I had great success with Weight Watchers last winter. I lost 30 pounds in a few months. But I last Spring I quit counting my points thinking I could just live off what I learned and eat better. It didn’t work very well. After hitting 225, I plateaued and have slowly gained back about five pounds.

Now, I have renewed interest in counting my points. I was trying to remember how many points I was allowed. I finally found a formula. Yeah, I know. Weight Watchers formulas are patented and I’m probably going to jail for life for publishing it. Then again, I like to live dangerously.

The food-point-value formula is widely available on the ‘net along with oodles of sites that offer pages and pages of food value tables. I’ve only found one site with the point allowance formula. So, I’m linking to that page and republishing it here to help folks like me have more success when they google it.

Based on a series of questions, you add up points to get your daily allowed point total. And don’t forget, no matter what your daily allowance is, everyone is allowed 35 “flex” points per week. You could look at this as an extra 5 points per day, but it’s better to take this weekly so you can have lighter days and heavier days throughout the week.

1. Gender: Female (2) (Add 10 points if you’re nursing), Male (8)
2. Age: 17-26 (4), 27-37 (3), 38-47 (2), 48-58 (1), over 58 (0)
3. Weight: Add the first two digits of your weight in pounds (ex. 199 lbs. = 19 points)
4. Height: Under 5’1″ (0), 5’1″-5’10” (1), Over 5’10” (2)
5. Activity Level: How do you spend your day? Mostly Sitting (0), Occasionally Sitting (2), Mostly Walking/Standing (4), Physical Labor (6)

For me, it looks like this:

So now I can start counting again and we’ll see if I can get down to 200 by Thanksgiving. That gives me three months to drop about 30 pounds. I think I can I think I can I think I can…