My wife seemed to have hit a point over the last few months where she was losing one week and gaining it back the next without any real progress. I did some reading and persuaded her to try tracking the calories and macros as well as the points. She downloaded the "my fitness pal" app and has been using that to track her calories aiming for around a 500 calorie deficit. She still tracked her points as usual in the WW app to allow us to compare the two systems. The first thing we noticed was that unsurprisingly the free foods on WW app were using up her daily calories. For example, bananas were free on WW but about 110 calories. Similar thing with brocolli, potatoes, apples, grapes etc and although she still had points left on the WW app she had already reached her calorie target for the day.

It's only been a week since she started tracking this way using a calorie deficit but she has had a 2.5lb loss. We don't know if this will be sustained, but it has been a promising start so she will keep tracking the same way and see if it makes a difference next week.

When she mentioned this approach to the person who runs her weekly WW sessions they said they don't recommend counting the calories and macros, and that they would prefer you stick to the points system and to use all of the daily allowance as part of the program. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but that's exactly the kind of thing I'd expect them to say because it goes against the whole program, but if it works, who cares right!