7 Helpful Tips for Making Weight Watchers Freestyle Work Better for You

Are you frustrated with the new Weight Watchers Freestyle Program? Here are 7 helpful tips!

A large group of people are beginning to exit the latest Weight Watchers Freestyle program.

Are you thinking about doing the same thing?

 
I first got a hint of this, due to a comment left on my prior Freestyle article, but I've been seeing this tendency pick up speed over at Reddit, as well. More and more people are returning to the prior Weight Watchers program.

The flexibility of the latest program has a lot of folks upset because they know themselves well enough to understand that they need more structure in their eating plan than what the new Freestyle provides.
Freestyle isn't working as well as they hoped, so they are bailing on the new program and going back to what worked better for them: regular SmartPoints.

The current program is designed to shove you toward making healthier food choices, rather than just giving you a gentle hint of encouragement. And Weight Watchers is

 doing it by penalizing saturated fats and sugars, and rewarding lean protein foods.

They were already penalizing fats and sugars within the SmartPoints values, so that's not new. What's new is moving lean chicken and turkey breast, fish, eggs, yogurt, beans, and corn to the zero-points list. And this is why people are upset.

On the surface, this sounds like a great idea.

There's less to track and you are less likely to overeat protein foods. Most of the zero-points foods are low in fat and less likely to raise your blood glucose level too high. However, the potential for calorie abuse is still huge.

Plus, if you happen to be insulin resistant, beans, peas, and corn -- despite their low glycemic values -- come with a carbohydrate punch that can actually cause your weight loss to stall if you overeat them.
Technically, Weight Watchers has no foods that are totally eliminated from the program.

And that includes saturated fats and sugars.

Penalizing them by doubling their calorie count in the formula doesn't mean you can never have them. You just have to pay a super high price to eat them.

The ability to eat whatever you want has been a large selling point in years past, making Weight Watchers different from other weight-reducing programs, but in real-life, it doesn't work out quite that easily. 
When you see the word "free" or "no limits" on intake, there is a chance that you will move into a mindless state where you start eating differently than you ate before the new program was implemented.

As a result, weight loss slows down or stops, feelings get hurt, and the disappointment causes you to go looking for something to blame. In this case, its Weig

ht Watchers Freestyle program that is the bully, and the dieter is a victim.

But personal responsibility doesn't work that way.

We always have a choice.

And while most of those upset with Freestyle have charged back to greener pastures, the problem really isn't Freestyle.

Why are Weight Watchers Members Upset?

SmartPoints hasn't changed.

Calculations for SmartPoints remained the same. What changed was your daily SmartPoints budget and the ability to roll over a maximum of 4 SmartPoints a day into your weeklies if you don't need them.

The daily budget was reduced by 7 points a day to make up for the calories in the lean protein choices that got moved to the zero-points list. Weight Watchers feels that you should not have to track them because these are foods that you are less likely to overeat:

"These foods were chosen specifically as strategic go-to foods because they are less likely to be overeaten." (Weight Watchers FAQ) 
The move didn't have anything to d

o with marketing or wanting dieters to fail, as those who are angry hypothesized. The changes had to do with the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans that came out in 2015.

This is also the main reason why lean beef, pork, and lamb didn't make the zero-points list, even though nutrition wise, they are almost equal to chicken. The USDA recommends weekly limits, so Weight Watchers has you track them.

"The USDA classifies beef, pork, and lamb as red meat and they suggest weekly consumption limits. Additionally, the American Institute for Cancer Research and The American Heart Association recommend limiting red meat consumption." (Weight Watchers FAQ)

Weight Watchers is following the advise of:

• experts in the field of nutrition
• the USDA
• the American Heart Association
• the American Institute for Cancer Research
• a panel assigned by the U.S. Government to make dietary recommendations for the majority of Americans

They are NOT doing their own nutritional research. They wait for experts to tell them what to do.

The latest guidelines encouraged more protein, less sugar and carbs, and removed the limits on saturated fats, so that's what Weight Watchers did too. Having you track red meat, starchy carbs, and sugars is Weight Watchers contribution to herd mentality.

These are business-focused decisions, of course. I'm not denying that. But they were not made for the reasons that those upset with the program believe.

My Top 7 Ideas to Maximize Weight Loss on Weight Watchers Freestyle

Running back to what worked before is one option. Sure. Raise your points to 30 and go on. But you really don't have to do it that way if you don't want to. There are other ways to make the new Freestyle program work better for you.

The aim of any weight-loss diet is 

to not only reach an ideal weight, but give you the tools and tricks you need to help keep the pounds from coming back.

