My Week- 10th July- Week 28
Keeping track of your weight loss
Tracking everything you eat and drink is a key to successful weight loss
Research shows keeping track of what you eat and drink can have a positive effect on your weight loss. Without tracking, it’s easy to think you’ve eaten less than you actually have.
Research shows people can underestimate what they’ve by up to 50%
Choose the method that suits you:
1. 1. The list maker- If you’re the kind of person who loves pen and paper list making, using your tracker. It has a 12 week tracker for meals and a space to check off your healthy choices, activity and fluids.
2. 2. The savvy onliner- If you have easy online access throughout the day, try tracking with the plan manager. Not only can track your daily Propoints values, you can chart your weight loss progress, modify recipes and save your favorite foods and recipes.
3. 3. The techy type- The new Weight Watchers iPhone app is perfect for techy types. It puts tracking in the palm of your hand wherever you go. You can also use your mobile phone to take photos of your meals to record later or send yourself a text or phone message of what you ate to record in your tracker when you get home.
Give yourself added flexibility
If you have a social occasion coming up, flex the Propoints Plan to work around you. Here are three ways to get the most out of a social week:
1. Use your weekly Propoints allowance. It’s your spontaneity stash!
2. Up your exercise. Earn some activity Propoints values to spend
3. Focus meal choices on Filling and Healthy Foods which are lower in Propoints values
4. Munch on 0 Propoint fruit and vegetables to keep you full without tapping into your Propoints budget
Drinking your fill
Weight Watchers dietitian Emma Stirling explains why drinking fluids is important to your weight loss
Water is really the most essential nutrient, so make sure you are not ignorning this important part of your tracker. Absence of water soon leads to life threatening dehydration. Even mild dehydration, equivalent to losing as little of 2% of body weight, can lead to a drop in mental and physical performance. Let’s explore:
Water and weight
When it comes to weight loss, maintaining hydration is important. Fluid is required for digestion, absorption, transportation, dissolving nutrients, elimination of waste products and body temperature and body temperature regulation.
However it’s important to realise that water is not a magic substance that can flush fat out of the body. An adequate fluid supply can support weight loss efforts as water has no kilojoules.
Drinking water before or with meals can also slow down eating and some studies suggest it can curb your hunger. Sometimes thirst can be confused with hunger, so staying hydrated can help prevent non hunger based, overeating
Water wise
A hydration status differs from person to person, fluid requirements will also differ. It is affected by things like your kidney function and how much body water you lose each day.
A good personal guide is to keep check on the colour of your urine which should be light or clear, not deep coloured.
The Weight Watchers Good Health Guidelines recommend 6-8 cups of fluid (not water) a day.
For good health and weight loss it’s great to aim for half of your total fluid as plain or sparkling water. New research shos that caffeinated beverages do not have the diuretic or fluid loss effect previously believed if you are a regular consumer. So the rest of the daily tally can be made up of all alcohol free beverages, including tea or coffee.
Tip- Down a glass of water or two while you’re cooking or before a meal
Keeping score
Weight Watchers exercise consultant Allan Bolton shows us how to track our exercise Propoints values accurately
Measuring exercise
There are several ways to measure exercise intensity. These rang from very complex methods, requiring laboratory equipment to simple, more practical evaluations of how you feel during exercise. The most common is Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) where intensity is rated as low, moderate or high.
Know your RPE
A good way to make RPE work for you is to establish perceptual anchors to work from ie on a scale of 1, zero= sitting motionless and 10= the hardest you could possibly work at a particular activity. Moderate intensity sits somewhere in the middle. The RPE low, moderate and high can be used to estimate activity Propoints values.
When using Weight Watchers online activity tracker Propoints vakues awarded to exercises are based on published intensity values for activities chosen.
Whatever the method used, all total energy cost values for exercise are based on intensity x duration per kilogram of body weight. Changing any of these will affect the number of activity Propoints values earned.
For Example- A person weighting 75kg will earn more Propoints walking at 6kph (constant intensity) for 30 minutes (fixed duration) than a person of 65kg (different weight).
To make your activity Propoints accurate, simply be as honest as you can with time, intensity and current body weight.
Is sweating an indicator of fitness?
The purpose of sweat is to help cool the body. Whether someone glistens or drips does not indicate how hard they are working, it merely indicates how effectively they sweat. Factors such as temperature, humidity and clothing worn also have a significant on sweat production. If the same person performed the same exercise in far north Queensland (AUS) and Dunedin (south NZ) the intensity would be the same but sweating rate would be very different.
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