Weight Watchers used to be the last bastion of old-school numbers-don’t-lie dieting. The points system reinforces a fundamental principle of weight loss: to lose body weight, create a calorie deficit. Fewer calories in, more calories out. When the body does not get enough energy from food, it begins to metabolize (burn off) excess body mass.
Under the points system, all foods are allotted a certain point value. The more calories a food contains, the more points it’s assigned. Foods with practically zero calories have—you guessed it—zero points. These are “free” foods. Participants are given a point limit per day, based on their gender, age, and weight loss goal. The idea is very simple: stick to your point limit, and the weight will come off.
At the beginning of 2011, Weight Watchers changed its point system to count most vegetables and all fresh fruits as “free foods.” The reason? That the majority of Americans do not eat enough fresh fruit. Allotting zero points to fresh fruit would undoubtedly compel Weight Watchers members to increase their fruit intake to the recommended 2-3 servings per day. Right? Right.
It’s taken about a year for the consequences to catch up with the Weight Watchers fruit points change, but the people have spoken: dieters aren’t happy. For those trying to shed pounds, it seems that zero-point fruit has been at best a source of confusion, and at worst a cause of total diet sabotage.
Do fruits belong in the zero-points category?
Let’s take a closer look at free foods. Because the points system is based on, calorie content, “free” foods were, until last year, only those foods with effectively zero calories: celery, lettuces, green beans, and jicama, for example. Logically, these are foods that provide the body with fiber, vitamins, and minerals but very little carbohydrate, protein, or fat. Foods no sane person would want to consume in large quantities.
But we cannot group fresh fruits with these free foods! Fresh fruits are juicy, often sweet, usually low in fiber, and always caloric. 1 serving of fresh fruit is ½ cup—the size of half a baseball or the bulb part of a lightbulb. Who stops at one serving?? You can see how things get tricky. 1 large apple? That’s two servings of fruit—possibly your total recommended fruit intake for the entire day.
Almost all fresh fruits have essentially no fat or protein, but they do contain carbohydrate, aka sugars. LOTS of sugar. 1 cup of red grapes has 100 calories and 27 grams of sugar—the equivalent of around 7 teaspoons of sugar. Would you consider 7 teaspoons of white table sugar a “free” food?
The sugars in fresh fruit are natural, but ultimately have the same effect in the body as the “artificial” added sugars found in processed foods. When we consume too much of any sugar, the body stores the extra efficiently—as fat!
Eating all the fruit you want doesn’t promote weight loss—it actually does just the opposite. Stick to the 2-3 recommended of servings per day, and focus on fruits that contain enough soluble fiber to minimize blood glucose spikes from all that sugar. Good choices include apples, cantaloupe, pears, and strawberries.
One of my favorite snacks are nuts. A handful a day may not only help to prevent heart disease but recent studies show they can also promote weight loss! The catch? Keeping your intake to just one handful (technically 1/4 cup is a serving). Simply put, grabbing too many can pack on the pounds because although healthy, they’re naturally high in calories and heart healthy unsaturated fats (about 160 calories/16 grams of fat per serving). So before I scare you away from them altogether let me share a few simple ways you can consume this awesome snack without undoing your diet:
We’ve all been there: our best intentions to consume a snack-sized portion of nuts/cereal/fro-yo result in a depleted container and too many extra calories not to mention the guilt. Or have you found yourself using tons of disposable zip-locks for on-the-go snacks? Enter the latest solution: 