Any tricks implemented must be totally integrated into your life permanently, and from the looks of things, Weight Watchers may be heading in the direction of one day eliminating the Points system entirely.

Eating for health and consciously restricting your portion sizes is a much better idea than dieting.

But to turn dieting into a lifestyle, changes need to be practical, useful, and something a real-life 

Weight Watchers member would actually do, so here is how to make Freestyle work better for you.

Tip #1: Check Out Your Weight-Loss Expectations

Weight loss expectations can kill your motivation if they are not realistic. The average weight loss on Weight Watchers is 1 to 2 pounds per week, depending on your:

• gender
• age
• height
• hormonal state
• and degree of overweight

For those who are short, older, or post-menopause, your average weight loss might be as small as half a pound per week. This is perfectly normal! The body can only mobilize and use a certain amount of body fat per week. 

If short or older, you might only lose 1/2 pound a week.
Be patient and accept your limitations.

You won't lose weight every single week or even every month on Weight Watchers because weight loss isn't linear.

Because of that, make sure that you're in this for the long haul.

If you're treating Weight Watchers like a crash diet, you're going to be very disappointed. Weight loss is filled with ups and downs, twists and turns, short pauses, and lengthy plateaus. You can't force your body to give up its fat stores if it doesn't want to.

From day one, the body tries to correct the energy imbalance you created by restricting food intake. Keeping your calorie deficit small can ease some of the physical stress on the body, but there is only so much you can do.

As the fat empties out, the body doesn't like shrinking those fat cells.

It often stuffs them with water, while waiting for extra calories to come in, so they can be refilled. This water retention is more common in those who have a long history of yo-yo dieting, but I've even seen it happen to newbies.

With lean protein foods and vegetables on the zero-carb list now, it's easy to eat so many zero-carb foods that you move into a low-carb state called Ketosis without realizing it. There is nothing wrong with doing that.

But switching to a meat and vegetable diet will cause you to change metabolic pathways. Instead of predominantly burning glucose for fuel, the body will be more primed to burn fats.

Ketosis can set you up for water fluctuations and dehydration.

Water fluctuations are nothing to be concerned about, despite what the media tells you. You aren't gaining body fat, so there's nothing to worry about either.

But the bouncing movement on the scale can be frustrating because it will look like the diet isn't working, even when it is.

Make sure that if you are eating mostly meat, eggs, cheese, and vegetables that you give the diet plenty of time to work before you tweak anything. Pay attention to how your clothes are fitting instead.

Since low-carb diets use a different metabolic pathway than a standard Weight Watchers diet, you'll need to give yourself a few weeks to adapt to burning fatty acids efficiently because you can realistically analyze whether the diet is right for you, or not.

Tip #2: Don't Worship Your SmartPoints

SmartPoints are not a goal.

They are a target that you aim for on a daily and weekly basis.

This target comes with a RANGE that you're encouraged to stay within, if possible. The range is 10 points below your daily points budget and up to 5 points above your daily target.

That's a 15 SmartPoints spread.

If you fall anywhere within that range, you are in the optimal zone for good nutrition.

You don't have to use all of your SmartPoints every day, and it's okay if you go a few points over. Hunger is the kiss of death when it comes to dieting, so eat if you're honest-to-goodness hungry.

For some reason, a lot of Weight Watchers members feel guilty about tipping into their weeklies.

SmartPoints are designed to give you a calorie deficit, even though you don't officially count calories. Weight Watchers has already done that for you.

Where you might run into problems is if you're older, very short, sedentary, or have a history of yo-yo dieting. In these cases, the deficit might not be large enough to see progress on the scale without cutting out or way down on your weeklies.

And the same thing can happen as you get nearer to goal. Weight Watchers has a minimum number of calories that it wants you to eat. Sticking to the bare minimum can prevent you from reaching goal weight.

But even so, there's nothing wrong with having a maintenance day if you're hungry.

Ditch the word "cheat." There's no cheating when you're eating for health, instead of dieting. Unless you went mindless and participated in a full-fledged binge, you simply ate at a maintenance level of points.

In 2016, I dropped 40 pounds using a flexible eating style that included a maintenance day here and there. While I'm not where I want to be yet, I'm easily maintaining that 40 pound loss today.

Tip #3: To Make Freestyle Work Better Use a Weekly Calorie Deficit

Stop looking at Weight Watchers as a diet and start thinking of it as an eating plan instead. Don't dwell on what you ate yesterday. Learn from your mistakes and let them go. Move into today with a clean slate. Always.

Think in terms of creating a weekly calorie deficit instead of demanding daily perfection from yourself. Rather than aiming for 23 points a day, aim for 161 points a week instead. This will allow you to stagger your daily intake of points instead of trying to hit the exact same number day after day.

