 Hi friends, welcome back to my channel and a special welcome if you're new here. My name is Jen. I'm a certified weight loss and nutrition coach and I'm on WW personal points. Happy Sunday. I am so excited to share with you today's video. It has been one that has been in the works for a while. I've really been thinking about and reflecting on my WW journey prior to tracking calories and macros what I did back in 2019 through the current and all of the mistakes that I've made when following WW. I have learned from a lot of these mistakes, a lot of these things I no longer do. And I thought that I would share with you the mistakes I made, how I learned from them and how it's benefited me in my weight loss. If you're new to my channel, I have lost almost 95 pounds on WW. I am five pounds from 100 pounds lost and I've been following the program since 2019. So if you're excited to hear all about the mistakes I've made, how I've corrected them, how not doing these things can benefit your weight loss, give this video a big, huge thumbs up, make sure you're subscribed and your bell notification is turned on so you never miss a single video. I do upload five days a week. Check out that description box down below for nutrition coaching. I do offer personalized 2U macros and calories. Highly recommend, especially after today's video, as well as one-on-one coaching. If you need individual support, I'm always here to help. I'll link all of my favorite healthy things as well as my Facebook group. Comment over, join us there down in the description box as well. So let's jump into all the big mistakes I've made on WW. So let me give you a little bit of back history, whether you're new to my channel or you've been following me since the beginning. Thank you, of course, for that. I wanted to just give you a quick rundown of my history with WW and how my weight loss has gone. So in 2019, I was strictly following WW. Back then, it was WW freestyle. When I was following just WW freestyle, I wasn't having a lot of success in weight loss and I am not blaming the program. I'm actually blaming myself. I had a hard time sticking with the program consistently. My weight each week when I did my weekly weigh-ins was like this. It was up and down a lot. I wasn't really getting anywhere with my weight loss. And you have to remember that I had a lot of weight to lose. If I've lost almost 100 pounds and I'm not my goal weight yet, it's evident that I should have been losing weight a little bit quickly and a little more consistently when first starting out my weight loss journey. I was suffering with a lot of stomach issues. I would mention in my weigh-in videos every week on how my stomach just didn't feel good. It was gurgly. It was achy and I couldn't understand what was going on with that. In 2020, I started switching a lot of the foods that I was eating from more artificial sweeteners and processed foods to a little bit more whole real foods, especially when I realized that I just wasn't eating enough calories on WW alone. I was always hungry. I was always thinking about food. I never ever felt satisfied and I knew something was wrong. I should not feel this way. Even though I'm on a diet, even though I'm in a caloric deficit, I shouldn't be hungry, starving, ravenous, uncomfortable all of the time. So it really got me into thinking about how many calories I was eating and this prompted my points versus calories series that I put out here on my channel. I'll link that playlist down in the description box for you. Once I got into points versus calories, realized I was not eating enough on WW alone, that's when I started double tracking. Tracking points and tracking calories. This is when WW shifted to the blue, green and purple plans as well. Also in 2020, I decided to switch the way that I was eating from more processed foods, WW hacked foods into more real whole foods and just this simple change not only helped with weight loss, but helped me feel better overall. I actually have an entire second playlist here on my channel about clean eating on WW. I'll also link that one down in the description box. I also obtained my weight loss and nutrition certification because I got heavily involved in nutrition and what are the best foods to eat for weight loss? Not only for weight loss, but to make you feel better, keep you full and not hungry all the time and what can I do to help others reach their goals on WW? So getting my weight loss and nutrition certification has been amazing. I have such a great clientele. I'm always taking on new clients. I also offer personalized macros and calories if you're interested in that. I have a wide variety of services. I'll put my nutrition coaching website here on the screen and it is also linked down in the description box. So once 2021 hit, I really started losing weight more consistently. I was tracking points and calories. I was eating enough every single meal every single day. I was focused on more real whole foods and at the end of 2021, I was diagnosed with a thyroid issue as well as inflammation. So I had to make again some major, major changes in order to see the scale move in the right direction. I was prescribed thyroid medication. I've eliminated most processed foods from my diet and I'm really heavily focused on protein, fruits, vegetables, and food that actually fuels my body with nutrients, vitamins, minerals. My inflammation has gotten a lot better because I have reduced my sugar intake to almost nothing and I've really reduced the amount of processed foods that I'm eating. And I set a goal for myself in 2022 to hit my goal weight. And I have lost weight every single week in 2022 and we're talking well over a pound, sometimes two pounds