Adjusting your PointsPlus® Budget in the Plan Manager Your Leader will have told you about some new ways to make the PointsPlus program even more flexible. Find out how you can make these changes in the Plan Manager. Article By: Elly Trickett McNerney We’ve always prided ourselves on providing a flexible and livable weight-loss program. But recently we’ve added some new features that we feel really take the program to the next level of flexibility, including the ability to adjust your daily PointsPlus Target if you need to. We’ve also made changes to the Plan Manager Settings that allow you to do this, plus choose how you swap your earned activity PointsPlus values (or not to swap them at all) and how much of your weekly PointsPlus Allowance to use. All this can add up to more ways to help control your weight-loss progress, or your success in Maintenance, and more ways to make the Plan right for you. Not everyone will need to make any of the available tweaks, of course. Talk to your Leader to find out more about the changes that are possible, and once you have decided together which, if any, are right for you, this article will explain how to make them in your Plan Manager. If your daily PointsPlus Target was lowered for you First things first: Some people have found that their daily PointsPlus Target has been lowered. If you are one of these people, your Receptionist or Leader will have explained why. You will also have learned that a new plan feature for PointsPlus 2012 is that the daily Target is flexible. If, in talking to your Leader, you decide that you were happy with your weight loss or maintenance with a higher number, then you can adjust your settings here. Lowering your budget Every now and then it can become necessary to make some tangible changes to the way you use PointsPlus values. We’ve always given members the flexibility to choose how (or even whether) to swap activity PointsPlus values for food, and to choose how much of their weekly PointsPlus Allowance to use. We’ve now added features in the Plan Manager that will make it easier for you to keep track of these choices. In the Settings panel you can now: Change the way you swap your activity PointsPlus values, from weekly (they roll over day to day), to daily (use them or lose them!) — or vice versa. Choose not to swap your activity PointsPlus values for food at all Play with your weekly PointsPlus Allowance, experimenting with using fewer than the full 49 Draw first from your activity PointsPlus values rather than from your weekly PointsPlus Allowance when you go over your daily PointsPlus Target If you’re losing weight too quickly Remember, a safe rate of weight loss is between .5 and 2 pounds per week. If you’re consistently losing more than an average of 2 pounds a week even while using your weekly PointsPlus Allowance and/or any activity PointsPlus values you may be earning, your Leader may advise you that you might want to increase your daily PointsPlus Target. Again, you can do this in the Plan Manager Settings. Going into Maintenance It doesn’t take a huge leap of logic to figure out that you’re going to need to add a few PointsPlus values to your day to move out of weight-loss mode and into Maintenance. You’ll need to do this when you’ve reached your Goal, plus you may choose to do this during a particularly tricky time (a vacation, say) when you’re OK with maintaining your weight rather than losing. The default increase for going into Maintenance is to add 6 PointsPlus values per day, but you may find that’s too many or, even, not enough. In Maintenance, it may take you a little while to stabilize your weight. If your weight goes up, or down, by more than 1 pound in a week, ask your Leader for tips on how to adjust your Target accordingly. You can do this in your Plan Manager Settings.