question about weight watchers

[knaidel]

okay, you've all totally inspired me to get off my butt and try to lose the last 10 lbs from my pregancy. I've been going to Curves, but I think I really want to join weight watchers as well.
Here's my question: my mom did weight watchers about 8 years ago. I remember her reading the food labels and using a little sliding thingy, figuring out how many "points" a food item is based on its ratio of fiber to fat (or something like that). Here's the deal: we eat very little processed foods in our house. Except for breakfast cereal, rice cakes and condiments, we make almost everything in the house from scratch. So let's say, I'm having a sandwhich of homemade whole wheat bread with hummus and lettuce, how would I figure out the points of that? (And, yes, I have made homemade hummus in the past! ) That's just one example. So if so much of my food doesn't have nutrition labels, how do i figure out the number of points?

Thanks!

[psophia17]

I did WW the first time three years ago, and I've been doing it again since Christmas, when I gifted myself with a Palm Pilot so I could download some free software that can you can do all your journaling and pt calculations on. This software also has lists you can download for it where you can search for pt values for different things. This has been a huge help to me, because you can search for the pts. value of the individual ingredients of a meal, and save those pts. for later.

If you don't have a palm and can't use this program, and are doing your journaling the paper way, you can still go online and get tons and tons of pt. values from Dotti's Weight Loss Zone. Check it out at www.dwlz.com. I originally downloaded my Palm software from this site, and discovered it while searching for pt. values for tons of other things.

And finally, when you sign up for WW, you get a little book that has a lot of pt. values for stuff in it, so you can look up what you're eating and then guesstimate what the pt. value is. I do a lot of this these days, especially now that I've been doing WW for so long. I tend to round up, but to use your example, pretty much any type of bread, homemade or not, is 1pt a slice, so I'd give myself 1pt for a slice of homemade. Hummous would probably be about 1pt for a tablespoon, so that's 3 pts right there, and lettuce is 0 pts. So with two slices of bread and a tbs of hummous, that'd run you 3 pts for lunch. With a glass of water, that's very high fiber, low pt lunch, and something I should really think about eating myself :P

HTH, and please let me know if you want to know where to get the Palm software - you have to join a yahoo group to DL it, now that WW has caught on that it exists.

[SandraHoo]

I'm not a regular poster here, but I am a WW-er. I was counting points pre-pg, but last september, WW introduced a core plan which may work well if you're already eating less processed foods anyway. You don't count points - you stick to eating off a list of core foods. You only need to worry about points and the slidey-thingy for non-core foods which you're supposed to be limiting greatly.
And if you cook a lot, that's even better. There are some foods that aren't core if you just pick them up at the store (e.g. hummus), but if you make it from scratch, using only core foods as ingredients, voilá - your homemade food is core. (I *think* you could make a "core" hummus - you'd just need to limit the amount of oil you used...)

I'm loving not having to count points and I know I'm eating better because I am eating more whole grains, unprocessed foods, etc.
However, I admit I'm not losing as quickly as I'd like sice I sometimes have trouble passing on the non-core foods. ((black & white cookie anyone?))
I'd probably do better if I spent more time in the kitchen working on that core hummus!