I often hear the complaint from folks that they just can not lose weight despite “Doing everything right”. Is this your problem too? Have you really done everything right? Do you really know for sure that you have done all you should? Are you going to try to convince me of that, or are you only attempting to convince yourself…

Let me get real, and give you the heart of the matter of why you can not lose despite “Doing everything right”.

You are not doing everything right.

It is simple as that.

It does not matter if you are male or female, young or old. Unless you have a medical condition diagnosed by a doctor, you are not doing everything right. Here is why;

No matter who you are, weight management is a simple matter of calories in verses calories burned. Period. You can attempt to convince yourself, or even others otherwise, but if you can not lose fat, you are either under estimating your calories consumed or over estimating your calories burned, or a combination of both points. I have not been in school a number of years, but this used to be a part of our lessons in Junior High School Biology classes.

Weight Watchers is an excellent program for losing weight. I know that many of you reading this have come over from their social media platform Connect. But, there are a few problems with them in which I will address along with a few other issues outside of their realm.

1. The point system on Weight Watchers does not address calories in verses calories consumed. It does not do this on Free Style nor did it address this issue in the prior version. I can no speak out on their meetings and what is addressed, but for online members, the important information is pretty damn vague. Eat these points and lose weight. Eat what you want as long as you remain within the Smart Point allowance. Now under Free Style, people are obviously over eating their caloric needs with “Free Foods”. Free does not, repeat DOES NOT, equal calorie free.
2. Calorie and macro-nutrient information is available when you track your food on Weight Watchers app, but for online members there is very little instruction to point you in that direction when you have trouble losing. I personally feel this is a disservice to their paying clientele. Too many think all they have to do is not exceed their points and they should lose weight. The fallacy in that is the calories you consume can be all over the map compared to the Smart Points you have consumed in the day. For instance, I eat 2500 calories every day. 2500 calories can equal anywhere between as little as 26 Smart Points to as many as 68 Smart Points. The pictures below are from one day to demonstrate how absurd the point system can be. On this particular day, I only ate 1932 calories which worked out to 68 Smart Points.

   Then you can see where 1766 calories came out to 46 Smart Points. This flawed system can have you either over eating or under eating if you are not careful. Both conditions can and will stall your weight loss. Note, that I eat a tremendous amount of points and manage to maintain my weight. The way I eat, I have a difficult time not losing.

   Now Lets Talk About You

I have given you a few examples of where Weight Watchers Free Style is flawed, How ever, if you are serious about losing weight and being healthy, the rest is on you and only you.

1. You have began a weight loss journey, but have you studied what it is going to take to lose the weight, or did you pay your Weight Watchers dues and skim over their app instructions without fully understanding the app? If this is the case, you need to go read up.
2. Do you track every bite that you take during the day? If you baked the family a cake, did you lick the batter from the bowl or the beaters? Did you track that? If you baked a batch of cookies, did you nibble an of the dough? How about a few sporadic pieces of your kids hard candy during the day? A piece here and a piece there can not hurt if it is not tracked, right? If you keep a nut bowl and nibble on calorie dense nuts through the day, know that as with the other stuff I mentioned, you can easily eat a few hundred calories beyond what you need to maintain weight or to lose. If your weight is a battle, you must track what you eat or you will easily underestimate how much you have consumed in the day.
3. Do you eat processed foods? When you grocery shop, do you only shop the outer aisles, or do you go down all the interior aisles where all the quick and easy garbage is located. Foods of convenience are garbage for a few reasons. They are almost always loaded with sugar, salt, fat, nitrates and other preservatives. If you can not pronounce or do not know what each ingredient is in the ingredient list, you might want to leave it on the shelf or in the freezer. Do you know what sodium erythorbate might be? How about Tri Sodium Phosphate (TSP) which is found both in processed foods and is also commonly used for cleaning walls before painting. Yummy stuff indeed…
4. Do you still eat sugar? You bet, I just had to go here. I know that Weight Watchers says you can still eat sugar and lose weight. This is actually true for some folks, but for most of you, this is a humongous disservice to you, their loyal and paying customer. Sugar is an addictive substance which causes many health problems which I have written extensively about. Most people with weight issues have come to this dilemma because of a lack of control over the cravings which sugar will cause. Obviously, sweet treats which contain tons of sugar are lacking nutritional value. Cookies, doughnuts, cakes and pies etc, load you with tons of it while not giving your body any meaningful nourishment. It’s the same with drinking sugar laden drinks such as soda pops and fruit juices. And then, there are hidden sugars in so many foods of today, especially in the processed garbage which tastes good and might be convenient, while only serving to harm your health and well being in the long run. This is a fact, as long as you are the type who craves the sweet stuff, you will never permanently lose your weight while still eating it. Eventually, you will once again lose all self control and the weight will pile back on. We read about this multiple times per day on Weight Watchers Connect.
5. When you exercise and log it on Connect, are you honest with yourself about the time committed to your physical activity and the effort expended? This is a serious question as I am a pretty serious about my physical fitness activities and I often see people achieving way more Fit Points than I do. Did you truly understand the exercise intensities you can pick from when tracking your fitness on Connect? Did your heart rate truly get elevated to where you had a difficult time speaking or maybe you could not speak at all? Would you expect me to believe you had a high intensity session where the effort was such that you could not speak and that it lasted a full hour? I will raise the bullshit flag on that one every time unless you are an elite level athlete. I will go out on a limb here and say that most over estimate their level of intensity by leaps and bounds and collect Fit Points which are not truly warranted and then eat them while questioning why the number on the scale is not going down.

Friends, I hope this helps some of you in your journey of weight loss and towards health and wellness. Be honest with yourself in how much you eat and exercise. Visit our blog and read up on nutrition, physical fitness and women’s issues. Senior citizen issues too. Brenda authored a great piece tonight on this topic.

At David’s Way, we promote healthy living through nutrition, physical fitness and stress reduction by “Making Our World Small”. What that means is to make the attempt every day to reduce the mental clutter in your life which brings stress, stress that is often the monster that leads into the trap of eating large volumes of crap and killing our hard earned success in our journey towards health and wellness. At David’s Way, we actually promote a life style over a diet. We will never tell you what to eat. What we will tell you is what to not eat, and that is sugar and processed foods. We will not tell you that you have to eat certain foods, prepared in certain ways which only serve to stress you. We promote eating a high protein diet that is low in complex carbohydrates which should be between 100g to 150g per day. We will advise you to consume from .8g to 1.6g per pound of body weight of lean protein per day in order to build and or maintain your lean muscle mass which is critical to your well being and plays a large role in your metabolism. The more lean muscle you have, the more proficient your body will be at burning fat. Check out our recipes, and keep coming back for more. We are building on recipes constantly.

We promote vigorous exercise for all who are able and advise all to get cleared by their doctor before beginning any exercise regimen. While weight training is my favorite choice as well as that of Brenda Sue, we also promote cardiovascular training whether it is some form of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), long distance running or jogging to simply walking at a brisk pace for as long as you can. You can always build up to doing more when you have taken that first step.

At David’s Way, you have my pledge that we will always bring you factual information to help you along your way to health and wellness. Know that weight loss is the added benefit of following my way. We write and share because we care.