There Is No One Right Way To Do WW

In this episode of the Simple Nourished Living podcast (@MarthaMcKinnon), hosts Martha and Peter discuss various aspects of healthy eating, focusing on smoothie bowls, the Weight Watchers program, and the concept of intermittent fasting. They explore how different eating habits can affect satisfaction and weight management, emphasizing the importance of personalizing one’s approach to nutrition. The conversation highlights the significance of awareness in eating behaviors and the flexibility of dietary programs to suit individual needs.

Key Takeaways

Smoothie bowls can enhance satisfaction and slow down eating.

Weight Watchers allows for diverse approaches to dieting.

Intermittent fasting can help manage late-night cravings.

Awareness is key to understanding eating habits.

Personalization is crucial in any weight management program.

Healthy eating should be enjoyable and sustainable.

Tracking food can provide valuable insights into habits.

Different cultures have unique approaches to eating times.

Meal prep can simplify healthy eating choices.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to nutrition.

There Is No Right Way To Do Weight Watchers

Video Transcript

Martha McKinnon (00:00)
Hi, welcome to the Simple Nourish Living podcast. I’m Martha McKinnon and this is my partner and my brother, Peter Morrison. Welcome, everybody. So how are you?

Peter Morrison (00:08)
Hello everyone. Hi. I’m good. How are you doing today?

Martha McKinnon (00:12)
I’m doing really well. So what’s going really well in your world right now?

Peter Morrison (00:16)
Well, I’m a little busy because I’ve been playing a lot of pickleball. I have a pickleball tournament tomorrow where I am playing with a new partner. So looking forward to that. Thank you very much. Hopefully it’s a nice day. It’s supposed to be supposed to be.

Martha McKinnon (00:24)
Good luck. Good luck. Awesome.

So send us pictures of your games, will you get a ribbon or a trophy? Well you will though, aren’t you feeling confident?

Peter Morrison (00:42)
Only if you place, if you win first, second or third.

Well, yeah, but we’re playing up in the division, it’ll be very challenging, so it’ll be good.

Martha McKinnon (00:56)
Okay. All right, okay, good. Well, good luck.

Peter Morrison (01:08)
I wanted to mention to you that one of my favorite morning meals, when I’m not intermittent fasting, if I am having something in the morning, it tends to be lighter and I tend to eat smoothies. And we were talking recently because I, for one, prefer thicker smoothies. It’s just fruit and nothing special, some fruit and cottage cheese, some spinach.

Martha McKinnon (01:10)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Peter Morrison (01:32)
And then, then at the end, after it’s already poured into my, it’s a short, fat glass, like a bowl, but I like to add a little almond butter and then some pumpkin seeds, a little Grape-Nuts for a little crunch and a little Muesli or if I don’t have Muesli, just some rolled oats and maybe riains if I want that sort of texture.

Martha McKinnon (01:39)
Okay.

Peter Morrison (02:01)
Then would eat it with a spoon usually, I just sort of prefer that rather than gulping it out of a big cup and you were telling me something recently about how that sort of aligns with something in Weight Watchers.

Martha McKinnon (02:17)
Yeah, so smoothie bowls. I think that’s what we’re describing.

On the Weight Watchers program, fruits and vegetables are zero points unless you put them into a blender or food processor and drink them. So if you are drinking them, there’s a place in the WW aApp where you’ll check that you’re drinking it and then the points do count. And the reason behind that, I think, is that the science shows that when you’re drinking, it’s not as satisfying or nourishing to your system.

It doesn’t give that same satiety that it does when you’re actually eating. So a wraparound for that or a workaround is to have a smoothie bowl, right? So if you’re, if you’re not drinking it and you’re eating it with a spoon, then, then in my mind, you’d be back to the zero, you know, back to zero points again. So that’s just a consideration. Yeah. So you find it more satisfying, like personally, yeah.

Peter Morrison (03:13)
Interesting.

I do. I think I would eat it or I would drink it much quicker, because I know I don’t go to Jamba Juice these days, there was a time when I used to go to Jamba Juice and there’d be this huge, huge cup with a straw and I would just, you just would suck it down and just inhale it and not really feel, and it was probably very caloric.

Martha McKinnon (03:25)
All right. Right?

Well, for sure. If you look at the points and calories on those, yeah, tons.

Peter Morrison (03:44)
Yeah.

