New WW Points Program Changes 2024/2025

Hi friends! If you follow the Weight Watchers program, you may have noticed some changes to the plan in the WW app this week, so I wanted to share a recap of what I’ve seen that’s new or different!

If you’ve done other WW plans in the past, some of these changes will likely look familiar to you, as a few formerly zero point food options are making a reappearance, but there are some totally new ones as well as some new app features. If you’re just here for the tasty lightened up comfort food recipes and not interested in WW, don’t worry, I’ll be posting more recipes soon!

Let’s dive into the new program:

NEW ZeroPoint Foods

So, what foods will be ZeroPoints? All the foods that were already zero points on the WW plan will continue to be zero, but there are a few new ones that I think members will be excited about:

• NEW lean meats: Previously, skinless chicken breast and turkey breast were zero points, but these changes have added many more lean meat options to your zero point food list! Here are a few that stood out to me:
  • skinless dark meat chicken and turkey are now zero, which means that 90% (and up) lean ground turkey and ground chicken are now zero as well (previously only the leaner ground breast-meat-only varieties were zero)
  • lean ground beef is now zero, including 90% lean and up
  • other lean and trimmed cuts of beef and steak are zero, for example, trimmed NY Strip, lean flank steak, trimmed filet mignon, and more are all showing as zero points
  • lean cuts of pork are now zero, for example, lean pork chop and pork tenderloin come up as zero
• Potatoes: Potatoes and sweet potatoes are now zero points *not for WW members following the diabetic plan*
• Oats: Oats are now zero points *not for WW members following the diabetic plan*

Daily and Weekly Points Allowance

In the past, when WW added or eliminated zero point foods, your daily and weekly points allowance would go up or down accordingly to accommodate the changes. This time, however, daily and weekly points allowances seem to be staying the same. I had 23 daily points and 28 weeklies before this, and that’s still the amount I have, even with the new zero point foods. So if you’re eating some of the newly included lean meats, potatoes, and oats, you may find that it feels like you have gained points to spend elsewhere, making the plan more accommodating.

Points Formula

The formula for calculating points is remaining the same, so any foods or recipes you know the points for that do not include any of the new zero point foods shouldn’t change. The points are calculated using calories, fiber, protein, added sugars, saturated fats and unsaturated fats. The algorithm is intended to help guide you toward foods higher in healthy fats, fiber, and protein and lower in added sugars and saturated fats.

Macro Tracking

When you look up a food in the WW app, if you scroll down it also shows you the nutrition information for that food item. Previously, however, there was no way to see your daily totals of those macronutrients. Now if you scroll past your daily meals in the WW app, “Nutrition totals” are listed at the bottom of your day of meals and it shows your daily total of protein, carbs, fats, fiber, and sodium. If you click on any of these categories, it will show you a breakdown by meal and by food item, as well as give “guidance” or information about that category.

Diabetic Plan

If you’re following the diabetic WW plan, you will be gaining all the new lean meat options as zero point foods, but potatoes and oats will still have points.

Import Recipes from the Web

If you go to track in the WW app and click on the plus sign where you’d traditionally do a quick add or create a new recipe, there’s now an option to “Add Recipe from the Web.” If you select this option, you can copy and paste a link to recipe you found online and it will import the ingredients for you…sort of. I tried this feature out with several recipes and almost all of them had some things wrong or needed adjusting after the fact, so it’s definitely not a perfect system. However, it does seem like a good starting point as long as you are willing to double check the ingredients and quantities and make adjustments manually once it is imported. Obviously the recipes on my site all contain links to open directly to the correctly tracked recipe in the WW app, so you won’t need this feature for my blog, but for other recipes you find around the web, this could be helpful with a few adjustments!

Take a Picture of Your Plate

This is another new feature that is kinda cool, but may not be super accurate every time. When you go to track food in the app, you’ll see a camera icon next to the barcode scanner icon. If you click on the camera it will open to a camera labeled “food scanner” where you can take a picture of your plate and the WW app will estimate your points. This does come with a warning “This feature is experimental, so there might be some mistakes!” when you open the camera, but it’s definitely worth playing around with and may be helpful, especially when you’re eating recipes or foods that you didn’t make yourself.

How will this affect the recipes on Emily Bites?

The great news is that if you’re a USA-based WW member, you’ll still be able to click on the WW link in each of my blog posts to view your current Points in the WW app. The WW app will always show you the points per serving for the current program you’re on, so for any recipes that contain the new zero point foods, it will show you the updated points values. From there you can track and save the recipe, and once you do you can also make changes to it within the WW app if you wish.

I also try to manually list the WW Points per serving for all my recipes, so some of the Points you see written out in the post may be incorrect for a bit until I get them all updated. Recipes that don’t contain any of the new zero point foods will stay the same Points per serving, but recipes that contain oats, potatoes, or any of the newly included lean meats may have the wrong Points listed until I finish my updates. The recipes will still show the correct points when you use the link to the WW app within each post!

I know people like to see the current points without having to click anything at all, so I will work on getting those updated as quickly as I can. This will definitely be helpful at-a-glance for WW members to know how a recipe will fit into their meal planning and also for international WW members who are able to see their points through my US-based WW links.

If you’re looking for recipes containing the new zero point foods, check out my ingredient categories for Beef, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, and Oats! Again, the current (new) Points will be shown when you click the link within each post to open these recipes in your WW app.

In Conclusion

I’m excited about gaining new zero point foods without losing any daily or weekly points! I’ll definitely be cooking with more lean ground beef, steak, potatoes, and oats.

I’m still mourning the loss of the WW website functionality since they moved everything to app-only earlier this year. I miss building recipes and checking points on my computer. This has nothing to do with this week’s changes, I am just throwing it out there in hopes that the powers-that-be at WW will bring it back. *manifesting*

So…what do you think?? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the WW program changes. What are you excited for? Nervous about? I want to hear what you think! Give me a comment below.

Thank you so much for being here and for following my blog and cooking along with me! You are all so important to me. A lot of my readers follow the WW program, but for those of you who don’t, thanks for your patience while I explained these changes to the WW folks – I’ll keep listing nutrition information for everyone else! We’ll be back to recipes with the next post, I promise. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts!