Simple Shifts Podcast: Life Beyond WW Points

In this episode of Simple Shifts: Conversations on Food, Life, Weight and Mindset, Martha McKinnon and Peter Morrison discuss various strategies for weight management beyond the traditional Weight Watchers Points System. They share personal experiences with Weight Watchers, the importance of mindful eating, and the psychological aspects of food choices.

The conversation emphasizes the need for flexibility in dieting approaches and the significance of understanding nutrition and portion control. The hosts encourage listeners to explore different methods and find what works best for them, highlighting that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to weight management.

Key Takeaways

There is no one right way to do anything.

If something is not working, try something else.

Weight management requires flexibility in approaches.

Mindful eating can help in understanding hunger signals.

Portion control is crucial for successful weight management.

Food choices should focus on nutrition, not just points.

Psychological mindset plays a significant role in dieting.

Simplifying weight loss strategies can lead to better outcomes.

Indulgence can be balanced with healthy choices.

Food awareness is essential in managing weight effectively.

Life Beyond WW Points Podcast

Video Transcript

Martha McKinnon (00:00)
Hi, welcome to Simple Shifts: Conversations to Fuel Your Body, Mind and Soul. I’m Martha McKinnon from Simple Nourished Living and with me is Peter Morrison, my brother and partner in crime on Simple Nourished Living. So, welcome.

Peter Morrison (00:17)
Hello.

Martha McKinnon (00:17)
Hi, how are you?

Peter Morrison (00:21)
I’m doing good. How are you today?

Martha McKinnon (00:22)
Good. So today our topic is going to be life beyond WW points. But before we jump into that, what’s going really well in your world? What are you excited about?

Peter Morrison (00:36)
What am I excited about? Well, it’s salmon night for us. So we don’t have to think too much about dinner because we always grill salmon. Today happens to be Sunday. We don’t normally record or work on Sunday, but here we are – life happens. So we’re adjusting and I’m happy to to say that this is podcast number 23. So we’re sticking to it!

Martha McKinnon (00:55)
Right? So grilled salmon, which sounds yummy. Dinner’s all ready, so you don’t have to give that a lot of brain power. And we’re sticking with our podcasts. We are sticking with it. We’re learning and we’re both enjoying it. We’ve talked, I think recently that we’re enjoying the process. That it’s just another way for us to share some of our thoughts, understandings, and insights in a way to just try to help and support people around the whole world of weight management, eating better, living a more happy, healthy, nourished life.

Peter Morrison (01:15)
Right.

Martha McKinnon (01:36)
It all kinds of goes together. And this is just another way, like we said, we’re finding the conversations really beneficial because I think we learn through deep conversation with others. It just sparks insight that we sometimes don’t get if we’re just lost in our own thinking. People can just say something, ask a question, share a comment that can help us to widen our understanding. So I think I’m enjoying the conversations with you, Peter, very much. So I’m glad we’re doing it. Thank you for suggesting it.

Peter Morrison (02:20)
Mm-hmm. Yes. My pleasure.

Martha McKinnon (02:25)
Alright, so we’re talking a question, a comment, an issue, I guess sort of a complaint that comes up with readers quite often. And that is just dissatisfaction with the current Weight Watchers plan, with the points, with the zero points foods. There’s a certain percentage of the population, certain percentage of people for whom it just doesn’t seem to be working. There’s just some frustration around that.

And I guess my bottom line is that there’s no one approach, there’s no one right way to do anything, right? There’s not only one way. There’s always multiple ways, multiple approaches. And so I know that’s been true for me in my life. It’s been true for us around the website. It’s like, so if you have a goal, if you have an intention, if there’s something you want to accomplish and one strategy or one approach just doesn’t seem to be working, you know, try it for a while, test it for a while.

I think that Weight Watchers provides a framework, so I think there’s quite a bit of room for flexibility in, your thinking and approach within that, you know, so keep playing with that a bit. But if it’s not working, there are lots of other approaches, right? There’s no one way to lose weight. There’s no one way to maintain your weight.

There’s only the way that’s gonna work for you. And so I think it’s kind of crazy to keep beating your head against a wall if something’s not working. You just gotta try something else. And I think that that’s true of life. You have to just keep trying other avenues, trying other approaches until you find the approach that’s right for you.

