weight watchers and cycling?

[sookiesue]

Hello,
This is kind of a long question, I'm just looking for any tips or ideas or to hear about anyone else's experience that might be similar.

I am starting up with weight watchers again because 7 of the 15 lbs I lost using their plan 2 years ago have creeped back on, mostly this winter due to indoor-only exercise and too much beer and general lack of discretion while eating.

I am wondering - is there anyone out there with experience using their plan while also cycling a fair amount? I am trying to figure out how to stick to the plan but also make sure I can eat enough to fuel my rides.

For those of you familiar with the plan, I am allotted 26 daily points and 49 weekly points.

When I enter an hour of 12+ mph cycling into their "activity tracker" it gives me 11 activity points that can be 'traded in' for food points.

I can try simply using those 11 points for food I eat before/during/after specifically to fuel my rides, but when I used the plan last time I rarely used my exercise points for food. However, I wasn't exercising as intensely (45 min-1 hour at the gym, usually on the elliptical trainer, as opposed to 2 hour bike rides) and that exercise didn't increase my appetite like cycling does.

Anyone out there have experience with this plan while also cycling?

Thanks for any help!
Susan

[maillotpois]

IMO, the plan WAY overestimates the number of points one uses for cycling.

I'd read this to start:

http://forums.teamestrogen.com/showthread.php?t=40785&highlight=watchers

Or generally search for WW on the board: http://forums.teamestrogen.com/search.php?searchid=3961310

[sookiesue]

Thanks, Sarah!

These are exactly the type of discussions I wanted to read. The points system has changed even since I used it about 15 months ago (I get 26 now and I got 29 then) so they are constantly tinkering with their systems, but the ideas shared in the TE discussions are very useful.

[Maye]

I'm having problems figuring out what extra food I can eat with Activity Points (AP's) as related to the Bicycling>12mph activity. So far I'm eating all the AP's the same day that I do the activity but I'm not loosing any weight. It's going to take me a while to learn how to "play" with these points to loose weight and not going into starvation mode. I used to use FatSecret to count calories and record activities and they provide a way to see your daily calorie deficits based on every single thing that you do during the day that will burn calories (i.e. sleeping). Not using Fatsecret now since is a pain to enter points and calories daily in both websites. Not sure how to count things like resting or sleeping as activities in WW, which leads me to believe that I'm not loosing weight the days that I exercise (bicycling for 75 minutes or more) and my body is going in starvation mode since I'm not taking into consideration additional activities that burn calories like resting, sleeping and etcetera. Does this make sense?