Weight Watchers Isn't a Diet: It's an Educational Process
Written: Nov 22 '04 (Updated Nov 22 '04)
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Pros: Very flexible, common sense approach to fix poor eating habits. Excellent coaching and support network.
Cons: You must pay $9.95 to attend weekly meetings until you reach your goal weight.
The Bottom Line: Forget Jenny Craig, Atkins, and any other fad diet. WeightWatchers is the only weight management plan that can be adapted without sacrificing. But it requires discipline and commitment.
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| h_and_i's Full Review: Weight Watcher's Points Weight Loss Program with F... |
Have you been struggling with weight for a while?
Have you been frustrated trying out different "yo-yo" diets? Have you tried and failed on those fad diets that produce quick and fabulous results, but that require you to make huge sacrifices... only to have your weight rapidly come back as soon as you quit the diet?
Trust me, I've been down that route. For the last decade, I have struggled with being overweight. I would eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I would eat huge portions. I wouldn't exercise. I was guilty of munching while watching TV. I would eat several large meals a day. I wouldn't eat any fruits and vegetables. I would eat out more than once a day. There were times when I would eat at McDonalds several times a week.
Before I knew it I had put on fifty pounds. When I finally became conscious of my appearance and weight, I was alarmed and I decided to try different fad diets. Most notably was the Atkins diet. The Atkins diet, as you may already know, requires to you to sacrifice carbohydrates and compensate by consuming more proteins. Many people are beginning to realize now that the Atkins diet is not necessarily a good life-time solution, and it is also not a practical solution. It isn't "natural" because of the way the typical person eats. I tried the Atkins diet for three weeks and lost twenty-five pounds. I was thrilled. I gained so much self-confidence. But the problem was that as soon as I lost the weight, I started eating normally again. And within a few weeks, I gained ALL twenty-five pounds back, AND MORE.
I tried calorie counting too. But this was difficult, because you can't always account for every calorie you eat.
My wife and I had both put on a lot of weight after we got married. And we tried so many fad diets and exercise programs to lose weight... we tried the all-fruit diet… we barely survived half a day. We tried aerobics but without changing our eating habits. Didn’t work.
But what changed it all for us was Weight Watchers. My wife and I were talking one day about what it would take to lose weight and one of the things that we figured was that perhaps what we needed was a third-person who we could be held accountable to. Unlike other diets where you are basically on your own and have to have the self-discipline to make your diet experience successful. Weight Watchers provides a pay-as-you-go incentive where you must pay money to become a member and must attend a group meeting once a week. At this meeting, they expect you to weigh in. So one of the great things about this is that you have a third person monitoring your weight for you.
I think that having your weight problems shared with a third party who you are held accountable to is a huge motivator, compared to if you quietly keep it to yourself. You quite naturally will want to succeed because you are paying them money and don’t want it to go to waste, plus you are attending meetings with other people who also have problems with their weight and who are also committed to losing weight with you.
Now, for the diet itself: The Weight Watchers Diet is not a “diet” in the sense that it restricts you from the types of food you can eat, like Atkins does. Rather, its focus is on portion control and the quantity of food intake. Using what is called the Weight Watchers Flex Plan, you can eat literally ANYTHING you want in the world – pizza, candy bars, chocolate fudge brownies, rice, pudding, steak, pasta, fruits and vegetables, salads, soups, it doesn’t matter… BUT you MUST stay within a “point limit”. Every food you eat is assigned a point value per serving size and based on your weight, you must eat no more (and no less) than your assigned number of points per day.
I think this is a win-win situation. I have been on the WeightWatchers plan for about nine weeks now, as of this writing, and I have lost a total of 20 pounds, or ten percent of my weight. My wife, on the other hand, has only lost 5 pounds, but that is because supposedly women have more difficulty with weight loss.
