BEWARE WW Points Plus & smoothies

[sueg]

DH & I are doing WW together and I started to follow a blog which offered several smoothie recipes. Our blender went & with encouragement from DH, I bought a Vitamix to replace it (Yes I spent over $300 on a blender) We were happily have what I thought were low point smoothies by breaking down the ingredients - for e.g. 1 cup of unsweetened almond milk is only 1 its. Fruit is free etc.
When I went into WW website recipes looking for new ideas, imagine my surprise when they were showing 6-8 its for smoothies. Looked at comments after these recipes and saw half of the comments were questioning the pts.
A few people chimed in that when you "process" things, the points change ala no free fruit etc.
I am so bummed. I've been erroneously tracking and wonder what else has secret rules. How else can you track a new recipe?
Goodbye smooties - you are not filling enough for 6-8 points. Anybody want to buy a relatively new blender?

 

[keahgirl8]

Have you still been losing weight? If so, I wouldn't worry about it. Even veggies have points if you put them in the recipe builder. I have read explanations and none of them make sense to me. Everyone has to so what works for them. For me, I figure the recipe items in individual components, if they are fruit or veggies. The only concern with fruit is to make sure you aren't eating (or drinking) too much of it. It still has sugar and calories. Just be careful, and you should be fine. This is my own personal opinion and is opposite of what I have read from many WWers.

 

[bumbershoot]

A few people chimed in that when you "process" things, the points change ala no free fruit etc.

No, this is NOT WW's stance on things. Even if a leader or two says it.


A smoothie isn't a recipe. So don't use the recipe builder for it. Enter in each fruit to the tracker, put in your almond milk, then Save As Meal.

The official stance is that you are to eat fruits and veggies to satisfaction, and your losses are to be your guide. If you do everything else correctly, and you're doing it for a good period of time, and you're not seeing losses, THEN look to your fruit/veggie consumption. If the only iffy thing you're doing is the smoothies, THEN moderate your smoothie consumption. It IS hard to moderate your fruit/veggie portions when blending them, because they go down so much easier, so keep track of them for sure.

But no, "processing" them doesn't make them have points. After all, we cook spinach, and that is processing it, making it easier to swallow. But cooked spinach is still 0. All you add is the oils or whatever else you might use to cook it in.

 

[sueg]

Thanks for the insight. Our smoothie this AM was one whole pear, one whole banana, 1 cup of almond milk, ice, hint of vanilla & touch of cinnamon. Shared between the two of us, it seemed like 1 pt each. When I used greek yogurt instead of almond milk, I upped the pts accordingly. Maybe i'll keep the smoothies as a sometimes breakfast, when we are tired of veggie omelets or oatmeal with fruit.

 

[walkdmc]

Don't get rid of your Vitamix!! You can make smoothies very low cal and satisfying, just look for recipes on sites other than WW. Baby spinach is always a good add-in since it has an almost nonexistent flavor. Almond milk (unsweetened vanilla) is also great, at 30 calories a cup!!!! Add some ice, baby spinach, a banana, almond milk and frozen strawberries and that can't be more than 2 points. Runners World just had some low-cal smoothie recipes so check those out.

I love my Vitamix. It gets used daily and after owning at least 3 different blenders in my life, this one is hands down the best. I've made hummus, peanut butter, margaritas and hundreds of smoothies in that sucker.

 

[coastgirl]

We were talking about fruit vs juice at our meeting this morning--I'd say if you are using whole fruit and not throwing out the pulp then it's still whole fruit.

 

[keahgirl8]

We were talking about fruit vs juice at our meeting this morning--I'd say if you are using whole fruit and not throwing out the pulp then it's still whole fruit.

I agree. Food is food. If you were to just have the juice, that is different. You're taking out the fiber, plus you are probably having too many servings of fruit that way.

 

[Ariel484]

I asked about this at my meeting yesterday, and my leader responded that we should follow the recipe builder because when we consume fruit "as a liquid" it's not as filling and the calories are still there.

So here's the recipe I put in to the recipe builder:

4 ounces frozen banana
4 ounces POM juice
4 ounces Almond Breeze (vanilla, unsweetened)
6 ounces frozen strawberries
6 ounces frozen blueberries

In the past I'd calculated this to be 3 PP (PointsPlus): 2 PP for the POM juice and 1 PP for the Almond Breeze. Seemed too good to be true...

The banana went into the recipe builder first, and if I remember correctly it alone was 3PP! By the time I got through everything my 3PP fruit smoothie had turned into a 9 PP fruit smootie. I mean...what?!

I get it from the calorie perspective, but not from the PP perspective. The pocket guide has all of the fruit listed at 0 (and it doesn't say what amount we should count as 0/a serving...I'm looking at the new 360 guide) and in the Good Health Guidelines section it doesn't say exactly how to limit your fruits and veggies, just to get 5 servings per day.

This was my first experience using the recipe builder (overall I just like to write stuff out better) and I found it frustrating and sort of contradictory to what they say in the literature about fruits and veggies. Like...WHY was the banana by itself 3PP?

Overall I think I am going to experiment a bit like you guys suggested. I'm pretty bad about regularly getting fruits and veggies in (will probably add spinach to the above recipe) and feel like I need to have "dessert" each night before bed, so this smoothie was going to be a double-win for me: a way to get the fruits and veggies in and have something before bed that's not, like...a cupcake or whatever. Because the above recipe is pretty darn delicious (it's from Alton Brown).

 

[bumbershoot]

WW's article, The truth about fruit, answered.

Notice the explanation for why the recipe builder does what it does. It doesn't know if you've input heavy cream or an artichoke.

And at the end, bottom line, let your weight loss be your guide.



I do not count fruit or 0 point veggies. I track them, but if they are 0 they are 0. I personally would NOT count points for the carrot in carrot cake that I made from scratch. Same with a fruit pie. I would count for the butter and the flour and the icing and the sugar and all that, but I personally would not count points for the fruit or veggies in such things. (again, that I made myself). I personally disagree with the "it's not 0 because then you might overindulge", because that's what counting points for the OTHER things does, is help me not overindulge.

But I DO agree with the stance in the article above.

My leader can go on with her own personal understanding of blending fruit and etc etc, but I 100% disagree, and I go by the article above.