Jan 18: The new DubDub

Hello pudge-busters!

So, as I said last week, I am back on the Weight Watchers bandwagon and so far I am very pleased. They've done some tinkering with their program and the changes are great. If you are unfamiliar with the ways of the DubDub, I gave a quick rundown of it last year. Foods are assigned a point value. You get X number of points per day, depending on your current weight. Points used to be calculated based on calories, fibre and fat content of a food. One point was around 50 calories, but if it had higher fibre and/or lower fat, the caloric value could be a little higher.

With the revamp, points are calculated differently. Calories don't figure in to the equation at all; instead, you enter grams of protein, carbohydrates, fat and fibre to calculate the point value. Foods that are higher in protein/fibre and lower in carbs/fat tend tend to have a lower point value. The thinking is, two items may have the same calories before you ingest them, but the amount of those calories your body uses to digest the food will vary depending on their nutritional value. Some foods are far more efficient.

I think this is fantastic for a few reasons:

1. Calories, and the need to count (some might say obsess, but I don't judge) are removed from the the equation. While counting calories may be effective, there is no incentive to eat foods with more nutritional value. It's a subtle way to shift the way I think about food, not thinking about calories all the time.
   
   (Having said that, it's a hard habit to break, and I usually keep a mental tab on how many calories I've ingested on any given day. As you know, I love to count.)
   
   
2. In the past, the strength of DubDub's points system, its flexibility, was also its weakness. If you wanted a Big Mac, you could eat a Big Mac. You couldn't eat anything else that day, but the option was always there. With this revision, the flexibility is still there, but I feel like I am being encouraged, almost pushed (in a good way), to make healthier choices.

Okay, those are kind of the same reason, stated twice. Whatever, you get the idea.

The other thing that totally ROCKS is the advent of free fruit. Even though they contain carbohydrates, fruits are no longer assigned any points. So if I've eaten all my points in a day and I'm craving a little somethin-somethin, I eat frozen grapes. LOVE the frozen grapes! And I add a banana (formerly 2 precious points of my daily allotted 23) to my cottage cheese breakfast in the morning with impunity! When I want something decadentish, I go to the store and buy fresh pineapple chunks. SO! GOOD! The result is that I am eating far more fruits and vegetables than ever before. I think free fruit is a revolutionary idea in the world of dieting and I am ALL for it.

Since the point value of many foods has gone up with the new calculation, the daily allotment of points (and the weekly allotment of "flex" points, to be used for special occasions or to bump up your daily points allowance if you need it) has gone up. It used to be 23 daily plus 35 for the week, and now it's 29 daily and 45 for the week. Now that fruit is free, I feel like I have more points than I know what to do with! It's awesome! (This is another reason why I count my calories at the end of the day - just to check in on how much I'm actually eating. FYI, the amount of calories I ingest in a day of eating 29 points and a couple of free fruits is around 1200-1300 a day, which is pretty standard on a healthy weight loss diet.)

So the changes are not so much about how much you eat (you get the same amount of calories each day, more or less), but about how you think and feel about the food you are eating, and about the choices you are making. I'll make a stir fry and eat it without rice and I'm satisfied. (If I'm not, I'll eat some FREE FROZEN GRAPES!)

So, thumbs up to the new DubDub. So far, so good.