Fruit

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Happy Friday!!

How was your week!? I have been so busy with work this week that I have not been able to focus on anything else! Hopefully, things at work will die down soon so that I feel like a real person again.

During my Weight Watchers meetings and Getting Started Sessions I get a lot of questions about the zero PointsPlus value on all fresh fruit. I thought that you might have some of the same questions so; here is the most recent information from Weight Watchers on fruit.

When do I have to count my fruit? What if I juice it? Blend it? Mash it? Bake it? Shake it?

If you put a banana in a blender, you still have a banana. But what a minute ago looked like a substantive snack, now looks like a tiny shot. So you might be tempted to add another banana and maybe even some raspberries, a few grapes, that leftover papaya from two days ago and a kiwi, just to fill your glass.

Juices bypass the body's hunger detectors. Smoothies seem to sit someplace in the middle—more filling than a juice, but easier to consume than plain fruit. If you sat down and drank the smoothie we just described, you've just slurped back 5 or 6 servings of fruit in one sitting.

Should you count it as zero? Its your choice—how exact do you want to be?. You can count it as zero using the Simple Recipe Math described on page 42 of the Getting Started Book (GSB). But if you are drinking a lot of smoothies and you aren't seeing the results you were expecting at the scale, we recommend you put those fruits into the Recipe Builder on eTools and start counting and tracking the PointsPlus values.

When you juice any fruits (ie removing the pulp and feeding through a juicer) no matter if you do it at home, in the car or on the beach, you no longer have fruit; you have juice and you must count the PointsPlus values. Same is true if you dehydrate the fruits, because you have removed the fiber/water that made fruit such a nice low-energy density treat.

What if you bake the fruit? Boil it? Microwave it? As long as you don't add any ingredients with PointsPlus values, you still have a zero PointsPlus treat. Count it as zero.

As with everything on this program, LET YOUR WEIGHT LOSS BE YOUR GUIDE. (Think of Obi Wan Kenobi "Use the Force Luke")

I hope this helped! Have a great weekend!!