per week. So all of these changes that I've made since 2019 to now and the mistakes I've made following WW have been corrected and now I'm seeing the most results that I've ever seen. My body has changed so much. I have leaned down so much. I'm healthier, stronger, happier than ever. So I wanted to share with you what I've done, what mistakes I've made, how I've corrected them to get me to where I am right now. So that's a little bit of back history on my weight loss journey with WW. And now let's go ahead and jump into the mistakes that I've made. Big number one and a huge, huge mistake is not eating all of my points. We are given a set target of points every single day. Now I'm not counting weeklies. These are our daily points that were given based on age, sex, weight, activity, medical concerns. There's a lot of factors that play into the number of points that we receive every day. Now following WW personal points, our points are dictated by the zero point foods that we have as well as all of the other factors that I mentioned. It is so incredibly important to eat all of your daily points every single day. If you're not eating all of your points, I can assure you, I promise you, you're not getting in enough calories, nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. And sure, you'll lose weight in the beginning, but I also promise that that will come to a complete standstill. You will hit a plateau, you will stop losing weight. It's going to be very hard to start losing weight again. And we don't even want to talk about when you get to maintenance on how hard it's going to be to maintain your weight loss. WW gives us daily points so that we use them every single day. In 2019, there were days I wouldn't eat all my points, but once I realized that that's partially why I'm hungry all the time, I started eating all of my points. And like I said, my weight loss just elevated from there. Number two is not eating your weeklies. WW would not give us weekly points if it prevented us from losing weight, because let's be honest, WW is a diet and it's a business. And if we are joining their program and we're not losing weight, we're not going to stay, which means we're not going to be paying them monthly, weekly, quarterly, yearly for their services. So they wouldn't give us weekly points if it inhibited our weight loss. The other issue with weeklies is it opens up the door to living a more balanced lifestyle. I know when I was only following WW, I would turn down so many invitations to things, whether it be birthday parties, dinners, barbecues, events at a friend's house. If it didn't fall on the perfect day, I would turn down the invitation. And that's not sustainable. Not enjoying life and going to events isn't sustainable. And that's where weeklies comes in. They are given to you to live your life, and to enjoy foods that are a little bit higher in points maybe aren't the healthiest options, but are part of living a healthy balanced lifestyle. Now, whether you use your weeklies in one day, like I used to do, I had one day a week that I used all my dailies and all my weeklies, you can do that route, or you can divide your weeklies up over the week, or maybe if there's a day that a surprise happens, or maybe you overeat that day, that's what your weeklies are for. But I highly, highly encourage you to eat all of your daily points and eat all of your weeklies. Again, this is going to ensure that you're eating enough calories and that you're going to have sustainable, consistent weight loss. Number three is eating on a schedule. I cannot tell you how frustrating and annoying this habit is once you get into it. When I was not tracking calories and really just tracking points, I literally told myself I had to eat at a certain time. Breakfast at eight, snack at 10, lunch at 12, snack at two, dinner at five. Whether I was hungry or not, I would eat at those set times. That is not a healthy relationship with food. That is a huge diet mentality. It is not sustainable because life happens, and maybe I can't eat lunch one day at noon. And if I'm so regimented on the times that I'm eating, I'm not really listening to my body. I'm not satisfying my hunger cues, and I'm learning to eat when I'm not hungry, which again is an unhealthy relationship with food. So if you're someone that eats on a schedule, we have to stop doing this. We have to start listening to our body, eating when we're hungry, stopping when we're full, and maybe we don't have a morning snack every day. Or maybe we don't have dessert after dinner because we're just not hungry. Our ultimate goal, once we've lost our weight, besides maintaining that weight loss, is to not have to necessarily track points, calories, macros for the rest of our life, but really focus more on intuitively eating, eating when we're hungry, stopping when we're full, and not fixating on food and just living our best life. Mistake number four is restriction. It is never, ever, ever healthy to restrict or eliminate foods or food groups. We restrict ourselves, or when we eliminate certain foods or certain food groups, it can lead to binge eating or overeating. Remember when you were a teenager and your parents told you they didn't like your boyfriend and they didn't want you to see your boyfriend anymore, you wanted to see him more, you wanted to spend more time with him, and you were more committed to maybe an unhealthy relationship than ever. It is human nature to want things more and more that we tell ourselves that we can't have. And this is an unhealthy life pattern to get into, and this is definitely an unhealthy eating pattern to get into. A healthy, sustainable lifestyle is never restricting foods or eliminating foods or food