Good for the first stone but... (Weight Watchers)

Member Name: kateh

Product:	Weight Watchers
Date:	25/07/03 (3746 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to follow, Can eat chocolate sometimes, website good

Disadvantages: Expensive, can feel ripped off, Makes you obsessed with food

I definitely have mixed feelings about Weightwatchers. I joined Weightwatchers for the second time about 3 months ago having put on some extra weight after taking steroids for an illness. I probably had about two stone to lose and for the first few weeks it was fantastic.

The new "time to eat" diet is really easy to follow - each person is allocated a number of points that they are allowed to eat each day based on their current weight - I was allowed 20 points. All you have to do then is to work out the points for the food you eat each day and make sure it doesn't go over your allocated amount. The points for each food item are based on it's calories and saturated fat content - when you join you are given a cardboard calculator which you can use to work out points and there are also lists of the points for common food items in the books given to you when you first join. Some food is point free (hooray!) such as tomatoes, lettuce, diet coke (the dieter's friend!), sugar-free jelly, marmite and loads of others. Others are very low in points (e.g. apples = 0.5, chicken breast = 2.5) whereas others are frighteningly high - fruit and nut chocolate bar - 7 points! You can add to your daily points by doing exercise which earns you a number of bonus points depending on the type of exercise you do. Each week you pay £4.75 to go to a Weightwatchers meeting where you are weighed (discretely!) and in theory attend a talk by your meeting leader who advises you on healthy eating, exercise etc

The good things about Weightwatchers are as follows:

- In about 12 weeks I lost 18 pounds which felt fantastic, most of this was lost in the first six weeks then I slowed down and sometimes didn't lost anything each week or sometimes just lost half a pound
- The diet is really easy to follow and understand
- The weightwatchers website is very useful (www.weightwatchers.co.uk) - I particularly used to look at the food tal
k message board which had very good ideas for low point food. On the website there is also a database of recipes which other users have submitted and which are all already pointed
- it definitely teaches you a lot about the fat and calorie content of different foods

The bad things about Weightwatchers are as follows:

- The meeting that I went to was a lunchtime one in right in the middle of the City in London. The queues were sometimes big and there was no class available - all that you paid for was to step on the scales and be weighed. Which for £4.75 seems a bit of a rip off! It would have been good to have the option of a class which you could attend if you had time, or a shorter class or anything really!
- Although everyone goes on about how much you can eat with Weightwatchers it does get a bit repetitive and you can end up eating the same things because you know how many point are in them
- The Weightwatchers food is extremely bad - a lot of the products available at the meeting are sweets which have unusual effects on your digestive system and must surely be bad for your teeth
- it is very easy to become obsessed by food when you are doing Weightwatchers - I started working out points in my sleep!
- I began to dread Fridays which was the day I used to get weighed and worry about it if I'd gone out for the evening and not stuck to the diet - if I'd put on weight I got "told off" even if it was only half a pound
- if you miss a week without telling the leader before you to pay for it even though you didn't go!

So I decided to take a break from Weightwatchers for a while. I'm happy with 18 pounds lost and am going to treat myself with all the £4.75s that I save. Since I've finished I've found that I'm still watching what I eat but in a slightly more sensible way and now all through the week rather than when Friday is approaching.

Summary: