Kelsey Borneman

In anticipation of my upcoming wedding this August and the need to feel like a super model on my wedding day, I joined Weight Watchers (now rebranded as WW). I’ve never been a fan of fad diets or extreme diets that don’t fit my lifestyle that I wouldn’t be able to maintain longterm. This girl likes to eat. WW seemed like the best option for me because you really can eat whatever you want so long as you stay within your daily points. 

The first month was free when signing up for a 6 month plan. Each additional month is under $20 for the digital access which includes access to the app and all online resources they provide. 

How WW currently works is shortly after you sign up, you are prompted to take a quiz to determine the correct plan for your day to day. I was given 30 points per day on the Green plan with 35 ‘bonus’ points per week to use as either cheat meals or to add a few additional points to my daily balance. If you don’t use all your points in one day, they roll into your ‘bonus’ bank for the remainder of the week, however it is encouraged to use all your daily points. 

I spent the first week after I signed up not religiously tracking my food since I had already gone to the grocery store that week and bought basically all foods not WW approved. I also wanted to get familiar with the kinds of foods I could actually eat vs ones that would use up my daily points (aka ranch, cheese, fries, you get where I’m going with this).

I was shocked at the amount of points certain food items I assumed were healthy actually had. A Naked Green Machine smoothie amounted to 14 points, half my daily total! A side of ranch dressing, not that bad right? Almost 10 points depending on the brand, but not to worry, I have found a WW approved ranch that tastes just as good as the regular stuff.

The key to success is simple: meal planning. This wasn’t a huge change for me since I pretty much did that on a weekly basis anyways, just with meals that I thought were healthy for me that in fact were not. I looked on Pintrest for meal and snack ideas and checked the point value using the WW ‘Create Your Own Recipe’ tool. I also searched for and pinned a bunch of WW Green plan approved recipes. There’s even a handy barcode scanner located in the app that you can use to basically scan anything and find out the point value. Let me just tell you, that thing is addicting. I spent 2 hours at the grocery store my first week on WW scanning everything in sight.

I’ve now been on it for almost 3 weeks and am down 6 pounds! But the main takeaway for me is that I don’t feel like I’m starving myself. I’ve found that I can pretty much make most recipes I usually do but with slightly different ingredients such as fat free milk, low fat cheese, whole wheat pasta, or subbing in greek yogurt.