The Weight Watchers Pro Points Plan: Does It Work?

The Weight Watchers Points system is based on reducing the number of calories you eat each day. But rather than count calories, you count Weight Watchers points instead.

Now they've changed the way the points are calculated with the introduction of the Weight Watchers Pro Points Plan.

Does the Weight Watchers Pro Points Plan work? And what makes it better than the old system?

The short answer is yes, it does work. Any diet where you burn off more calories than you take in will lead to weight loss.

The reason it's better than the old system is that it takes into account the amount of protein in your diet.

I'll tell you why protein is important in a moment. First, I just want to briefly explain how points were calculated in the past.

With the original Weight Watchers points system, the more calories in a food serving, the more points were in there.

Believe it or not, the "secret" formula used to work out how many weight watchers points a meal contains is protected by a US patent.

Although there are many variations of the formula, here's an example of one included in the patent information.

One point = (calories/50) + (fat grams/12) - (min{r, 4}/5)

The last part of the formula — min{r, 4} — is equal to the number of grams of dietary fiber or 4, whichever is the smaller number.

The formula means that one point is equal to the number of calories in a food serving divided by 50. The value increases by about one point for every 12 grams of fat, and drops by about one point for every five grams of fiber.

In simple terms, total fat becomes a point penalizer, while fiber is a point enhancer.

For people who wanted to lose weight without the hassle of weighing food or learning about good nutrition, the Weight Watchers points system was reasonably effective.

Not only was it based on the main "law" of successful weight loss — eating fewer calories than you burn — the program incorporates several techniques proven to make losing weight easier, such as keeping a written record of what you eat.

The points system was also designed with the deliberate intention of keeping things simple.

The authors of one of the patents (US Patent # 6,040,531) note in their report that numbers in "the low tens are easier for people to deal with than the numbers in the thousands which calorie counting involves."

In other words, Weight Watchers take the number of calories in a food, bring down the number to the low tens (e.g. 500 calories becomes 10 points), and then adjust the points figure up or down slightly based on the fat and fiber content.

What makes the Weight Watchers Pro Points plan better?

One of the main problems with the old formula is that it doesn't take into account the amount of protein in your diet.

As you can see in the video below, even Karen Miller-Kovach, Chief Scientific Officer of Weight Watchers International, accepts that the old points system didn't reflect the best nutritional science available at the time.

So why does protein matter?

Firstly, studies show that protein does a better job at filling you up than carbohydrate or fat. Eat a protein-rich breakfast, for example, and chances are that you won't eat as much food for lunch.

The figure below is from a University of Washington study where dieters were told to eat roughly twice as much protein as normal [5]. The circles at the top represent daily calorie intake, while the diamonds at the bottom represent body weight.

As you can see, eating more protein led to a spontaneous reduction in calorie intake that lasted for the length of the study. In fact, calorie intake dropped by an average of 441 calories per day.

After 12 weeks, the test subjects had lost about 5 kilograms (12 pounds). Considering they did no exercise, losing an average of 1 pound per week is a decent result.

Protein also has a higher "thermic effect" than carbohydrate or fat. In other words, some of the energy in each gram of protein is wasted as heat during the process of digestion and metabolism. The thermic effect of nutrients is approximately 2–3 % for fat, 6–8 % for carbohydrates, and 25–30% for proteins [3].

So under the old system, a chocolate bar and a chicken breast might have had the same points value because they had the same number of calories. But the new Weight Watchers Pro Points plan would give the chicken fewer points because your body uses up more energy processing it.

But there's another benefit to protein.

Protein has a "muscle sparing" effect during dieting. In other words, it helps to preserve muscle while you lose fat. And if you don't get enough protein while you're on a diet, studies show that you'll end up dropping muscle as well as fat [2].

Although losing muscle means that you'll lose weight more quickly, you'll just end up looking like a slightly smaller version of your current self, with many of the "flabby bits" still intact.

The reason you lose weight more quickly when muscle is lost is because 1 pound of muscle provides roughly 800 calories, while 1 pound of fat provides around 3,500 calories [4].

Let's say that you create a daily calorie deficit of 500 calories. In other words, every day you burn 500 calories more than you get from your diet. That comes to 3,500 calories per week (500 x 7 = 3,500).

If all of those calories came from fat, you'd lose just one pound in weight. However, if all of those calories came from muscle (which is an unlikely scenario, but I'll use it just to illustrate the point), you'd lose almost four pounds in weight.

So, 100% fat loss is the equivalent of 1 pound of weight lost, while 100% muscle loss is the equivalent of 4 pounds of weight lost.

Focusing on fat loss rather than weight loss is a far better approach to controlling your weight in the long run.

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About the Author

Christian Finn holds a master's degree in exercise science, is a certified personal trainer and has been featured on BBC TV and radio, as well as in Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Fit Pro, Zest and other popular fitness magazines.

If you want better, faster results from the time you spend in the gym, click here now for instant access to his step-by-step muscle-building and fat-burning workout routines.

References
1. Agus, M.S.D., Swain, J.F., Larson, C.L., Eckert, E.A., & Ludwig, D.S. (2000). Dietary composition and physiologic adaptations to energy restriction. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 71, 901-907
2. Layman, D.K., Evans, E., Baum, J.I., Seyler, J., Erickson, D.J., & Boileau, R.A. (2005). Dietary protein and exercise have additive effects on body composition during weight loss in adult women. Journal of Nutrition, 135, 1903-1910
3. Jequier, E. (2002). Pathways to obesity. International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders, 26, S12-S17
4 .Hall, K.D. (2008). What is the required energy deficit per unit weight loss? International Journal of Obesity, 32, 573-576
5. Weigle DS, Breen PA, Matthys CC, Callahan HS, Meeuws KE, Burden VR, Purnell JQ. (2005). A high-protein diet induces sustained reductions in appetite, ad libitum caloric intake, and body weight despite compensatory changes in diurnal plasma leptin and ghrelin concentrations. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 82, 41-48