And I would have to say even for myself, there have been lots of transitions in my life and in my life journey. I started off, I struggled with my weight through childhood and into young adulthood and I went into Weight Watchers in my, I think I would say was in my late 20s and I joined Weight Watchers. I had one of those moments, which I think a lot of people who decide to lose weight can remember back to that exact moment when they made the decision that they were going to do it. And mine was triggered by a photo, a New Year’s Eve photo where I got a glimpse of myself and thought, my goodness, I’m just ready for something to change.

My husband has ha the same experience, he can tell a similar story when he was 14 years old and he was just overweight and pudgy and he just made a decision that he was gonna didn’t matter what happened, he made the decision and he and he did it.

So I used Weight Watchers for the first time I lose weight, but Weight Watchers back then was a diet. They used the food exchange approach. It was long before points and so the plan in those days was for you to eat so many breads or starches, so many proteins, so many fruits, so many vegetables, so much dairy. That was the approach.

So I learned at that point what would be considered as kind of a balanced approach to eating, which I hadn’t necessarily learned growing up. So again, we’re to learn a new skill, a new way of being with food. I knew nothing about portion control. So some of the big awarenesses for me was when I started measuring out a serving of cereal. That first morning on the plan and realized that I had been serving myself probably two or three servings of cereal that I had no idea. I I didn’t know that, I didn’t think that way. I didn’t think in terms of portions. I just wasn’t raised to understand what a serving looked like.

Peter Morrison (06:06)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (06:22)
So all of those were wonderful learnings for me and to learn that you your body needs so much protein and so many carbs and you need your fruits and you need to eat in a balanced way. So I found that very very helpful and beneficial but like so many people I was arrogant you know and so I went through the plan I lost the weight I became a Lifetime member and then I reverted to some of my old behaviors. Quite honestly I reverted back so I did end up gaining back some of the weight over time.

Never back to all the weight that I lost. So it’s been a struggle, you know, of learning and experimenting and finding ways since that time. So I went back to Weight Watchers as many Weight Watchers do more than once, you know, when the scale would get beyond where I wanted it to be, I’d revert back and Weight Watchers has changed its plan many times through the years, it transitioned to the points plan. I think it was around 2000.

And at that point, it became I guess it was really a calorie based system in disguise. I mean every food had points, a number of points associated with it. And at that point in the plan, a banana had the same amount of points, two points I think, as an Oreo. And so, then from that time they’ve had lots of different variations on points.

And I’ve also done and experimented with ways of losing weight outside of Weight Watchers. I’ve now done as a result of Peter introducing me to intermittent fasting. I’ve done a lot of that experimenting around intermittent fasting. I became a huge fan and you can go back and look at previous videos of what I learned through the teachings of Brian Wansink’s book, Mindless Eating. And I found that very, very helpful as just a different understanding of the struggle around weight and the fact that learning about how much our habits and how much our routines and how much our environment especially is affecting how much we eat and how we eat and taking some of those teachings and understandings and applying them to my journey have been very helpful.

And so I guess my bottom line to this is, if you feel like Weight Watchers absolutely is not working, if you feel it’s not the right solution for you, by all means try something else. I mean, we had a reader who specifically said she had great success after not having success on Weight Watchers with using a calorie counting app, Lose It, and she was able to lose the weight counting calories in a way that felt really good. I was able to get back to me and it’s my last time or get back to my goal weight through the teachings of Mindless Eating and just paying attention to my portions, changing up some of my habits using smaller plates, changing up the way I stored food in my kitchen, in my refrigerator, just having a different understanding that I was being influenced by just the sight and smell and taste of food in a way that I didn’t appreciate.

And so that was really, really helpful for me. So I guess there’s just, there’s life beyond points, you know, and there’s life beyond Weight Watchers. If that’s not right for you, but don’t use that as an excuse to just give up because know that there’s, there’s many, different approaches you can take.

