Weight Watchers Points Tracker

I'm not really sure how useful this is going to be to people, but as it's helped out several friends, I figured I'd share it here.

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A good portion of my immediate family and their significant others have been doing Weight Watchers.  My mom and girlfriend kept asking me when I was going to do it to.  Hoping I might get out of it, I told my girlfriend I'd do it to so long as she kept track of all my points.  She agreed, and so I was stuck.

(To be fair, I agreed to Weight Watchers as opposed to any other diet as it seems more of a “how to eat properly/lifestyle” kind of thing as opposed to a “diet” kind of thing, so it also peeked my curiosity.  Like, “How much SHOULD I be eating compared to what I have been?” (Answer: A lot less)  To express this point, you don't have to lose weight while on the program, you can adjust how much you eat to gain, lose or maintain whatever weight you want.  It's kind of interesting to realize the amount of food intake it requires to affect your body.)

After a month of letting my girlfriend track my points, I decided to do it myself.  I wasn't going to learn anything about what I was eating if I didn't take part.  Soon after I started tracking, I realized I needed some kind of automated system that I didn't have to constantly add, subtract and keep count of for days at a time.  All of the information was already stored in a fairly easy to follow spreadsheet my girlfriend made, so I decided to add a few formulas to keep track of things a little easier.

To put simply, this spreadsheet keeps tabs on what you're eating, how many points it costs, and determines how many points you've used/have left for the day and week.  Like I said, I'm not sure how useful this is to anyone else, but I figured there'd be one or two people out there that might enjoy.

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Please let me know if you have any questions...I edited the files a little bit in hopes that it makes more sense.  Feedback is always appreciated.

Who this is for:

• If you want to try weight watchers, or currently use weight watcher, but don't want to pay them, this might help you.
• If you want to count your calories in a point system, this might be for you. (This is essentially a glorified calorie counter.)
• If you want to keep track of what you eat, this might also be for you, though it may not be in depth enough.

What this isn't:

• This doesn't tell you how many points things are worth, that's your job.
  • A quick guide to points:
    • Every 50 Calories = +1 Point
    • Every 10 Grams of Fat = +1 Point
    • Every 5 Grams of Fiber = -1 Point (you can't go below 0)
    • (and don't forget to keep an eye on serving sizes!)
• This doesn't tell you how many points you should shoot for.  Again, your job to find out
  • If you want to lose weight, there's guides online to figure out what it should be.
  • If you want to gain weight or stay the same, figure what you need to do to lose weight, add five or ten points to that and see what happens.
• This doesn't track Workout points. I don't believe in them, I don't use them, I didn't add them.

What this is:

• You enter in what you eat.
• You enter in how many points it costs.
• It will tally everything for you.
• Tracks Weekly Points which are bonus points that tally though the week
  
  • These are a buffer in addition to your daily points
  • They count down throughout the week (you don't want them to go to zero)
  • ...use it for a couple of days and it should start making sense.

What you need to do to make the most use of this:

• Download the appropriate file and put it in a place that's easy to access.
  • I use different computers depending on where I am, so I also downloaded Dropbox and put this in a folder that's shared with all of my computers.
• Figure out how many points you should eat and enter that in the ??????? field on the spreadsheet (see the attached picture).
• Enter in what you eat, as you eat it, and see how things go.
• If you use this, and your weight changes, ten pounds more or less, make sure you re-figure out how many points you're allowed to eat.

Voila! Now you don't have to pay $17.00 a month to a website to track your points for you!

Attached you'll find the Open Office and Excel versions of the same file.  Choose what suits you.