But you wouldn’t, I wouldn’t really feel like I even had a meal, calorie wise. But when I eat, when I eat the smoothie with a spoon and it has a little more substance, not substance, but you know, it forces me to maybe chew a little and while I’m eating, which I think is why I like adding the pepitas (raw pumpkin seeds) and the muesli and in Grape Nuts.

Martha McKinnon (03:49)
Right, right. Yep. Right.

Peter Morrison (04:14)
But yeah, it slows me down. I can’t inhale it and I have to do some chewing and it’s just more enjoyable.

Martha McKinnon (04:24)
Yeah, something about the satisfaction factor, right? But it’s interesting to think that if you were drinking it, it wouldn’t fill you up the same way as when you’re eating it. Right. So that’s really, that’s just really, really interesting. The whole fact that we are where it’s conflict, the whole feeding ourselves optimally is complicated in some ways, right? That you gotta, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot to consider.

Peter Morrison (04:29)
And it fills me up. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (04:52)
That it’s really not just a calorie in a calorie out because of, you know, because there’s so many things, because of our minds and our bodies and our emotions and the way that the nervous system works, right? And sending the signals from the stomach to the brain. And I mean, the physiology is just complicated in itself, right? Just with so many different systems and endocrine systems and hormones and the nervous system and the digestive system.

Peter Morrison (04:53)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Martha McKinnon (05:21)
But that’s, but, but again, I think the key to all of this, you really tapped into the ultimate key is awareness, right? And paying attention and noticing. And once you pay attention and notice, notice things that that’s where all your power is. You can’t really, if you didn’t have that, if you hadn’t noticed that and you just kept drinking the smoothie and you hadn’t, you’d be sort of lost. Yeah. You just keep doing. Right.

Peter Morrison (05:46)
Wondering why you’re not losing weight.

Martha McKinnon (05:49)
You keep doing what you were doing and you’d be frustrated. But so it’s just like slowing down, getting those insights, getting those awarenesses. And that’s just part of the journey, part of life. And that’s where the magic happens in the awareness. So anything we can do to help build that awareness. And that’s, think, that’s where tracking comes in too. Is the point, if you think about tracking not as a punishment.

You know, or just this meaningless exercise, but as a way to really start to notice things that you didn’t notice before. And that may even take a bigger paper journal. I took a course years ago where they really encourage you not to just track what you were eating, but like where you were eating it and who you were with and what you were feeling and how it made you feel after. That can provide you like a whole bunch of information, right?

That you might’ve been ignorant of, in terms of what satisfies you, what doesn’t, what works and what doesn’t, because everybody’s so different. Which brings us to our topic today, which is there’s really no one way to do Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers provides this platform, it provides a framework to help guide you in making different choices and seeing food differently and interacting with it differently, but nobody does Weight Watchers exactly the same.

And I came to learn that that came really home for me back when I was, I was a leader for a short time in Weight Watchers, Arizona. And we were at a meeting with, it was just a group of meeting of leaders, you know, and that topic came up, people were sharing, like, when did Weight Watchers really start working for you? And people were sharing their approach and everybody was doing the program differently, you know, and what do I mean by that?

So you can have vegetarians on Weight Watchers and you can have people who are carnivores on Weight Watchers and people who do all their cooking at home and people who eat out regularly. I remember the story of a success story of a woman who was actually a food critic. So she had to be eating out all that, you know, often, but so, but she, and she was successful on the plan.

Martha McKinnon (08:11)
So many, so many stories through the years of people. I remember, you know, the woman who ran, I think it’s long sold now, but Kathleen King from Tate’s Bake Shop, you know, where those cookies now are everywhere. But she started with the, my gosh, they’re good cookies. But she started like selling, she was from somewhere in Long Island and actually started selling cookies out of her family’s like farm stand when she was a teenager and ultimately had a successful.

Peter Morrison (08:25)
They’re really good cookies.

Martha McKinnon (08:41)
At one point I was remember reading an article of her and so was a time when she was in a bake shop all day with long stressful hours and gained weight and she became a Weight Watcher. So that’s what’s really I think exciting about the plan. There are people who eat you know many small meals a day and there are people who eat maybe one or two meals and do intermittent fasting.

So the cool thing is that you don’t have to just make yourself fit into a box. You can really just use the guidelines of the plan to help support you in what you’re trying to accomplish, which I think is really really a strength of the program because so many of the other programs are just so extreme and so limiting. You have to do this. You have to do that.