Hunger directed eating is another one that I’ve come to really appreciate and believe in too. And the fact that sometimes I think the diet mentality can take us out of our own, it can remove us and remove us away from our own inner guidance and our own intuition. And we become so dependent upon some outside guidelines and rules that it kind of can sometimes override – I would say even override our common sense around eating. So hunger-directed eating is just a way of approaching food whereby you really start to tune in and tap into your hunger signal. So notice when you’re hungry, physically hungry. Eat when you’re hungry. Keep paying attention and stay aware and stop when you’re no longer hungry.

Start to tune in and notice how certain foods are making you feel. so that’s another avenue for people. There’s just, there’s so many approaches. And you can talk to people who’ve had success in doing all of these different approaches, taking all these different avenues and all these different ways and strategies of losing weight. There’s definitely no one size fits all approach to this.

Peter Morrison (10:57)
I’m kind of curious, I’m backtracking now to your initial work with Weight Watchers. You said it was the exchange plan. Was that not easy, I mean, was that relatively straightforward for you? You said you had success and you made it to lifetime.

Martha McKinnon (11:06)
Yeah. Well, I think it was two-fold.

I mean, I can go back and only just try to guess why it was so successful for me. I think I was very motivated. And I think that that is huge. I think whenever you’re trying to change your behavior, there’s one of these sayings in the world of behavior changes that we change when the pain of not changing exceeds the pain of changing because there’s a certain amount of pain that comes with any change you want to make. But I was very very motivated I was very very determined that I was going to lose the weight I met somebody who had had success. In fact Kathy Palmieri who had had success on the plan and it was just like I was ready you know and I just walked in there and I just I wanted to succeed so I was very motivated and I followed the plan as it was written at that point.

Peter Morrison (11:47)
Not changing.

Martha McKinnon (12:16)
I think it was partly easy because I was motivated. And I think it was partly easy because it made a lot of common sense. And I think there’s a lot of talk around the fact that we need to take food and weight loss back to a food-based approach. And you’ll see that in the of the plate, the my plate, you know, with the USDA putting out that that we, if we, think it’s helpful to think of food as food. I think sometimes personally, and maybe I’m biased because I did learn on a plan that kept food as food, that I thought of food as starches and as proteins and as fats and as fruits and vegetables and dairy. And so that’s how I thought of food.

A lot of times not with macros, even diabetes moved away from that into carb counting. You start counting other things, like points and you start to think of food not as food but as points, it just sort of gamifies it. And I’m not sure, personally, I’m not sure that it’s helpful. I think for me personally, it’s helpful to really think of food as food and to remember the purpose of food, right?

And to know that I think Weight Watchers really helped me to think in terms of healthy, balanced eating. It doesn’t mean that I never indulge in pleasurable foods, I do, but I always keep in my mind the fact that I’m eating those for a different reason, right? I’m not necessarily eating those to nourish my body. I’m eating those to satisfy my taste buds, for the pleasure associated with them. And I think that was really beneficial for me because I was a carb junkie.

I loved carbs, and the 90s was that whole low fat era where if it didn’t have fat then somehow everything was sort of promoted that if it didn’t have fat it was okay. I mean I look back to that now and I think you know how silly you know Entenmann’s was putting out you know fat-free Danish and people would eat them without thinking.

Peter Morrison (14:09)
Crazy.

Martha McKinnon (14:28)
I remember working in a situation where the lunch room, the break room would be full of animal crackers because they were low fat and jelly beans because they were low fat and you know, I would eat bagels without a second thought you know, and I thought I was doing my body good.

And it was only through Weight Watchers that I learned that a bagel, you know, was essentially four to five servings of starch. Essentially a bagel translates to four to five servings of bread, of starch. And that helped me. I would never eat four to five slices of toast at a time, but I ate a bagels without even thinking about it.

And so it helped, so it really did help me understand like food as food and balanced eating. Where I think about the early points plan, where if I had been able to just eat points and choose, I’m not sure I would have eaten in a balanced way. I probably would have kept eating a lot of carbs, not getting my balance, not getting the protein and fats that I needed and I don’t know if I would have been as successful or not.

But I know that thinking of food that way was very, very helpful for me. And learning portions, learning that a serving of protein is around the size of a deck of cards. And that you think about one cup as the size of your fist and you just start to see food and think of food and understand it.

