ive just completed my first week on pp and lost 2 1/2lbs i have done discovery before and lost 7lbs in the first week i am also confused as to which plan to follow. PP seems to allow too much food for weight loss.
dieting is not about how many lbs you lose each week but on having a plan that is liveable and sustainable ON A VERY VERY VERY LONG TERM, because believe it or not, you will need to keep on "dieting" for the rest of your life. If you keep on doing what you've always done you will always get what you've always got. If you diet and lose weight quickly it means that you lose water in your muscles, muscles themselves and a little fat. I prefer to lose only the little fat and lose only 2 lbs rather than losing always the 2 lbs in fat, but also other 5 lbs of muscle mass which will be very difficult to rebuild. Remember the story of the turtle and the hare, slow and steady wins the race. That's the new approach WW is having.
If you are on ww it's because obviously you have overeaten for a certain number of years. otherwise you wouldn't be there. I feel i can say that, because I have been there myself, when I started weight watchers I weighted 14 st 2.5 and it was all my fault, even if I didn't think so at the time.
The PP plan encourages you, WITHOUT making you feel punished/ravenous/hungry, to make HEALTHIER choices and encourages you to educate yourself on what is the best food for your body, that keeps you fuller for longer, without depriving you or without forcing you to give up all you like. If you give up all you like, in the end you will miss it and get back to it and you'll pile all the weight back on.
It happened to me once on Discover: as soon as I reached my ideal weight I stopped following the diet and piled the lbs on again, just because although the diet was allowing me to have treats and stuff I liked, it was TOO restrictive and didn't allow any flexibility for life to interfere. This time it's different and I have proved it: I'm on propoints since November and al maintaining really well my 8 stone weight. I have kept on losing a bit until Christmas, exactly like I was doing with Discover (I have been at goal since June, but on Discover, even on the maintenance points I was still losing weight, so much so I've lost 9 lbs in 6 months...) and then I have happily kept on maintaining my 8 stone of weight. My goal is 8st 9 and even after having come back from holiday for 10 days in Rome at Christmas (with all the Christmas food and cakes lying around) I hadn't even returned to my goal weight, I had only put on 4 or 5 lbs, which I have happily lost in a couple of weeks, again with propoints, stopping where I wanted to stop.
So... why restrict yourself on a diet based on old scientific principles, which promotes a daily calorie intake of only 560/980 minimum (if you have 14 points per day, a vintage point was, based on the saturated fat, between 40 (x14 = 560) to 70 (x14=980) calories. Hence, if your 14 points contain mostly foods high in sat fat, you would have only around 500 calories! Even by adding an extra 300 or 400 calories of vegetables, and that would be a MASSIVE amount of carrots/tomatoes and etc, you wouldn't be getting even to 1000 calories a day! The formula for the vintage points would give 1 point for 70 calories only if the saturated fat content was 0.1% or less, so it means that 980 calories per day would be possible only on very extreme circumstances. Most of the time on vp if you had 14 points per day you would be averaging 800 calories per day, plus maybe 100/150 of vegetables, hence not even 1000!) when you can lose weight with a well balanced diet of 1200/1300 calories per day (1500 with fruit and veg) which any nutritionist would recommend you to have?
Yes the weight loss is slower, but HEALTHIER. Combined with exercise the Propoints plan would result in you being able to enjoy your life, never feel hungry, lose your weight and arrive at goal toned, with a minimum amount of loose skin and armed with the best tools to maintain your loss forever without yo-yoing!