Is WeightWatchers a “fad” diet like any other? No. Not at all. In fact, the term “diet” is a misnomer for WeightWatchers, because the name, in common everyday parlance, has come to mean “a temporary change or restriction in your eating habits in order to achieve rapid weight loss”. This is NOT the case with WeightWatchers. You will NOT lose 20 pounds in 2 weeks on this diet. WeightWatchers is designed to be a LIFETIME diet… a diet that actually conforms to your human nature, by gradually weaning you into an adjustment of your eating habits.
1) Portion control – You can eat the same foods – but you have to learn to make wise choices. For example, I would eat 4 to 6 slices of pizza a day, but now I only eat one or two, because I know that I have to stay within a certain points “budget”. If I eat 4 to 6 slices in one day, I am basically done for the day and cannot eat anything else. Why would I want to do that, is the rationale.
2) Activity – Yes, Weight Watchers also assigns point values for activities as well. Many nutritionists say that a COMBINATION of diet AND exercise is essential for proper weightloss. Therefore, WeightWatchers has a plan for you too. You should strive to accumulate a certain number of “activity points” per week, and different types of exercises at different levels of intensity convert to a certain number of points you can accumulate.
3) Lifetime maintenance – Once you reach your goal weight (which I haven’t yet, as of this writing, so I don’t know from first hand experience what actually happens), they are supposed to give you a personalized plan to help you determine how many points you need to eat every day in order to MAINTAIN your weight so you do not lose or gain anymore.
4) While not REQUIRED, WeightWatchers DOES advise you to strive to eat a certain number of servings of fruits and vegetables and consume a certain amount of water and dairy products per day, so that you can reap their benefits and realize that perhaps eating several foods with smaller point values is better than eating only a few foods with huge point values. It’s up to you, how you want to tailor your lifestyle.
So, WeightWatchers makes the most sense to me. I personally plan to spend the rest of my life on the WeightWatchers plan. Does that mean counting points for everything I eat? Maybe, maybe not. I think if you eat the same types of foods over and over again, you tend to develop a habit and a knack for how much of what types of foods to eat.
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The word “diet” seems to conjure up a negative connotation in most peoples’ minds, but not WeightWatchers. I have eaten Krispy Kreme donuts, ice cream, pizza, as well as healthy foods like salads, apples, and whatnot. And I have still consistently lost weight. I don’t know about you, but I think I could definitely stick to this plan forever, because it involves the least amount of sacrifice. All that is asked of you is that you control your portion sizes. And once you get the hang of it, it really isn’t that much of a sacrifice.
And that brings me to another point: Once you reach and maintain your goal weight for about six consecutive weeks, you automatically get WeightWatchers LifeTime membership, which means that you can attend meetings for free and don’t have to pay anymore and are entitled to membership benefits.
So you may ask the question: Well, what if you stop the WeightWatchers plan? Won’t you gain back all the weight? That’s like asking “What if you start smoking again, won’t you get cancer?” WeightWatchers is not a fad. It’s an educational process that gradually helps you learn about yourself and helps you to become consciously aware of your eating habits.
I’ve spend the last ten years overweight. I think I owe it to myself to spend the next ten years eating right. And I’m not really sacrificing much because I haven’t stopped eating any of the foods I normally eat. I jut limit how much of it I eat, and balance it out by eating a variety of other good foods too.
What about the money? Isn’t it expensive? Isn’t it a scam? No it isn’t a scam. The only
thing is, yes you have to pay money. But if you are willing to spend $10,000 a year on a
college education, why not spend $40 a month to educate yourself on how to take care of
your health? I think it is well worth the investment, and once I reach my goal weight, six
weeks later my membership will become free anyway. (Besides you can prepay to get a
certain amount of discount.)
Don’t even feel like I’m on a diet.
Recommended:
Yes
Approximate Monthly Cost (US$) 39.80
Food Variety Restrictions You eat any food you want
Restrictiveness of Portions Satisfying
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h_and_i
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Reviews written: 3
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