And so this is, just think a much more sustainable approach for the long term. You know, I’m another big advocate of don’t do anything to lose weight that you’re not willing to keep doing, you know, to keep the weight off. Because if you’re, you’re going to have to do a lot of those same behaviors forever, you know, to keep the weight off, to keep your fitness, you know, whatever you’re doing, sort of like don’t do anything to get really fit, right? That you’re not, you might train really hard, I guess, for a marathon or for something like that and then back off a little bit. But the results.

Peter Morrison (10:12)
Sort of doing what you do anyway just in a little more concentrated way. Right.

Martha McKinnon (10:15)
So it’s like training a little different. Your training is a little different when you’re preparing your everyday routine versus when you’re training for an event. Which again, and a lot of us do, right? If we’re having to, if we’re going to be in a, the one that comes up a lot for me that I’ve seen in a couple of the submissions of people who want a little help and that they have

They’ve given us ideas for topics for podcasts. I noticed a couple of times people say I have events coming up. I need to, you know, my grandkids are getting married. I’ve got an event and we all do that, right? We’re going to our reunion. We always want to be our best and maybe drop a few pounds, get a little fitter for those kinds of events. But in terms of day to day, you know, lifestyle, you don’t want to get too extreme for a short time because that can often rebound in a bad way. Have you ever done that where you were just really so extreme with yourself for a while that it you couldn’t keep it up?

Peter Morrison (11:32)
Definitely if you’re doing a special diet that requires special food or special preparation or particular meals you need to eat in a particular order or anything like that. It sounds fun and well, it could sound fun. It could sound interesting and you think it’s going to be helpful, but it usually backfires.

Martha McKinnon (11:34)
Right. Right. Right.

Peter Morrison (12:00)
I would say, at least for me personally, because it’s not sustainable in the sense that I would, it’s not something, it’s not how I’m gonna live my life. So when I would stop that or slowly drift back into my way of doing things, invariably, if I did lose a couple pounds, I would sort of just end up back where I was, essentially.

Martha McKinnon (12:30)
Right. So sort of like, you know, one step forward, two steps back, you know, if you get too aggressive with yourself, yeah, you really, mean, the slow, steady, sustainable step by step approaches, the one that has been proven in the science. I love to read in this space in terms of habits and behavior change. I’ve read several books and it’s consistent, you know, the fact that you got to take a slow, steady, sustainable approach. If you try to change too much too fast, you get overwhelmed and it backfires on you. Just like you said. Yeah.

Peter Morrison (13:11)
I think my one, for me personally, my one exception to that rule would be intermittent fasting, I sort of stumbled on and had heard about it and I had probably read about it. And I know there are different theories about how best to do it.

Martha McKinnon (13:16)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Right.

Peter Morrison (13:40)
And there’s different time periods, but I’ve adapted over time to just sort of, I would say, listen to my body and some days I fast longer, some days it’s shorter, some days I don’t fast at all, but there’s no plan, there’s nothing I’m following. I’m just sort of going by how I, well, what I have going that day and also how I’m feeling.

Martha McKinnon (13:58)
Okay. Yeah. And fasting, I’m sorry, go ahead. So intermittent fasting is something that you really introduced me to. And I was very, very hesitant about, for lots of reasons that we probably could devote a whole podcast episode to, but I, I have found fasting helpful for myself as well. And this really relates.

I woke up thinking about this this morning because as I was going to bed last night, had that dinner was long over. I’d done some other chores. Um, but suddenly there was, I thought about those, I bought some really good, um, they’re, but the biscotti from Costco, they actually are baked in Florence. You know, we were just in Italy this summer. Oh my gosh. So I started to see those biscotti and think, wow, one of those would really taste good.

Peter Morrison (14:45)
Really?

Martha Mckinnon (14:54)
But then I thought, no, when you think in terms of fasting in your window, of eating and the fact, well, my kitchen, I’m thinking, well, my kitchen’s been closed now. I haven’t eaten in a couple of hours. If I have that cookie, now I’m going to have to reset the clock, right? And it’s going to be later tomorrow before I can really feel good about eating again.

So I really had that awareness that the intermittent fasting helps me avoid the late night snacking that’s really, I didn’t need anything. I wasn’t hungry. It was just a passing thought. But because I do fast, because I do want to have, and again, like you, I’m not strict. You know, I use my body as a guide, but for health reasons too. I mean, there’s been a lot of science about all of the benefits that you get beyond just weight, right? In terms of health.

