Battling Obesity

Last Saturday, my wife and I went out to dinner with a couple of friends to a semi-fancy italian restaurant here in Winnipeg. The lights were dimmed inside the restaurant, and it was packed! I felt uncomfortable pulling out my camera and taking a picture of my supper and try to work out the points for W/W. My wife had this delicious looking stuffed chicken marbalized with some Almond and hazelnut sauce and the other couple were more into the ‘Italian’ type of dinner selections.

I thought I would just go with what I know - PIZZA .. because I have an easy way to count points for all pizza.

>> We went to Bellisimo’s Restaurant and I had:
9″ Sicilian style homemade pizza, with chicken, pepperoni, beef, roasted pepper and chicken - taking 27 points

And how did I calculate that 27 points? It’s easier than you think.

KNOW YOUR BASIC PIZZA

Dotties Weight Loss Zone Pizza-Pizza page is a great start to find the basic pizza that you seem to like. For me, when I first started with Weight Watchers back in 2005, I meticulously calculated how many points my favorite type of pizza would be (like above ingredients) and found that most of my Pizza choices were similar to the Sicilian Pizza. Yes .. I know my pizza above is nowhere near a Sicilian Pizza , but I’m in belief that the 5.5 points per 1/6 of a 10″ pizza is equivalent to my desired 5-topping pizza above, point-wise.

According to Dottie .. 1/6th of a 10″ pizza is 5.5 points .. remember this figure!

FIND THE TOTAL AREA OF YOUR PIZZA

According to the above calculation, if 1/6th of a 10″ pizza is 5.5 points .. it’s safe to say that an entire pizza is calculated to be: 6pcs x 5.5pts = 33 points.

The total area of a pizza is calculated in either these two ways .. If you are a geek or math genius you may use the first method, although I would recommend the second:

* [1] RADIUS(squared) X PI = AREA

In this case, the radius is half the pizza size .. 5″. If you go on the internet and find the value of PI .. it’s 3.14159265358979 .. So, the area would be calculated as follows: 5″ x 5″ x 3.14159265358979 = 78.54

* [2] DIAMETER(squared) X 0.7854 = AREA

In this case, the diameter is .. 10″. So this calculation is much easier: 10 x 10 x 0.7854 = 78.54

CALCULATE A UNIT POINT PER PIZZA AMOUNT

In this ongoing case, my usual type of pizza - with an area of 78.54 - is 33 points.

For every point .. in my case .. I can have: 78.54 / 33 = 2.38 area of pizza

HOW I GOT 27 POINTS FOR MY PIZZA

Okay .. I had a 9 inch pizza, and I calculated it to be 1 point for every 2.38 area.

Calculation: 9″ x 9″ x 0.7854 = 63.62 area divided by 2.38 = 26.73

I rounded up to 27 points!

Share This