WW OR PLAIN OLD CALORIE COUNTING??
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WW OR PLAIN OLD CALORIE COUNTING??
| Wed, 10-08-2008 - 6:41pm |
So I'm diabetic and have 100 pounds to lose. I read on a diabetes site that a large woman trying to lose weight should eat between 1600-2000 calories a day. It also said how many servings to eat from each food group. Would this be better than weight watchers for a diabetic?

Hi and welcome to the board.
In my humble opinion either one will work but 2000 calories is too much. That is the amount of calories for a man not a woman. Just remember that you didn't get that heavy overnight and you won't lose it overnight either. A 5-10% weight loss will bring your diabetes under control in most cases. But I found that it was easier to meet with a dietitian and get a special meal plan designed for me. Although WW does have a diabetic eating plan if that is all that is available to you. You want to lose 1-2 pounds per week. Also you need to add in exercise and the goal is 150 minutes per week. It can be as simple as walking 30 minutes per day. Start small and work your way up.
Please pull up a chair and join our conversation. We have all been where you are and we are here to support you as best we can.
Those numbers seem good for someone to maintain a weight but not so much for losing. One way I've heard of for calorie counting is to figure out a target weight (figure 5% loss from where you are now for instance) and eat based on that amount of calories. For instance (and I'll use little numbers to make things simpler for myself), if you weight 100 lbs and want to get down to 90 lbs (a 10% decrease), instead of eating around 1000-1300 calories per day (fairly sedentary person values), try 900-1170. It's not fast weight loss by any means but you will start losing and once you've got to your target, it's old hat to stay at that range.
Also, set smaller goals than 100 lbs - that is daunting to think about and every little slip seems magnified. Maybe set a 3 month goal or a 6 month goal (whenever it is you next see your dr. for followup checks) to be x amount lower. For instance, I aim to be 3 to 5 lbs lower every 3 months - which is a really modest goal, that's about 1/4 lb to 1/2 lb per week which means I can usually meet and exceed my goal, nothing feels better and is more motivating than beating your own goal.
Keeping a food log is a good idea so you can see where the nibbles are sinking your plans - BUT you must be honest with yourself and your food log.
Some people find it helpful to break their day into 5 or 6 smaller food portions instead of 3 meals. That way you don't get to 'mealtime' feeling famished or deprived, you're never more than about 3 hours from food. However, some people have trouble keeping the 'betweens' to a proper size (once the snacks come out, it's hard to stop for some). So, YMMV. If you do decide on 5-6 small portions throughout the day, a helpful way to do that is not to ADD more stuff but rather take the existing meals and sub divide them - for instance, instead of cereal, milk, sliced banana for breakfast, have the cereal and milk then save the banana for mid morning (obviously, cereal is not necessarily a good breakfast for a diabetic but it's an easy example); have the sandwich for lunch and save the apple for mid afternoon and so on.
--Deb
Several members of our Weight Watchers board have diabetes -- you might want to check-in there, too