Peter Morrison (16:04)
Well, I totally agree with your comment about thinking about food as food and not as points because I’m not a Weight Watchers member, never have been. I’ve just learned about the program working with you and talking with you. But it was so odd to me when to learn to try to learn and understand the whole points thing. It just seemed so…

Martha McKinnon (16:43)
Unnecessarily complicated?

Peter Morrison (16:45)
Yes, yes. Because like you said, a banana is a banana and Oreo is an Oreo. They’re not the same.

Martha McKinnon (16:54)
Right. And of course Weight Watchers has adjusted for that now, right? They’ve moved away from that and they have made changes and now you’re to a place where there’s a very extensive zero points food list. You can have success on the plan. In fact, I was playing this morning, I’m always playing. I just sort of tracked, like, what might a day look like? And it’s like, can this work?

And I think, for example, me in maintenance, I’m allotted 29 points on Weight Watchers, along with this very extensive list of zero points foods that we’ve talked about. And the zero points foods includes your fruits and your vegetables and many of your lean proteins now. Lean chicken and fish and beef and lean pork and starchy vegetables, corn and peas and potatoes and your fruits and nonfat dairy.

So it’s a pretty extensive list. So if you think about balancing this very extensive list of our zero points foods, which are really what you would call your healthy foods, the foods that you need for nourishment, against other foods that will have points, some of them are fine in nourishment, but if you think about just balancing them out, and I kind of played with that today to say, what does that look like? And it does, I think if you think of it as just providing you with guardrails, a lot of people think if they get to their points limit that they’ve somehow, or they exceed their points limit, that they’ve kind of blown it for the day, and that’s just not, that’s not good thinking.

If you get to the point where you’ve used up all your points, it suggests that you really, if you focus now on the zero points foods, if you focus on these healthy, you know, your fruits and your vegetables and your lean proteins and your, eggs and other forms of protein that you’re going to come into some balance. And so for example, I played with it today and I just said, like, what might be all the indulgences that I would want? It’s a Sunday, you know, so let’s say I plug in a donut.

You know, a donut on Weight Watchers is, again, depending upon the donut, but I just like a plain cake donut. I think it’s, I think I looked it up, it’s nine points. You know, I get 29 points in a day. And then I plugged in my, I like my glass of wine in the evening, so I plugged in a glass of wine in the evening at, I think that was four, four or five points. And then I, let’s say at lunch, I’m going to have a peanut butter like sandwich. I’m going to have two slices of bread and two tablespoons of peanut butter. The peanut butter is seven points, the bread is two points a slice. I think all of those foods basically used up my points for the day. I think that’s 29 points. Now I add up the calories for those points, right? And I’m at about, it was like 870, say like 870.

Peter Morrison (19:47)
Mm.

Martha McKinnon (20:06)
So I haven’t blown it, I mean, there’s still room, right? Now you can choose, but what Weight Watchers is trying to say, I think, is, well, you’ve had your donut, you’ve had your glass of wine, I also put in pasta at dinner, so I had a cup of pasta. And that included the 29 points and said, now I’m going to fill that in. I’m going to fill the rest in with zero points food. So to my donut, I added a cup of nonfat yogurt and a banana. Okay, those are zero points. I know they still have calories.

To my lunch, my peanut butter sandwich, I added an apple and a cup of vegetable soup, like a vegetarian vegetable soup like Progresso. You can find those soups out there, zero points. Now I’m building sort of a nutritious, balanced meal.

Martha McKinnon (21:02)
To my dinner, my cup of pasta, say, okay, let’s say I imagine I take chicken and I saute it just with, in a nonstick pan, and I add some onions and peppers and mushrooms and some diced tomatoes, and I kind of make like a cacciatore, you know, in a skillet to put over my pasta.