groups. It's eating everything in moderation. Now, WW tells us that no food is off limits, and that is true, but there are foods that take up more points than others. There are foods that are healthier than others. No food is bad or good, and by telling ourselves or putting a label on food, it can really, really hinder our weight loss, and it can also hinder our relationship with food, which can lead to severe food issues down the road. So whether you're on WW, counting calories, you're not even on a diet, make sure that you never restrict or eliminate any food or any food group. Don't put a label on it and just eat it in moderation. Enjoy the foods that you love, and remember, whatever you're doing to lose weight, you have to do that to maintain your weight. That's a mistake, and this is a huge mistake, and this is falling into the trap of WW food workarounds, and really only looking at the point value of food and not really looking at the nutritional value and the sustainability of that food. I know I'm not the only one who tried to eat as low a point as possible. Even if that meant eating foods that I absolutely hated, like fat-free cheese or plastic cheese, fat-free, sugar-free, everything, by consuming these foods, not only is it unhealthy for our bodies, we also have to remember that our body doesn't understand artificial sugar, it doesn't understand what fat-free cheese is, it has a hard time processing and digesting those foods. Also, these foods do not keep us as full and satisfied as real whole foods. So by only focusing on low point foods or how low can we get this cheese or this dairy products or this cereal or this chip or this cookie, whatever the case may be, by only focusing on the points, we're not eating foods that nourish and fulfill our body. We're also not eating foods that keep us full and satisfied. And that's a huge reason why I was hungry all the time when I just followed WW. And all I thought about was my next meal, my next snack, and what food I was going to shove in my mouth next. It's because I wasn't eating foods that kept me full and satisfied. I was eating foods and doing workarounds to get the lowest points possible. Sometimes the lowest point foods aren't the healthiest foods and they're not the best foods for us. So instead of trying to find all these WW workarounds and dupes, I now eat foods that fuel my body. I eat full fat cheese. I eat full fat dairy. I limit the amount of sugar-free items that I choose to eat every single day and I focus on the foods that make me feel good and that fuel my body. Next is living and dying by the weight scale. Now I know a big piece of WW is the weekly weigh-ins and I don't think there's anything wrong with this for most people. If getting on the scale can ruin your day, your week, your month, your year, then getting on the scale every week, whether or not it's recommended by WW may not be the healthiest decision for your mental health or your physical health. The number on the scale is just data. It doesn't define who we are. It doesn't define our progress. It doesn't tell us how good we're doing on our healthy journey. It's simply a box that generates a number based on your weight. Now weight makes up so many different things. Our weight can be affected by the foods that we eat, the sodium we consume, the lack of water or the overconsumption of water exercise. There are so many factors that play into weight that it shouldn't be the most important thing to you when you're on a healthy lifestyle journey. The weekly weigh-ins at WW can be really beneficial for a lot of people. It can be the accountability that you need to stay focused on week because let's be honest, we don't want to step on the scale, especially in front of someone else and have our weight go up every week, stay the same, and really not lose weight, which is what WW is intended to produce. But we also need to focus on things that aren't related to our weight. How about how we feel overall? How does our body feel? Do our knees hurt less? Does our back hurt less? Are our clothes getting looser or fitting better? And are we just feeling better overall? What are those NSVs or non-scale victories? Those play a bigger part in overall success than the number on the scale. I was wrapped up with the number on the scale. And if you follow me on my channel here, you know that I don't really give a rip what the scale says because it isn't always an indicator of how good I did during the week, how much I was on plan. Maybe I did everything right and that stupid scale doesn't deliver the results. I've really just started to use the scale as data. And that's a healthy relationship with the scale. And it's a goal we should all have is not just focusing on the number, but focusing on all of the other benefits from getting healthier and losing weight. Not eating enough zero-point foods has been a huge mistake for a lot of us on WW. We are given zero-point foods, zero point, not free. There is no such thing as a free food. The only thing you can consume that's free or zero calories is water. So I like to call them zero-point foods, not necessarily free foods. I think that connotation can be kind of confusing for people. We are given zero-point foods by WW because they're healthy, they're nutritious, they're whole real food. There isn't a single process food on the zero-point food list. The whole premise behind zero-point foods is to use these as the foundation of all of your meals or snacks. So when you're building a meal or a snack, the first thing you should be focused on is what zero-point food are you going to be eating and then building your vegetable, your carbohydrate, your fruit, the other parts of your meal or snack around that