Weightwatchers Online (Weight Watchers)

Member Name: pingucb

Product:	Weight Watchers
Date:	28/09/08 (449 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It works!!

Disadvantages: Willpower not included, expensive

I've always battled with my weight, but I've never been keen on fad diets as from what I've seen of other people using them they either don't work or work brilliantly but result in you putting on even more weight when you stop doing them. So for years, my weight yo-yoed as I struggled to take in less energy than I was using up in exercise, without following any particular plan.

Then about two years ago, I was turned down for critical illness insurance because of my weight. I knew I needed to lose a few stone, but didn't consider myself massively overweight, so this came as a huge shock to the system. Luckily it jolted me into action and this was when I first joined Weightwatchers.

In fact, it wasn't quite as simple as that - having looked at Weightwatchers in the past, I'd been totally put off by the thought of the meetings. It wasn't the weighing in front of other people that put me off, rightly or wrongly it was the thought of being patronised by the group leader - I couldn't get the vision of Little Britain's Fat Fighters out of my head. But then I discovered that I could do Weightwatchers online and I joined the same day. I've never been to a Weightwatchers meeting, so this review is purely about the online Weightwatchers experience.

At the time of writing it costs a one off fee of £29.95 to subscribe initially, plus another £9.95 per month, or you can try it for a month at a time without subscribing for £17.95. It's worth looking out for promotional codes and special offers on membership, which can often be found in newspapers, in the Weightwatchers magazine or online. These can save you a fair bit, for example when I joined, I had a special offer reducing the subscription fee. Even once you've joined it's possible to save money, but it's up to you to check your subscription status and change to a better offer if one's available. For example, at the moment I can pay for 3 months for £24.00 instead of the usual £9.95 per month, but at the end of each 3 month period I have to remember to renew this or I'm automatically put back to £9.95 per month.

When you first join Weightwatchers you have to decide what plan to follow. At the moment, you can choose between the Points Plan which gives you a certain number of points to use per day, and the Core Plan, which allows you to eat unlimited amounts of certain foods, with a small number of points to use for other things. Weightwatchers tend to change the plans from time to time, although rather than being annoying I find this helps to keep things fresh. I've only ever used the Points Plan in the current set up, as I find it allows me to eat whatever I like and I enjoy variety, but I know others who find the Core Plan much easier to manage. Whichever plan you choose, the bottom line is that Weightwatchers encourages healthy eating and exercise.

In Weightwatchers world, every food has a points value, based on the amount of calories and amount of saturated fat that it contains. The number of points you have available is determined by completing a questionnaire that asks about things such as how active your work is, whether you're male or female and whether you're a breastfeeding mother. Your responses are used alongside your current weight to determine how many points you have to play with each day. One of the most bittersweet experiences you can have with Weightwatchers is the excitement at going down into a lower stone bracket, quickly followed by the realisation that you lose a point from your daily allowance. You can also create additional points by doing exercise and it's possible to use up to four of these each day to have extra food. In my experience, the system is really well balanced, so that as long as you use your points sensibly (i.e. not use your entire day's allowance on a tub of Ben & Jerrys icecream - yes I have done this!) you have enough points to not go hungry, and if you do stick to it you will lose weight. In fact, in just over a year I lost over 4 stone using this system - of course I then got pregnant and put most of it back on again, but that's another story and also the reason why I'm now back writing a review of Weightwatchers!!

In a similar way to going to weekly meetings to be weighed, you have to weigh yourself on the same day each week and log this on the online system - you get a very basic graph showing how you're progressing, which includes little stars each time you lose 7lb or when you achieve a 10% weight loss. In addition, instead of writing what you eat in a book, you have to log it online, on something called the Plan Manager. This is a really nifty bit of online software, that allows you to search for foods you've eaten and enter them under breakfast, lunch, dinner or anytime. It automatically calculates the points value of every food you enter and deducts it from your running total for the day. It also works to a weekly schedule, allowing you to carry over up to 8 points each day (four from food and four from exercise) to be used later in the week. At the beginning of your next week (your weigh in day) your saved points values are reset. The Plan Manager includes a number of useful tools - you can save foods as favourites to avoid searching for them again, you can enter recipes and it'll tell you how many points are in each portion and you can enter foods which aren't yet on the system, as long as you know basics like weight of a portion, number of calories per 100g and amount of saturated fat per 100g. The Plan Manager automatically updates your number of points available based on your current weight and responses to the questionnaire and can also be used to track your additional points gained through exercise. Once you have some of your favourites saved and your familiar with they system, it can be quite quick to enter your points each day.

With online Weightwatchers, the onus is very much on you to monitor your own weight and progress, it probably isn't the best choice if you find it hard to motivate yourself, you want specific direction from a leader or you respond better to group encouragement. Having said that, the website includes a busy forum section, where you can 'chat' to likeminded people online. This was an invaluable support system for me when I used Weightwatchers first time round, although now I rely on emails to real-life friends who are working towards similar goals. The flipside to this is that you can access your account from any computer, so that your tools and support network can be with you wherever you go.

One of the biggest benefits of Weightwatchers is the size and popularity of the brand. As a result, an ever-widening range of Weightwatchers branded goods are available in your local supermarket which help make it easier to stick to the plan. In addition, Tescos include Weightwatchers points values on many of their own brand foods, which can make things even easier still. To make shopping easier to manage, you can buy a Weightwatchers points calculator to carry with you, so that you can calculate the points value of any food from the nutritional information provided, although it's possible after a while doing Weightwatchers to estimate pretty accurately and this can be confirmed when you next get in front of a computer.

The rest of the Weightwatchers website has a wealth of information for people wanting to lose weight. There are numerous articles on different topics relating to weight loss, healthy eating recipes and inspiring success stories from other members - you can even search these based on how much weight people lost or their reason for losing weight, so that you can find a story about someone who started off in a similar position to yourself. In addition, there's a useful shop section where you can buy Weightwatchers branded goods, such as foods, scales, points calculators and books.

It annoys me slightly that online members don't get the rewards that meeting members do. I'm aware that these rewards are nothing major, however it would be nice for achievements such as reaching 10% weight loss to be recognised in a more obvious way - even an email certificate along the lines of those received when reaching a different feedback level on Ebay would be better than nothing. The online plan is still pretty expensive and this doesn't seem much to ask.

Overall I would highly recommend Weightwatchers - once you get the hang of it it's a very easy system to follow which really does allow you to eat anything you want. I enjoy searching for foods that are low in points, to maintain the variety in what I eat, but most of all I enjoy the results I get from following the plan.

POSITIVES
If you follow it, it works!!
Plan manager
Forum support network
No need to go to meetings

NEGATIVES
Like any weight loss plan, it needs willpower
Expensive
Basic progress charts and no rewards (other than weight loss obviously!)

Summary: The best way to lose weight