Martha McKinnon (21:18)
All of those foods are zero points. And so now I’ve sort of, I’ve been able to have the foods I wanted, right, that were kind of indulgent, that weren’t necessarily healthy, and I’ve now balanced them out with these healthier zero points foods. And if I add up all the calories from that, it was around 1,400 calories, which would put me in a deficit. And so I look at it and I say, it’s all your thinking. It’s really about your thinking around this and understanding that, because some people will say e share recipes on our website and some are indulgent, you know, desserts and things. And people will say, people have the mindset or belief, you know, my gosh, that slice of cake is nine points. I can’t possibly have that. And I will say that’s your thinking, that’s your belief, because I just built a profile, a plan where I had the nine point donut. And I still made the, I still, you know, constructed a daily plan that was overly balanced and healthy. So, this goes back to a lot about talking about the fact that, you know, this is really coming 90, 95 percent, I think, back in your mind, right?

Because If you say you can’t have that doughnut, you know, it’s like well the next question would be to show me your plan. Show me what you’re eating in a day that doesn’t allow you to have that donut. Because I can build a plan that will allow me to have the donut. And neither one is right or wrong. Except that I think that if you can build the plan that makes you feel good and makes you feel in control and makes you feel like it’s something that you can sustain, like, my gosh, I can have a donut every Sunday and still make this plan work.

I think you’re just in a better place, psychologically, for long-term success.

Did that answer your question or did I over answer your question?

Peter Morrison (23:25)
Well, it over-answered it. And then, I guess, because I was curious, because you had, I guess, a different experience, right, from someone just entering Weight Watchers now, who’s only going to know the point system. So you have the added benefit of thinking in terms of balance and food.

Martha McKinnon (23:43)
Right. So I think it’s hard for me now because I’ve been playing in this space for a very long time. Right? Well over 30 years. Maybe like 35 years. So I’ve watched the plan change. I’ve watched myself change. I’ve watched the world of like dieting change. I’ve learned about all kinds of food and how they label it.

Peter Morrison (24:06)
Well, just food and how they label food and all that’s different.

Martha McKinnon (24:18)
I mean, I like that’s changed my understanding of the mind-body connection right with our video that talked about the Milkshake Experiment. Yeah, so my my understanding is very, different than somebody just coming in. You know, so if you’re just coming in and you’ve never paid attention to nutrition, if you’ve never paid attention to healthy eating, you know, if you’ve just been doing what you like, I hadn’t paid any attention when I first walked in the doors. I mean, those initial awarenesses are very helpful and powerful. But I guess I maybe I have a different understanding of a donut, you know, and what the points are on the plan now as opposed to maybe somebody just coming in for the first time because I’ve watched a donut change in points. I’ve watched a donut go from maybe what would it have been like you know four I’ve watched I’ve watched the sweet treats double in value basically because they just got dinged. Foods with that are higher in saturated fats and higher in sugar based on the world’s most recent understanding of nutrition really penalizes sugar and saturated fat foods in a very, very high way. And I guess I know that I have that understanding based on all those years of experience.

Martha McKinnon (25:55)
We’ve seen it on our website too because we’ve had recipes, we’ve watched the points change on our recipes through the years where suddenly something was four points and it went to eight or nine points and something that was seven points went to zero points. So we’ve watched all those changes and shifts and we have maybe just a broader understanding.

Peter Morrison (26:11)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (26:18)
But I think these experiments that I play with tell me that it can work as long as you get your mind in the right place and as long as you understand. And we did talk about this, think in the zero points foods video that it’s not called a budget, it’s called a target. And so, it goes back to this whole concept of thinking and it’s like, don’t be thinking that you’ve blown it. You’ve just like think of a bullseye, you missed the target.

If you can think, I missed the target, but there’s still plenty of room for me to end the day successfully, I think that’s the mindset that can really help you versus this mindset that just psychs you out.

Peter Morrison (26:53)
Mm.

Martha McKinnon (26:56)
Like, I can’t possibly live within these points or, you know, this just doesn’t work. It’s the thinking, I think, that if you can see it in a different light, it can be helpful. But again, if it’s not working, it seems too complicated, because I really do believe that simpler is better. So if it seems too complicated, then find a way that’s simpler. I mean, and I think the simplest way we explore in our mindless eating videos, the simplest thing you can do is just start paying attention to your portions and shrinking them, right? Because at the end of the day if you weigh more, or if you’re holding more weight than you need to, then that basically means what? You are eating more calories, you’re taking in more fuel than your body can burn. And there’s lots of different ways that you can start to minimize the amount of fuel so that you’re not in this excess.