Staggering your SmartPoints intake can help you avoid some of the adaptions that come from reducing food intake. This is probably the theory behind weekly points.

Not eating exactly the same amount from day to day keeps the body guessing at how many calories to expect. If there's no set pattern, when the body doesn't know, the body won't adapt as quickly as it would if you ate exactly 23 points every day. Fewer adaptions means your metabolism will run better and won't drop as fast.

This is what the 4-point rollover is all about, as well, but Tip #1 can apply here, too. Don't become a slave to the rules. If you go 5 points under on one day and 7 over on the next, you're really only over by 2 SmartPoints for the week and 60 to 70 calories.

Each SmartPoint is only worth about 30 to 35 calories, so don't get caught up in the numbers. What you do consistently, week after week, and month after month, is what determines your weight.

Tip #4: Reduce Your Stress Load

Life isn't going to hand you a smooth, easy ride. The nature of life is challenge and challenge you she certainly will, so just expect life to be a bit rocky and try to stay calm, regardless of what's going on around you.

When things don't quite go your way, the brain releases stress hormones to help prepare the body for an emergency situation.

Those stress hormones include cortisol, which clears the bloodstream of fatty acids, sends them to the liver to be stored in your fat cells, and prepares the body to break down glycogen into glucose, so you can fight your demons, or run for safety.

For most of us, this stress cycle gets triggered whenever you get your feelings hurt, you're upset, or worried. There's no real physical threat involved.

While you might be angry, the exaggerated amount of glucose produced due to that anger doesn't get used unless you physically act out. When there's a lot of glucose available for fuel, there's no need to burn any body fat, so weight loss gets put on hold until after all of that glucose is used.

If you have chronic stress, which means stress on top of stress on top of stress, weight loss can actually stop completely because your glucose level will stay elevated.

Tip #5: Track Everything, Even Zero-Point Foods

Weight Watchers tells you that you don't have to track zero-point foods, but that honestly doesn't make any sense, until your new eating style becomes second nature. Tracking prevents mindless eating, which is more likely to happen now that lean protein sources, starchy beans and peas, corn, and sugary fruits are all on the zero-points list.

For those who adopt a low-carb diet within the Weight Watchers Freestyle format, and avoid starchy carbs and most fruits, your hunger will go down, making it less likely to overeat.

Those who eat mostly lean meats, eggs, and veggies
will go into Ketosis, so appetite will go down.

But if you have a lot of higher point foods that you're going to try and work into your day, or if fruit, corn, and beans are a major part of your diet, then keeping track of just how much you're eating can help make the Weight Watchers Freestyle program work better.

Food you aren't required to track can still show patterns of mindless eating, which you won't catch if you're not writing it down.

For example, on the old Weight Watchers Exchange Plan, there was a limit of 3 to 5 fruits per day, depending on gender. Corn and peas were equal to bread, so they were a part of the bread exchange, which was limited to 2 or 3 servings per day.

If you're eating more than that, it could cause your weight loss to stall. While fruit, beans, and corn are very low in calories, they are high in carbohydrates and sugar.

In addition, corn is actually a grain, not a vegetable, which is why it used to be grouped within the bread exchanges.

With summer's bounty just around the corner, you'll want to be careful how many ears of corn you eat in a day because a single cob contains 1 to 2 cups of corn, depending on the size of the ear. One Weight Watchers serving is only 1/2 cup, so an ear of corn is actually two to four servings of grain, depending on how long it is.

Since hubby doesn't have any bottom teeth, I cut the kernels off for him all the time. There is a lot more corn on a single ear then you might think.

Honesty is a must.

While it's easy to forget what you don't write down, lying to yourself about what you're eating and how much won't help you long term. Sustainable weight loss requires personal accountability.

No one is going to see what you write in your journal unless you show them, so do yourself a favor and make sure that you record everything you put in your mouth -- including those little "tastes" you take while cooking dinner.

The first time I joined Weight Watchers, I was shocked at just how often I put food into my mouth while cooking.

Tip #6: Pay Attention to Portion Sizes

Tracking doesn't mean you have to count calories, but you do need to become aware of portion sizes. Even vegetables can drive up your blood glucose level if you eat too many. Most people underestimate how much they eat and overestimate how active they are.

The only way to know for sure is to drag out a kitchen scale, a set of measuring cups and spoons, and make the effort to weigh and measure everything you eat for at least 2 to 4 weeks. This will teach you a lot of things.

Do you honestly know what a tablespoon of mayonnaise looks like?

A tablespoon of mayonnaise is less than you think!

How about a half a cup of rice?

Do you know how much a 1/2 cup rice really is?

