the "calories burned needs
to be greater than calories eaten" equation. That's the other reason WW
limits the number of activity points eaten as well as the restriction of
only eating the points earned that day. The idea is that if we only eat when
we are hungry, then when we need extra food due to exercising they are
available for us to use that day. We also don't HAVE to eat those activity
points at all.

A tweak, yes, but don't think of it as a diet tweak. It's a life style
change that you want to investigate. But you have to be willing to make
these changes gradually or I sense you feel that you will freak out.

The change does not have to be radical. It could be a combination of lowered
calorie, say 200 per day plus a small increase in activity, say 15 minutes a
day.

You may have done this before but I don't remember, how about posting a
typical day or 2 of menus. Maybe we can help you tweak them to help lower
the calories without freaking you out.

Wow, thanks for all your replies, people. Each and every one of them
were very constructive an useful.

Here are some additional thoughts.

Yesterday's sudden jump in weight must have been a temporary water
retention or something from the day before, because this morning I was
down 1.2 kg from yesterday and back to 84.6 kg, which is the range
I've been hovering in the last few weeks.

Kate, that is interesting information about the different way the UK
WW plan calculates and utilizes activity points. I like the fact you
can save up activity points during the week. I'm surprised there are
no free points to spread out over the week though. Even if I don't use
them, my "bonus calories" are a vital psychological "safety buffer"
for me, knowing they are there.

Laura writes: "You might try gradually lowering it down to 1500. WW
lowers the daily point
target by 1 or 2 points with each 25 pounds lost. I don't think you
have
done that since you started. It probably is necessary to do that if
you wish
to continue losing. You may have found your ideal # of calories to
maintain
your current weight and it is going to take reducing the calories some
more
in order to get the scale moving again. "

I think that is the heart of the matter. My diet concept was a little
bit different from WW's here in that rather than continuing to reduce
points/calories and keep weight loss linear I thought I would start
with my goal weight calories and gradually coast to goal weight, even
though I was losing less and less this week. The idea here was to get
used to a constant calorie level I could live with the rest of my
life.

But since I am hovering in the 84 kg range now - and my weight has
actually been hovering up and down and settling on this weight for
SEVEN MONTHS now, it is obvious that I am simply eating the number of
calories I need to to maintain (more or less) this weight.

It might be that my metabolism is just lower than I originally thought
it was. It might be that I am constantly miscalculating some
calories.

I had this thought yesterday: Every time I take one of my U.S. trips I
tend to lose a lot of weight, Then when I get back to Tokyo weight
loss stops (at least this past half year or so I've seen that trend).
So I was thinking, what is the big difference between how I eat here
and there?

One answer is obvious - in the U.S., when travelling, I cook homemade
meals a LOT less and tend to rely on pre-packaged frozen meals (Lean
Cuisine, etc.) or restaurants where the calories are on the menu. Here
in Tokyo I tend to cook myself from raw materials and calculate
calories myself. Maybe the calories I'm calculating for things like
ears of corn, chicken, lean pork, etc, are just wrong.

If I weigh about 84 kg now (still down 41 kg, thankfully!) and want to
get to the top range of normal BMI - that means I need to lose another
10 kg (22 lb).

10 kg is about 12% of my current weight.

So it occurs to me that I can continue to calculate the way I have
been - same bonus calorie plan, same way of calculating foods and
exercise - but just reduce my limit by 12%. Then, over time, I should
get 12% smaller, right?

12% of 1700 calories/day is 204 calories, say 200 calories for round
numbers. So that means if I can just psychologically convince myself
that I can live on a base of 1500 calories/day instead of 1700
calories a day then, over time, I should lose the extra weight. Or,
conversely, if I can somehow do just 200 more calories of exercise a
day that should make up the difference too.

(I wish the Universe would give a better calorie discount on some
foods though...)

Or, I can borrow a bit from WW's exercise philosophy and stop giving
myself too abundant a calorie credit for exercise.

Laura also wrote "WW gives us 1 point per 100 calories burned. 1 point
eaten is roughly 50
calories. The idea here is that exercise is for losing weight and by
eating
only half of the calories burned we contribute to the "calories burned
needs
to be greater than calories eaten" equation. "

That is what I suspected - in WW you only get 1/2 of your exercise
calories towards more eating. Maybe I should do that. That, in itself,
would come to about 90-100 calories per day based on how I'm counting
exercise these days.

Also, one other thought comes to mind when I look at the spreadsheet
and see when I basically stopped losing weight and then it started
creeping up again. My dog, Tao, passed away in October at age 14 years
2 months old. I would always take Tao for multiple walks a day and
that added up to at least 90 minutes to 2 hours of just getting out
and walking around. During his last year he was walking very very
slowly, and I have never counted dog walks as countable exercise, but
maybe just getting out and about with Tao plus the fact that I never
deducted those calories really made a difference over time.

So lots of combinations to think about.

Thanks, people!

doug

p.s. Last night I ate fresh mushrooms and eggplant sauteed in Mazola
zero-calorie butter spray with garlic seasoning mixed with a few
ounces of boneless white mean chicken and some oyster sauce. I
calculated just about 210 calories for a very large, satisfying
portion.

Doug,

First, CONGRATS on your consistency..I admire you for that in the long time
you've posted on here VS my being a yo-yo.

Secondly, here are my recommedations for you.

1. Take a month and don't eat what you earn in activity points..maybe you're
at a plateau and you're body needs a nudge. Some may encourage to eat your
max points for a couple of weeks and then drop down to your usual pattern
and not eat your earned AP's...

2. Bump up your exercise in the cardio arena to ensure you're getting your
heart rate up to a Target Rate that guarantees you are burning fat.

3. Be thankful that you're still on-plan and experiencing a slight "bump"
and it will pass.  :)

Glenn B  TX

with you being a numbers guy you really need to actually look at the math
formulas for points, and I also think you need to go and get one of those
BMI tests where you float in the water.  Lee, just thinking about
information that might lead to options, Lee

Great low calorie snack/meal for "people barely able to cook".

1. Coat the fry pan liberally with that Mazola zero-calorie butter
spray. Add garlic. Then throw in chopped up mushrooms and/or eggplant.

2. Add a little bit of oyster sauce and cook really well, until most
of the liquids are got.

Very yummy and very low calorie and very filling.

If you throw in some white meat chicken you have a home cooked low
calorie dinner too.

I've done this for dinner the last two nights and dropped 1.2 kg and
then 0.4 kg = 1.6 kg the last two days.

Of course walking 8 miles yesterday could have helped too. :)

doug