And one of the easiest ways is to just start shrinking the portions and I would say eliminating what I call the low hanging fruit. And by that I would mean the really, really empty calories. Like the sugary drinks. If you just start playing with, I’m going to just get rid of that Coca Cola and substitute it with a diet Coke or substitute it with bubbly water with a splash of fruit juice. If you start looking at the easy transitions you can make and shrinking your portions, you can start this journey in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming. You don’t have to really disrupt your whole life and overwhelm yourself. Does that make sense?

Peter Morrison (28:57)
That makes perfect sense. Yeah, I learned a lot in the Mindless Eating book as well. The two things I really liked from that, one was making food not less available, but less easy to just reach in and grab out of the candy dish. If that’s not out and available, if you have to, you know, if they’re, you know, open the cupboard and open the package and move this and move that, it’s just the barriers. Yeah, the more barriers you create.

And I also like the smaller dishes, because I do feel like our portion sizes have gotten like, at least out in restaurants have gotten crazy. So at home, eating a meal on a smaller plate, what would be considered a normal portion size that doesn’t leave you feeling like you’re being deprived because you’ve got this monstrous plate with this, what looks like a small serving of food. So those are the two techniques I resonate with.

Martha McKinnon (30:10)
Yeah, I found that to be really fascinating as well. Both of those issues. The whole make, how do we describe it? Making food less readily available, right? I mean, just getting out of sight, out of mind approach, like getting the food off the counters, getting it tucked away in cupboards has been one of the biggest things I’ve done for myself.

And just that reaching for food without thinking about it. I mean, we were just together at mom’s a couple of days, was that just two days ago? And we were sitting having a conversation and she swept in and stuck a bowl of nuts right between us. And pretty soon I was not hungry. I was not hungry, but the nuts were sitting there and I found myself, I ate two or three before I paused and said, wait, I’m not hungry.

Peter Morrison (30:48)
Mm-hmm

Martha McKinnon (31:08)
And at some point I got up and moved the nuts away from the table. And I’ve playing in this space a long time and that’s how quick it happens. Fortunately, most of the time now after, I’m like, wait, what am I doing? I wake up and I adjust. But that’s just the power of having it there in front of you. That’s just one example. Again, like you with the portions, because what I come to find is that when I really tune in and I find myself over serving myself, that my eyes are bigger than my stomach. So that shrinking the plates really helps because it just again, sets up that barrier.

And so that you eat and you have no time to question, was that enough? Am I no longer hungry? Because the danger if you eat quickly and you eat to satisfaction is that in five or 10 minutes you’re going to be miserable because there’s a delay in that signal, right, from your brain to your stomach to your brain and often by the time you feel satisfied you’ve overeaten. And so to just create that situation we have a chance to let everything settle before you make the determination, yeah, I think I need a little more. That’s powerful, and that can be enough. That can be enough to just put ourselves into a deficit situation where we slowly, gradually start losing weight in a way that just is not painful at all.

And that’s what makes me excited, you know, no pain, you know, it’s like the no pain approach.

Peter Morrison (33:03)
Well, nice. I’d like to wrap this up and say if you’re struggling with points or it’s not working for you, maybe try to incorporate more zero points or maybe try counting calories, maybe shrink your portions. Yeah.

Martha McKinnon (33:19)
I mean I really would encourage everybody to read that book, Mindless Eating, because like I said, it provided so many insights to me. It was just so helpful. It was just one of those game changers for me, one of those life changers for somebody who’s struggled for so long to just see food and all of the ways that we’re being influenced in a new light was very, very powerful.

Peter Morrison (33:38)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (33:50)
And I think it explains a lot about why we’re struggling as a society because food has become so available, you know, and the portions just keep getting bigger and bigger, right? And it’s designed to be so palatable. It’s so hyper tasty. I mean, on all of these things, make it more challenging to manage your weight.

Peter Morrison (34:15)
Very good.

Martha McKinnon (34:15)
Alright, so we’ll be back again soon.

Peter Morrison (34:16)
Have a great day!

Martha McKinnon (34:17)
Have a good one. Take care everyone.