Using Weight Watchers for P90X, Insanity and other Beachbody Workouts

The Weight Watchers diet plan is really common, and many people who do P90X, Insanity, or the other Beachbody programs want to continue using the diet as they are already familiar with it. There is no reason that you can’t use the diet plan with these workouts. This information can be used for the Points Plus system.

The Problem With the Weight Watchers Diet

The problem with the Weight Watchers diet program is that the goal is to lose weight through a calorie restricted diet. It assigns people points to optimize fat loss, by taking people down to about 1,000 calories a day below their Maintenance Level. This gives people an average loss of 2 lbs of fat a week, which is the supposed maximum safe fat loss level. Any more than that and your body can go into starvation mode, where your body tries to save itself by hoarding fat and burning muscle. That is obviously bad.

However, when you add an extreme fitness program like Insanity or P90X, you increase your daily calorie burn dramatically. If you don’t add calories to your diet, you move from the safe fat loss level to starvation mode. While Weight Watchers assumes some light activity in their point calculation, they don’t anticipate P90X level activity. So if you are already on Weight Watchers, you have to add extra points/calories to your diet to maintain a safe level of weight loss.

What is a Point?

To write this column, I researched Weight Watchers’ patents to come up with an answer. A Point is essentially 50 calories. However not all calories are the same. For example, 50 calories of food high in fat is worth more points, while 50 calories of food high in fiber is less than a full point. So I can’t just tell people to figure out how many calories they burn and then add the appropriate number of calories. However you can roughly estimate that you should add 2 points for every 100 calories of exercise.

How To Calculate Extra Points To Add To Your Day

In reviewing the Weight Watchers patent, there is a formula for points to allocate to your exercise. Unfortunately, Weight Watchers even states that they underestimate the Points you might need, as they believe people overestimate their exertion. However, few people would describe Insanity, P90X or TurboFire as less than Intense. For that reason, I will modify the Weight Watchers’ formula to be in the middle.

If you are doing P90X, Insanity, Power 90, ChaLEAN Extreme or TurboFire, you want to use the following formula:

.1783 x (your weight in pounds / 2.2) x minutes of your workout / 75

So, if I am doing P90X and I weigh 154 lbs, I generally estimate that P90X averages about 70 min a day (with ARX). That means that it is:

.1783 * (154/2.2) * 70 / 75 or 11.6 points.

I round that to 12 points to add per day on average.

Simplified Math for P90X and Insanity

If you are willing to trust me, here is the overly simplified math for estimates for Insanity and P90X:

For P90X: Multiply your weight in pounds by .07564

For Insanity Month 1 and Recovery Week: Multiply your weight by .04214

For Insanity Month 2: Multiply your weight by .05943

Less Intense Workouts

While I don’t intend to downplay the level of effort involved in Turbo Jam, Hip Hop Abs, Slim in 6 and other programs, they are not at the intensity level of P90X and Insanity. There is a slight modification to the formula for these programs as follows:

.0711 x (your weight in pounds / 2.2) x minutes of your workout / 75

The other programs vary to much in length of workouts to give a more simplified number. Again, you can average the length of the workouts, so that you are not using different points every day.

Let Me Know If You Are Stuck

I realize that this can seem complicated. If you get lost in the math, feel free to send me a message at ira@irawinkler.com.

These Are Estimates

As I said, these are estimates. You need to watch your results and modify as appropriate. Ironically, I will say that if you stop losing weight, I recommend that you add points. Again, on Weight Watchers, you are already bordering on starvation mode. If you stop getting results, you very possibly put yourself firmly into starvation mode, so you should probably add about an extra 1/3 of the points you added for exercise.

Weight Watchers is a very established nutrition plan, but again it does focus on calorie restriction. P90X and other Beachbody programs focus on a holistic combination of exercise and nutrition. It can however be safely modified for the Beachbody programs.

What is P90X?

The textbook answer to what is P90X is that it is a DVD based home fitness program featuring Tony Horton. That is like describing Michael Jordan simply as a basketball player. P90X is actually the most popular home fitness program every put together, with well more than 1,000,000 copies sold.

P90X is produced and distributed by Beachbody, which is the leading producer and distributor of home fitness programs, as well as nutritional supplements. As with all Beachbody programs, P90X has both fitness and nutritional components. While most people know P90X for the 12 DVDs that come with the program, a significant portion of the results come from eating properly.

For a detailed description of the different exercise DVDs, you can follow this link. Fundamentally though, there are 5 strength workouts, 3 aerobic workouts, 2 core workouts and a yoga and a stretch workout. The P90X schedule uses the Muscle Confusion philosophy, which essentially implies that the workouts do not repeat on a frequent basis, so your muscles do not get used to the workouts. The schedule has you do strength workouts every other day, three days a week. There is then yoga and 2 cardio workouts on the alternate days. There is also on optional stretching workout for your rest day.

The workout schedule is divided into three different phases of 4 or 5 weeks each.

One thing that is important to note is that P90X derives it’s name from Power 90 Extreme. Power 90 is an extremely popular program from Tony Horton, and a follow up program was a natural. Extreme means that P90X workouts can be extremely tough, and the workouts generally range from about an hour to an hour and a half a day. If you can take the commitment, it will provide results.

The nutritional program is also divided into three phases. The program starts out with a low fat/low carb approach and increases carbs and decreases protein in the subsequent phases. While more details will be covered in later entries, the surprising part of the nutrition plan is that it actually has people eat many more calories than they think they need. The high protein means that there is a lot of bulk to the food. Also, given that you are doing hard workouts for more than an hour a day, you are potentially burning an extra 1,000 calories a day.

In the end, what really makes P90X is Tony Horton. If you don’t like Tony, you won’t like P90X. If you like his corny jokes and overall energy, you will stick with P90X. There are plenty of workouts out there, but what made P90X so popular are the results of hundreds of thousands of people who spread the word. The reason they had the results is that they stuck with the program, and the only reason they stick with this program, above all others, is Tony Horton.

If you want to purchase P90X, you can follow this link.