Weight Watchers Purple Plan
Will the purple plan work?
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(Before you begin another diet, I suggest reading this book.It has changed my life and I am finally able to succeed. I needed to deal with the root of the problem and find ways to cope before I could truly succeed at any program.)
Weight Watchers recently changed their program to offer three plans: the green plan, blue plan, and purple plan. You get to choose the weight loss plan you would like to follow, and you can switch between them to find what works best for you!
In my opinion, the easiest plan to follow will be the purple plan because there will be less tracking with 300+ zero-point foods to choose from. As soon as I discovered the purple plan had so many foods with zero points, I wondered, “What’s the catch? How can one offer 300+ free foods and the others not?”
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Here’s how:
There are two differences between the three plans. Basically it boils down to this: the more zero-point foods you are offered, the less daily points you will have.
For example:
On the purple plan I get only 16 daily points, but 300+ free foods. (For reference: I’m 34, 160 lbs, a woman, and not breastfeeding).
If I would have chosen the blue plan (which is basically the freestyle program they have used for two-ish years) I would have 23 daily points and a list of 200+ zero-point foods.
The green plan is the final plan to choose from. On this plan I would have 30 daily points and 100+ free foods (this system is similar to smart points).
All plans still allow you to use exercise to earn points, and they give you 35 weekly points.
Here’s the thing, the green plan has already been proven to work, along with the blue plan. The only wild card is the purple plan, and I promise you, it’ll work too.
WW claims you will lose at the same rate no matter which plan you choose. I believe them.
Here’s why:
Let’s use potatoes as an example. On the purple plan, potatoes are a zero-point food.
When is the last time you baked 4 plain potatoes and ate them all with nothing on them but salt and pepper? YUCK! I have never had a plain baked potato in my entire life, and I’m going to keep it that way.
The items that make you want to keep shoving potatoes in your mouth are butter, bacon, cheese, and sour cream. If I made 1 potato with all those ingredients, that would take all 16 of my purple plan daily points. So I’d have to stop eating at 1 potato, or start eating plain potatoes…and I definitely won’t do that.
Another example is French fries. French fries are only good because of all the oil, and the oil has points. Therefore I can only eat so many French fries. Get it?
The problem is not potatoes and whole-grain pasta…it’s all the junk you put on it. What I’m saying is the new zero-point foods will be limited by foods that have points assigned to them. The foods that you use to make them delicious.
The mad scientists and geniuses at WW must have realized that when they let these foods become free. They also understood that while whole-grain bread is a whole-grain, it still needs to have points. Overeating on plain bread is very easy!
Why not just eat intuitively and skip tracking all together?
Well, friends, while this is my ultimate goal, sadly I am not at a place where I can take this leap. Unfortunately, I like sweets too much. Plus foods that have high amounts of fat are too delicious for me to stop eating them. I can’t be trusted by a can of nuts or a block of cheese. I have to measure portions, and then figure out how to fit it into my day.
Plus, I still want to lose weight. While I can stop tracking and maintain my weight pretty easily, I absolutely cannot lose weight without tracking. More than likely, neither can you.
That’s why WW helps me so much. I have the freedom to eat most foods intuitively, but I still have to be accountable to things like chips, candy, and cake. This is why I always say that WW is a great stair step on your way to eating intuitively, and the myWW purple plan just made it even better!
I trust WW. It works for weight loss, no matter what. Period.
WW and I go way back. Back to when carrots were the only zero point food. We have had an on again/off again relationship for the last 10 years of my life! It is the program I used before I had kids to lose weight. After each of my babies, it was the program I used to get back to my pre-pregnancy weights. On WW, I have lost 53 pounds since 2016 (see the Instagram post below). I’ve strayed from WW and tried different ways of eating, but the only times I lost weight in the last three years was with this program.
Because of my success over the years, I trust them with this purple program.
Not only has WW evolved, but so have my eating habits. I now focus on eating a whole-food plant based diet. A majority of my meals are home cooked with real foods that have short ingredient lists.
The fact that I eat real foods is why it makes perfect sense for me to run with childlike abandon into the arms of the purple plan. On this plan you get 300+ zero point foods!!! That means I have 300+ foods I don’t have to track. I. Am. THRILLED! I hate weighing and measuring every bite of food I eat…I HATE IT.
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Why the other plans are not a fit for me.
Tracking everything was exhausting! The bane of my tracking existence used to be figuring out how to measure cooked whole wheat spaghetti or roasted potatoes. All the options I was given didn’t make sense.
Do I weigh the noodles dry or cooked? What do 2 oz uncooked noodles weigh when it is cooked!?!? Am I supposed to shove these noodles into a measuring cup? What’s a cup of potatoes look like when it is cut into a wedge? Do I try to piece these wedges together until they form a potato so I know how many I am eating? I hated it, and ended up “eyeballing” it constantly. You know how that goes!
That just didn’t work for me. Now enters the purple plan, and I am truly blown away! Could they have done it? Have they created the absolutely perfect plan for someone like me!?!?! Potatoes: free. Lentil noodles: free. Oats : free!! I have died and gone to weight loss heaven. It makes sense to me how this will work for weight loss.
Related Posts: Whole-Food Plant Based WW
However, you won’t lose weight if you get in your head and overthink the program. Don’t try to understand how it could possibly work with so much food you don’t have to track. Or try to justify not tracking one food because it has the same calories as a free food. It will be hard for you to succeed because you will get sloppy with your tracking.
I know this from 10 years of personal experience. The times where I started trying to outsmart the program are the times I’d fail.
You must find the myWW plan that works for your personality.
This will allow you to trust the process and follow the program. Once you land at that point, you will lose weight. Try them all to see what works best for you if you don’t know. WW offers the flexibility to do that!
Final thoughts on WW
I always joke about the program changing often, but it’s only because they are trying to make it a program that can work for anybody. I’ll even admit that some changes have completely stalled my weight loss, but it’s never because the program doesn’t work. It’s because the changes they made didn’t reflect what my personality needed.
I’m excited to see how far I go on a program that seems like a perfect fit for what I need! Follow me on Instagram to see how it goes.
This is the best idea WW has ever come up with! You won’t find a better weight loss program, a cheaper one, or one with more freedom that is guaranteed to work. If you are looking to start making healthy changes in your life, and want to lose weight at the same time, start today with WW!
What are your thoughts on myWW? How do you feel about the purple plan? Which plan would you choose? Comment below, I’d love to hear from you!