Or a 6-ounce potato?

A 6-ounce potato is actually quite small.

When a Whopper first appeared on the menu at Burger King, it was literally a whopper. That puppy was HUGE.

A Whopper was so big you needed two hands
to hold it while you ate.

Today, a quarter-pound burger is considered small next to the half-pounders and triple bacon cheeseburgers that people are more likely to order. French fries no longer come in a little bitty white bag. Now, they come in a giant cardboard box. At some places, you even need a separate plate to hold them all.

French fries no longer come in a little white bag.
Today, they fill your entire plate.

Instead of a 12 to 16-ounce soda, people are coaxed to buy 44-ounce Big Gulps because ounce for ounce, they're cheaper.

Everything is so super-sized today that you might not know what a realistic portion size even is without checking it out. While the Old Weight Watchers Exchange Plan made it easier to relearn, because you had to weigh and measure everything, it's your responsibility to make sure that you are counting the correct number of points for the portion size you're really eating.

Tip #7: Plan, Plan, Plan!

When I used to watch videos of people showing you what they ate during the day on SmartPoints, a lack of planning was the number one reason why folks were going over on their points.

I watched a lot of impulsive eating during the day. People followed their urges and had nothing in reserve when co-workers or friends wanted to go out for drinks or dinner after work.

While there's nothing wrong with keeping a running tally as you go along, aiming for 5 to 7 SmartPoints per meal can make it easier to stay on track and still have plenty of points to use if something unexpected comes up later in the day.

If you know ahead of time that you might go out in the evening, stick to a zero-point or very low-point breakfast and lunch. Freestyle makes this easy. Have hard-boiled eggs and fruit for breakfast, chicken and vegetables for lunch, and keep your snacks within reason.

If you don't go out as planned, you can always have a higher point dinner by yourself or save the extra points for later in the week when you do go out. Some of the people at Reddit do this almost every day, so they can have a nice, higher-point dinner with family. It works for them.

Don't cheat yourself out of living. Just plan ahead.

How to Tweak Weight Watchers Freestyle to Fit Your Lifestyle

The Weight Watchers Freestyle plan is like any other weight-loss diet. You have to tweak it a bit to fit your:

• tastes
• preferences
• lifestyle

Rules are nice, and give you a solid foundation upon which to build, but they are not carved in stone. Eventually, after giving the diet plan time to work, you might have to make a few adjustments.

Just because the structure works as written for a lot of people, that doesn't mean it will work for you. If the flexibility of the new plan doesn't make you happy, then change it to something that does.

It's okay to bend the rules if you need to make Weight Watchers work better.

• Don't like chicken?
• Or fish?
• Or non-fat plain yogurt?
• Don't eat eggs or beans?

Fine.

Don't eat them!

Simply substitute lean beef, pork, or lamb and create your own list of zero-point foods. Just look at the calories and limit your portion size to something that stays within the calorie range for the zero-point food you're replacing.

For example, a 4-ounce serving of boneless, skinless chicken breast is 140 calories. Ground beef that is 90 percent lean is 149. Cook that puppy on the grill and it will be close enough to easily swap, regardless of what Weight Watchers actually says.

A 4-ounce serving of boneless pork loin is about 218. A boneless, skinless chicken thigh is 206. Both are much higher than the ground beef or chicken breast.

But, if you cut the serving size of the pork down to 3 ounces, it comes out to be 165 calories, which is a closer fit. A 3-ounce portion of chicken thigh is 170.

Plus, the amount of fat in pork loin and chicken thighs is very low. There's only 2 grams of fat per ounce of pork and 3 grams for chicken thighs. In comparison, a tablespoon of oil or mayonnaise has 15 grams of fat.

I know this sounds a bit rebellious, to just substitute calorie for calorie, but the Weight Watchers statement on why extra lean beef, pork loin, and lamb were not added to the zero-point list doesn't have anything to do with its calorie count or even its saturated fat content.

It has to do with government agencies being behind the curve in nutritional advice. So make the substitutions you need to and go on with your life. In fact, many people are doing exactly that and still experiencing success on Weight Watchers Freestyle.

And the same goes for your daily and weekly points budget.

If the number of SmartPoints the company is assigning you doesn't work because you don't like the new Zero-Point Foods and you want to keep counting SmartPoints the old way, then change the number back to 30, count the new foods, and go on with your life.

There's no reason to be angry. You are not a victim. You have choices, so make them! No one is going to know how many points you're eating per day if you don't tell them.

You don't have to conform to the new rules to belong to the group. You are free to do what works best for you.

Weight Watchers Freestyle is simply a place to begin your weight loss journey. Where you go after you get the information they share is up to you.

And only you.