zero-point food. When we're not eating enough zero-point foods, number one, we're not getting enough whole real food, nutrients, vitamins and minerals. But even bigger than that, number two, we're definitely not eating enough calories. I promise you 100% guaranteed that you are not eating enough calories every day, you are far below even a thousand calories and you're not even close to where you should be eating every day to have sustainable, healthy weight loss. So it's really important to focus on zero-point foods. Because these foods aren't free and they still contain calories, it's important to stick to a serving. But if you find yourself that you're still hungry after your meal, have some more zero-point foods. These are the whole real foods that your body needs and these are also the foods that will keep you full and satisfied until your next meal. So make sure that you are focused on your zero-point foods. The next mistake is not tracking calories. On the WW program, they don't track calories. They do not give you the calories that you're eating per food, per meal, per day. But it's really important to have that knowledge in the bank and know how many calories you're eating on WW. Now once you track a food in the app, you can click on that food. It will give you all of the nutrition information of that food. But you have to manually open each food, add it up to get your total calories for the day. Same with your protein, your fats, your fiber, all of the different macronutrients that you're tracking. My recommendation for you would be to utilize a calorie tracking app. There's a lot of free ones out there. I use, lose it. I love that app. There's my fitness pal. I'll link a couple of these options down below for you. But I would recommend that even if you don't want to track calories and points every day, one or two times a week, check in with yourself. Track your day of food and make sure you're eating enough calories. Make sure you're getting in enough protein, healthy fats, fiber, carbohydrates. Make sure you're eating a well-balanced diet because it's more about what we eat rather than how much we eat that can make a big difference in losing weight and even a bigger difference on our metabolism and maintaining our weight loss. The last thing you want to do is under eat on a regular basis. Do damage to your metabolism and have to start all over and even gain weight to lose weight again. And again, it's really hard to maintain your weight when your metabolism has adapted to such a low caloric intake. Get your macros and calories from a nutrition coach. I do offer that service. See a doctor, dietitian, nutritionist. Just know how many calories you should be eating every day and make sure that you're hitting those calories on a very consistent basis. And that may mean a little bit of double tracking until you get into a groove of eating the right amount of foods, the right foods, the right macronutrients to eat sustainably, keep your metabolism wrapped and continue your weight loss success. Next is not focusing on real food. Not making sure that the majority of what you're eating every day is real whole foods. Lean protein, fruits, vegetables, dairy, really limiting the amount of processed foods that you're eating every day can make a huge impact on your weight loss. Like I mentioned, it's more about what we're eating rather than how much we're eating. Just because we're eating skinny pop for three points doesn't necessarily mean that skinny pop is the best option for us. What are the macronutrients of skinny pop? Is it fueling your body? Is it giving you the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that your body needs? It's best to pair macronutrients together. And if you don't know what macronutrients are, it's carbohydrates, fats, and protein. So when you're having a snack, don't just have skinny pop. If you want skinny pop, have skinny pop. But pair that with another macronutrient. That's primarily a carbohydrate source. So have something that has some healthy fat or some protein with that. Maybe have some skinny pop and a cheese stick. This is going to help you reach your macronutrients that your body needs to live, to lose weight, to maintain that weight, and to make you just feel better overall. Like I said, we never want to restrict or eliminate any food or food groups. And it's okay to eat processed foods, but it's most beneficial for not only your body, your health, but especially your weight loss if you focus on real whole foods for the majority of your meals or snacks every single day. This is definitely, definitely like I mentioned for myself, a mistake I made. And when I remedied and corrected that mistake, I've lost more weight than I ever lost before and I'm consistently losing more weight. Another big mistake that I made in the beginning and a mistake that I've absolutely corrected, and this is focusing on too much at once, making us overwhelmed with trying to live a healthy lifestyle and lose weight. Weight loss starts in the kitchen and fitness starts in the gym. So when we're on a weight loss journey, it's important to focus on what really delivers results and that's the foods that we're eating. We can overwhelm ourselves if we're focused on foods, water, exercise. All of those things can be really overwhelming and when we get overwhelmed, that's when we quit. That's when we stop losing weight. That's when we stop focusing on a healthy lifestyle. That's when we can quit our weight loss journey altogether. So it's important to focus on one thing at a time and since the foods that we're eating is the biggest contributing factor to weight loss, that's what we should be focused on first. Once we have our food under control, once