Thursday, December 4, 2008

Losing Momentum... the Momentum Plan!

As many of you may be aware, Weight Watchers has debuted their new "Momentum Plan." Gone are the days of Flex and Core because WW has rolled them into this new and not-so-improved plan. In case you couldn't tell, I'm neither pleased nor impressed with this change. You have to track your hunger and your activity points don't come into play until you've used up all your weekly flex points. I find this to be counter productive. You can't tell me that if I run my ass off on Monday and earn 8 activity points, I can eat those activity points later in the week and still lose weight?? I'm calling bullshit on that one. I was doing just fine on the flex plan, earning my activity points and not dipping into my weekly flex points unless absolutely necessary.

Here is the reality of weight loss, regardless of whatever plan your on:

1) A reduced calorie diet low in fat and high in fiber will aid in weight loss. By eating the proper foods in the proper portions, you can shred pounds. And we all know that you shouldn't eat when your not hungry.

2) Exercises, specifically a combination of cardio-vascular work and resistance/strength training, will aid in weight loss.

3) The two aforementioned factors combined will maximize weight loss. BUT ONLY IF YOU REALLY DO IT!!!

In one of his previous posts, Tony P. (aka AntiJared) mentioned how ridiculous it was when his leader talked about hula-hooping as a form of exercises and I was laughing right along with him. GET REAL PEOPLE!! A hula hoop will not get you into size 4 pants. Neither will 20 minutes of gardening or 40 minutes of vacuuming. Get your ass on a treadmill or elliptical machine for at least 30 minutes 4 times a week. You don't have to run, just move for Christ's sake. Suggesting that the hula hoop is an adequate form of exercises is almost insulting to those of us who exercises religiously.

But back to the diet- I see a lot of people in my WW meetings that should be losing 4-5 lbs a week IF THEY WERE ACTUALLY FOLLOWING THE PLAN. I've gained the last two weeks. Part of the has to do with Mother Nature's monthly visit, the other with the fact that I didn't stay on plan. Before that, I had been losing consistently thanks to the plan and exercises. I'm tired of going to meetings and having old, bitter and jealous fat women glare at me because I followed the directions and lost weight. I wasn't what society would consider "fat" when I started WW, so I immediately was subject to the "Why are you here?" and "You don't need to lose weight!" comments. The feelings of animosity only increased as I continued to lose.

My main point is that if you use common sense and follow the plan, you will lose weight. No cheating, no excuses, no slacking- just do it and you will lose! The Momentum Plan is new and I don't have all the details yet, but I not convinced that this change is for the better. For now, I'm sticking to my Flex Plan, making good food choices and literally exercising my ass off!

3 comments:

Pamela said...

I have a feeling that I'll be sticking to the flex plan, too, although I'll admit I don't know much about the new plan. I figure that if it has worked so far - so much that I've lost over 150 pounds - why change now??

Diana Swallow said...

WW needs to reinvent themselves every few years, I really think its because it helps those who've failed in the past not blame themselves for not sticking to the previous plan but blame WW for not having the "right plan" back then.

I think any healthy plan will work IF you work it and move your body.

I have a lot of respect for WW and I know it does a lot of good for a lot of people but when they change things its also an insult to those who lost the weight and kept it off using one of their previous plans LOL

Philo said...

Sorry to insult you, but hooping is actually great exercise and there's few things you can do that are better for strengthening your core than hooping. We're not talking about kids hula hoops, we're talking about larger adult sized hoops. There's a lot more info about it all under health on hooping.org