How To Figure Out Weight Watchers Activity Points

What do you do to effectively shed some weight? If you are one of the people who watch their weight closely but don’t see any significant change no matter how hard you resist fatty foods, you should engage yourself in Weight Watcher’s activity points. Activity points are a point system that measures your exercise’s intensity to effectively burn some calories. Many people think that limiting themselves from eating sugary or fatty foods is enough to bring down their weight. But little do they know the human body needs sugar and carbohydrates to have energy. In the Weight Watcher’s activity points, it allows you to eat sugar and carbohydrates moderately and compensates by increasing the intensity in your activities.

Does it sound good? Here is how to figure out your activity points as explained in theweightwatchers.com:

List your activities. When you think of exercise, do you limit it as going to the gym? Or lifting weights? Actually, your daily household chores can be considered as exercise as well. Activities like playing and having fun with your children, ironing your clothes, doing manual laundry or manually mowing your lawn can be intense to earn yourself some activity points.

Measure the intensity of the activity. The intensity of your activities is grouped into three categories – low, moderate and high.

Low intensity activities are those that don’t let you break into a sweat like leisure walking and stretching. Low intensity activities’ heart rate measures about 40-54% maximum heart rate or MHR.

Moderate activities are the activities that can produce an amount of sweat like brisk walking and leisure biking. Its MHR is measured about 55-69%.

High activities are the ones that gain the most activity points. High intensity activities include running, jogging, swimming and vigorous biking. These activities equals to a good 70% MHR.

Calculate your activity points. Once you have categorized your activities, you can now calculate your activity points. Be sure you log your activities and its durations and you are keeping record of your present weight. You’ll need this information in calculating your activity points. Once you have all your information, you can calculate the points with the each intensity’s formula.

For low activities, use this equation:
Weight X activity minutes X 0.000232

So if you weigh 195 lbs and walked leisurely for about 10 minutes to the store, your activity point’s computation will be as follows:
195 lbs X 10 minutes X 0.000232 = 0.45 activity points

For moderate activities, the equation should be:
Weight X activity minutes X 0.000327

A perfect example for computing your activity points would be going jogging for 30 minutes. Thus, when you calculate your moderate activity points using the same weight at 195 lbs, it should be:

195 lbs X 30 minutes X 0.000327 = 1.92 activity points

For high activities, compute the points by using this formula:
Weight X activity minutes X 0.0008077

So for doing a 25 minute power swimming, you can compute the points as:
195 lbs X 25 minutes X 0.0008077 = 3.93 activity points

Log your activity points. Don’t forget to log your progress everyday. You can gauge yourself in performing light to high activities gradually. Logging your progress will keep you on track on your weight loss program.

Remember that activity points are valid only during the day you had your activity. You can’t add it up or carry it over to the next day. You will soon notice that the higher your activity points be, your weight will lose a significant amount correspondingly.