Basket (of fruit) Cases

One of the biggest differences between the new Weight Watchers program and the old one is fruit. Fruit is now a "free food" - it's zero points. This is huge. It used to be that you could eat all the green veggies you wanted, but if you wanted a banana, you would have to fork over (ha!) two of your precious points. I never thought this made sense. And apparently neither does Weight Watchers. I still don't understand where that leaves corn and peas (two of my favorite vegetables that do still have points...come on Weight Watchers, help me out with this one...), but it's great that I can have an orange with breakfast. Super.

Except for the debate that is raging over fruit on the Weight Watchers message boards. There are lots of people who blame the fact that they are no longer losing weight on the sudden addition of fruit to their diets. Um...really? Fruit? Fruit is why you're not losing weight? Come on. Was fruit a huge part of your diet before? You know, when you were eating McDonalds value meals and donuts? Some of these people are pushing 300 pounds. I am sure they got that way from too many apples.

See, it all goes back to my big problem with the program. It's focused on a low-carb, low-calorie lifestyle. The fact that these fruit haters are not losing as much weight is more due to the fact that they're not eating enough calories, not that they're eating fruit. It's all about math - if you eat fewer calories than you consume then you will lose weight. But if you don't eat enough, then your metabolism slows down. You have to find a balance. There are lots of equations out there about how many calories you need a day - the easiest one is to take your weight and add a zero to the end. That's how many calories you need to maintain your weight. Eat fewer and you'll lose. Exercise and you'll lose. To give you an example - I spent a summer working out with a trainer with all sorts of advanced degrees in this stuff. (I know, very technical) At the time, I weighed about 185 pounds. She recommended I eat around 1600 calories a day. Combined with exercising 5-6 days a week, that gave me enough of a calorie deficit to lose weight at a steady rate. She told me not to dip below 1400-1500 - as an active person, I needed that many to keep my metabolism up.

So, what does Weight Watchers recommend? It's a little bit harder, because 100 calories of lean protein has fewer points then 100 calories of cookies. But my healthy lunch today - sushi (1 tuna roll and 1 salmon roll) and seaweed salad - had 400 calories. It was 10 points - more than 1/3 of my points for the day. Weight Watchers wants you to eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day - which could add another 200 calories or so. There's no way that adding even three or four pieces of fruit gets me over 1500 calories. Fruit is making you not lose weight? No way.