we've developed a healthy relationship with food, then we can start introducing other things like having a water goal and exercising. But focusing on one thing at a time can make weight loss a lot less overwhelming and more importantly, make it something you'll stick with long-term. Now let's talk about drinking water. Once we have food under control, we can start setting ourselves up with a water goal. We should be drinking water throughout the day every day even if we're focused on the foods that we're eating. We should still be making sure that we're getting in enough water every day. Water does your body good. It flushes out everything in your body. It makes a huge difference with your hair, your skin, your nails, and just how your body looks and feels overall. Nothing is worse than being dehydrated. Nothing's worse than chapped lips, crepey skin because we're just not getting in enough water. It is recommended to consume eight eight ounce glasses of water every day. This is what's recommended by doctors, nutritionists, worldwide standards are eight eight ounce glasses a day, which is 64 ounces or half of a gallon. This is where I started and over the last year or so, I've been able to work myself up to a gallon of water consistently every single day. I do track my water and the way that I found to know that I'm getting in my water every day is to use a water jug. I have a 64 ounce water jug and I have a gallon water jug. Both of these I purchased on Amazon. Both of these were super affordable. I will link them down below for you. But what I do is I fill my water jug up the night before because I love nice cold water and then I refill a glass, a tumbler, a water bottle throughout the day with that nice cold water. Once the jug is gone, I know that I've reached my water goal for the day. So if you struggle getting in your water, having a water goal or having a jug to depend on to track your water is absolutely essential. And if you have a hard time with just plain water, you can add some fruit to that. I love lemons, limes, cucumbers, berries in my water. You can even add water enhancers like crystallite or purple or mule to your water. What's important is getting in your water. However you get that in, however it can make you want to drink your water, those are the things that you need to do because drinking water is not only important for our bodies, but it's really, truly essential for seeing success on the way in weight loss. And last but not least is not being consistent, not consistently tracking your food, making sure you're eating the right foods, making sure you're eating enough calories, drinking your water, moving your body, staying away from franken foods and WW low point foods that aren't healthy for us. Consistently doing all of these things is what's going to lead us to not only being healthy overall, fueling our body, correcting, changing, fixing our relationship with food. And all of these things is what makes us keep our weight off. It's what makes this sustainable and lifelong. This is a lifelong change, not just a diet or a quick fix. And remember, whatever you do to lose weight, you need to do that same thing. Eat those same foods to maintain your weight. So if you're scarfing down fat free cheese or salads for the sake of weight loss, the minute you lose your weight and you stop eating those same foods, you're going to have a hard time keeping your weight off. So eat the foods that you love throughout the weight loss process and continue to eat all of those delicious foods that you love while you're at maintenance. And this is really the key to long term success, to fixing your relationship with food and to really seeing overall health results. I've made every one of these mistakes. And in fact, a lot of these mistakes, I made over and over and over again until I realized I was making these mistakes and since correcting these, I have consistently lost weight. I am healthier, stronger, leaner than I've ever been before. And honestly, I feel better overall. My sleep is better. The way my body feels is better. No more aching joints, no more hurting back. I can get in my exercise with less recovery time. I can climb the flight of stairs without being out of breath and my knees hurting. All of these things make such a huge impact on quality of life. And none of these things have anything to do with the number on the scale. These have everything to do with how we feel and the changes that we're noticing in our body and our lifestyle that make our weight loss sustainable and something we can stick with long term. It's okay to make these mistakes. We're all going to make mistakes. We're all going to do things that don't benefit our weight loss journey, but realizing and correcting these mistakes can make such a huge impact on your overall quality of life. So let me know down in the comments which of these mistakes that I've made resonated with you and which ones are you correcting or have you corrected on your weight loss journey. Let us know down in the comments because the community can really benefit from all of your personal experiences even more so than my personal experience. And if you enjoyed this video and you found it helpful, don't forget to give it a big huge thumbs up. Subscribe if you're not because I do upload five days a week and check out that description box for everything I talked about today. The videos, the water bottles, the Lose It app nutrition coaching as well as my Facebook group. It's another free great source for support and an amazing, amazing loving community. So head on over and join us there as well. Thank you guys for watching and I hope that you found this video helpful and I'll see you next time. Bye.