So, you know, I typically probably do 12 to 14 to 16 hours more, but probably 12 to 14. But it was enough again, because we just had an episode where we’re talking about nighttime cravings. And for me, just knowing that I want to eat, I don’t want to have to wait till like six o’clock tomorrow night to eat is enough to have me to say, I don’t, you know, yeah, it was a passing thought, but no, I’d rather just stick with it and keep that window going.

Peter Morrison (16:20)
It makes me think of something you mentioned in a previous podcast about your Duolingo streak and keeping the streak going. It’s sort of the same thought process of you want to keep the streak going, you want to not restart your clock.

Martha McKinnon (16:27)
Right. Right.

Right. You know, it’s really helpful. So I think it could be helpful for people, especially if you’re a real mindless, if you’re a real mindless muncher, you know, I mean, this whole concept of, and I think there’s a lot of, and again, we’re not scientists by any stretch. We’re not doctors. We’re just, we’re just two people sharing our experiences. This is all very anecdotal, but there’s just something…

How do I describe it? I think it’s just, for me it’s been surprisingly helpful in lot of ways that I didn’t even anticipate. Especially if you’re used to this mindless snacking. I think it’s good for your digestion. I used to be the one who just would, even if I wasn’t hungry, if you’re out somewhere and the carrots are there, you’re eating because it’s there, you don’t really need it.

And think your body does, I think digestion, all of this works better if you’re, don’t think your body wants to be digesting food constantly, you know, if you think about from an evolutionary standpoint, again, this whole concept of feast and famine where, where sometimes you’re, you would eat and then there’d be periods where you wouldn’t. I have a feeling like my body works a lot better if it just has times to rest and not be constantly digesting just because you’re eating it, just because you see it.

The other words for intermittent fasting that have become popular like time restricted eating, the fact that you’re just limiting the hours that you eat, I think can be another just good something to consider, just another guardrail, just another way of evaluating your relationship with food that can be helpful.

Peter Morrison (18:07)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And I think it is one of those controversial approaches that, because you’ve written a few posts on Simple Nourished Living about intermittent fasting, and it’s received some support, but also much…

Martha McKinnon (18:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right.

Peter Morrison (18:52)
Opposition, I guess, to, you know, people just don’t think and, and that’s back to your point of there is no one way to manage your weight or to do Weight Watchers.

Martha McKinnon (18:52)
Right. Right. And I think just to stay open, I mean, and I’m having to remind, I mean, I think we teach and we talk about what we need to know and what we need to learn. You know, it’s, we can become know it all. I know I can, you know, I think, I think I know, I think I have the answers based on like, and I have a really good teacher in my space who’s constantly reminding me like, you know, you’re one over 8 billion. You really don’t know diddly squat. You know, your opinion is sort of meaningless.

Peter Morrison (19:19)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (19:33)
And I think that that’s important to keep remembering to always stay open, to always learn, because I can get really caught up in the way, you know, my limited view and my limited worldview is very small. It’s like one person. So when you went so my first reaction to you was intermittent fasting. My goodness. But then I opened myself up to it and I experimented for myself. And I think the best thing you can do is just not take anybody’s word for anything. Right.

But to try it for yourself and give it a chance and see, and then you know, I mean, maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, maybe some variation of it works. Maybe it works, maybe it works on certain days of the week. You know, maybe it works in certain situations. I know, for example, traveling, I think that intermittent fasting, when you when if that’s the way that you’re sort of managing your life, it can take a lot of the pressure off when you’re traveling and you’re in different countries and you’re eating different foods and you have less control over what you’re going to eat, right?

Peter Morrison (20:10)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (20:31)
But you have more control over the timeframes in which you will eat. And I think about a lot of cultures, like I was very into studying, like French ladies don’t get fat, you know, and they have a lot of very strict food rules. I mean, when you’re in Paris and if you miss the lunch hour, there’s the restaurants close, you know?

So while they might not call it intermittent fasting, they’re not eating 24-7. There’s a breakfast time, there’s a lunch time, there’s a dinner time, and there’s not a lot of snacking in that culture. So there’s all different ways to approach this. I think if you get, again, this goes back to your mindset and your openness and your attitude and how you’re feeling, if you really are approaching it with curiosity and interest and not overwhelming.

