Congrats on your engagement!
So basically weight watchers works on the basis of points, with roughly 1 point equating to 40 calories. Depending on your age, height and weight you will get a certain amount of daily points. I started off on 34 daily points, and everyone gets an extra 49 weekly points. As you lose weight your daily points drop until you reach 26 which is the minimum.
Daily points can be used on anything. Obviously the more fat and carbohydrates in something the higher the points! An average chocolate bar is 6 points. I think 60g of wholewheat pasta (dry, uncooked) is 6 points. There are free foods- zero heroes, which you can use to pad a meal out or snack on etc. Most fruit and veg is 0pp but you have to be careful as some have points such as peas, sweetcorn, tinned tomatoes, potatoes. But things like apple, banana, strawberries, carrot, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans are 0pp.
Whilst in theory you can eat a mcdonalds everyday if you so wished as long as it was in your points it might slow down your weight loss, and wouldn't be very healthy! But with WW you can eat what you want (within reason) as long as you track it all.
The 49 weeklies are there for you to use as you want. They're great for if you want a meal out, or alcohol etc. Some people use them in one go for a big night out, others use a few a day over the course of the week. Personally I try not to use more than 20 weeklies as I feel it slows my weight loss or even causes me to gain weight, but for others they don't lose weight unless they have their 49 weeklies.
You might find that when you start weight watchers you are on what seems to be a high number of points. It's tempting to limit yourself to 26pp a day straight away in order to speed up your weight loss. It's a really bad idea. It's designed so that you start off on a higher number of points (depending on your weight and height, some do start off at 26pp if they dont have much weight to lose) and gradually drop down as you lose weight so that you don't plateau. If you start off on 26pp and after losing say a stone and you plateau, you'll have nowhere to go in order to kickstart your loss again unless you drop below 26pp which is not allowed on WW!
If you have an iphone then the weight watchers app is great for tracking your points and working out the points in the food- you can search the database or calculate the points from the nutritional info. You do need to be a member of weight watchers in order to use the app. You can download 'fake' WW apps such as the value diary, but be careful of this as some foods in the database have the wrong points so I would just stick to using the calculator.
If you have any more questions feel free to ask!
