Okay, so I know weight watchers works, my wife has lost a lot of
weight on it as have a ton of other people. and I am certainly no
dietitian, but I have a rather strong medical background and research
sports medicine and health at a moderate level.
so here is what I don't understand. There is no debating that carbs,
left unused by exercise, turn to adipose tissue. so how is it that
the weight watchers formula doesn't even consider carbs in the formula
and there is no metric on the diet for how many calories you burned in
a day (exercise is critical to any healthy weight loss plan, in my
opinion).
For example, you could eat a 1 point bagel, that still has 25 grams of
carbs, be sloth-like (burn no calories), and according the WW lore,
lose weight.
I am not saying it isn't true, I just want to know the logic behind
it, because at a technical level, it makes zero sense to me.
can someone enlighten me to what I am missing?
thanks,
Erik
Stormlady - 20 Jul 2007 21:30 GMT
Well, to start, a bagel with 25 g of carbs would be at least 2 points as
each carb gram is 4 cals, so there's at least 100 cals in the bagel, and
that's if the only cals are from carbs.
WW is basically just calorie counting made easy, you eat within a calorie
range each day that leaves you with a calorie deficit at the end of the day,
so fat is burned to make up the missing calories. Basically, even if the
carbs are not burned, and they turn to fat, that resulting fat is then
burned up due to the calorie deficit that the person is maintaining.
However, a healthy diet recommends that 1/2 of a persons daily calories come
from carbs. If someone is going to be eating something that is excessively
high is carbs, it will most likely be high in cals and therefore high in
points. That way, everything is accounted for. WW does promote healthy
eating overall, 2 servings of dairy, 5+ of f+v, healthy oils (2 servings per
day) and water.
WW absolutely promotes exercise and there is an allowance made in the plan
for calories burned in exercise. You earn activity points based on the
intensity of the exercise and your weight, These points can be ate or not as
desired.
> Okay, so I know weight watchers works, my wife has lost a lot of
> weight on it as have a ton of other people. and I am certainly no
[quoted text clipped - 20 lines]
>
> Erik