It can become fun to just see it as an experiment and to play and say, well, I don’t have to do this forever, but I can try it and see what happens. And that’s when I think the whole journey becomes, you know, much less overwhelming. You just take it a little bit step by step and, you know, make it playful, make it fun.

Peter Morrison (21:53)
Hmm.

Martha McKinnon (21:55)
Absolutely. It’s funny. mean, I’m just going to throw one more thing out here. I read too much, I think, but I’m a big fan of James Clear, you know, the writer of Atomic Habits. And I am playing just little bits with his app. I haven’t quite mastered it yet, but I was doing a little bit of reading and he said that in terms of and he’s really become an expert in understanding habit change, right? Because he’s read tons.

And that’s really his space. But he was talking about habit change. And he said that there are four things you have to consider or questions you should be asking yourself when you’re trying to develop a new habit or break an old habit. Actually, it was when you’re trying to build a new habit. He said, ask yourself, how can I make this obvious? How can I make what my new habit easy?

How can I make it attractive and how can I make it satisfying? So all those things are very positive, right? In terms of…

How can I introduce this into my life? So for example, me, if I’m wanting to do more yoga, I will often just leave my yoga mat unrolled in my bedroom. So it’s now obvious, right? It’s like, and I don’t have to get on it for a long time, but I should do a couple of yoga stretches. could do a few down dogs. have a few minutes. So when you start thinking about that, how can I make this obvious?

Peter Morrison (23:11)
Hmm.

Martha McKinnon (23:27)
How can I make it easy? We’re really talking about taking the stress out of it, right? Making it more fun kind of off topic, but.

Peter Morrison (23:39)
Well, no, but that makes me think of something we’ve talked about in the past and something a lot of people write in about is making meals easier and meal preparation easier. Well, there’s a lot more prepared foods in the supermarkets these days, or how do you repurpose your leftovers?

Martha McKinnon (23:49)
Right? Mm-hmm.

Peter Morrison (24:09)
And if you, you you cut your veggies up or you cook a big batch of veggies and you put them in your container in the fridge, you have a multitude of ingredients ready to go that aren’t in any one dish, but you’ve got some leftover rotisserie chicken and you could easily put together a meal just by assembling a few ingredients. You don’t have to start from scratch every time.

Martha Mckinnon (24:17)
Right? That’s really, that’s a great point. mean, cause a lot of us do struggle with the feeding of ourselves.

And this is a great way if we start thinking about that in terms of our cooking or approach to eating, it’s absolutely, absolutely spot on. want to make it like, like obvious. I found that to be true too, because I got myself a new air fryer for Christmas and it’s like sitting right on the counter. And like, so now it’s obvious .

Martha McKinnon (24:55)
If I had to go pull it out of the pantry or pull it out of a cupboard, but I’m using it because it’s right there. So if you really start to think about how to set up your life, you know, if you want to eat more fruit, like have the fruit bowl right on the counter, right? It’s obvious if you will. So this is another great exploration that we could really apply to what we’re trying to help people accomplish here, you know, around making healthier eating easier and more fun.

Peter Morrison (25:25)
What were the four tips again? Obvious, easy.

Martha McKinnon (25:27)
So obvious, easy, attractive, and satisfying. So we’ll keep playing with that because that’s really sort of the foundation. I mean, from which he builds, there’s a lot more around habit change. But I think the more we understand about human behavior and habit change and how to make this easy on ourselves.

Peter Morrison (25:34)
Easy.

Martha McKinnon (25:54)
It doesn’t, mean, again, this goes back to the whole, my whole mindless eating thing that, that, that those shifts really, were so helpful and they were, it was so easy, you know, you just, and it’s obvious and easy. so, yeah, this is something we’ll, we’ll definitely want to be exploring more, as we continue these sessions.

Peter Morrison (26:17)
And just remember, there is no right way, there is only the way that works for you.

Martha McKinnon (26:19)
There’s no right way. There’s no right. There’s no right way. There’s no one way. There’s the way that works for you. And so you want to tailor the program for you. You don’t want to try to force yourself into into a program that doesn’t work.

All right.

Peter Morrison (26:37)
This is very helpful. Thank you.

Martha McKinnon (26:41)
We’ll see you soon.

Peter Morrison (26:44)
Have a great day everyone. Bye.

Martha McKinnon (26:44)
Bye bye.