I’ve been thinking about the purpose of “points” for tracking food intake in the WW program (formerly Weight Watchers) Most people get a budget of 23 points a day. Some foods are 0 points, but most aren’t.
I actually have a wonderful client who I work with on nutrition therapy to manage a medical condition. She also uses Weight Watchers, separately from our work together, and finds the camaraderie and groups to be really useful and up-lifting. She lets me know they discuss topics other than food too: sleep, movement, and mood to name a few. I tell her, that’s great they are offering a holistic view on health! I’m not here to judge her desire for weight loss or use of Weight Watchers. But I *do* hold issue with extreme restriction of food (particularly when it leads to binge eating down the road), and the idea of points is a concept I struggle with.
I can understand why points are used. “Calorie” has become such an emotion-laden word that most people fear — somehow, diet culture has convinced us that we need to eat as few calories as possible, lest we start gaining weight at a rate that cannot be undone (not true). But points! Points feel pretty benign. We typically associate points with positive meaning (earning points, scoring points!), and in that sense, I can see why they have replaced calorie-counting with banking points. That was a strategic move on WW’s part to mask diet culture in their program.
I dislike points because it distills all food down to a mere tally mark, when I want to talk about flavor, satisfaction level, the wider context of the meal! It also provides a hard cap on how many points you can eat a day (just like a 1200 calorie diet). I know there are 0 point foods (just like there are low-calorie foods), but the idea of trying to squeeze an entire day of existing and eating into an arbitrary box of points is difficult for me to stand behind. And worst of all, to me, it doesn’t teach participants how to listen to their body. What if I am hungry for an 8 point meal but only have 3 points left in the bank? No matter what, ours brain and body will perceive that as restriction and likely rebel in the form of cravings, overeating, and guilt in the near term future.
As a Health at Every Size practitioner, I am not here to judge people who seek weight loss (many people who I love have that as a goal and I can understand and empathize with how they feel), but I will stand to critique systems that set people up for failure or strip away the greater context of eating. WW’s point system takes food and waters it down to a mere point, erasing the many wonderful associations we may have with ingredients and dishes, and turning ourselves against our intuition and daily physical and emotional needs. Humans are much more than a points bank, and what we eat is much more than a point!