What is Weight Watchers?
Weight Watchers is a program that offers support in meetings and online.There are two plans available including the popular The Flex Plan which counts calories using POINTS that are adjusted depending the food's nutritional values such as fiber. The Core Plan promises no calorie counting and instead offers a list of foods chosen to help dieters feel full.
How does Weight Watchers work?
In meetings, the support groups' leaders (often former meeting attendees) offer diet tips, members are weighed before each meeting and dieters are given awards such as pins after losing a certain number of pounds. Products such as snack bars are also sold at the meetings. In the Flex Plan, dieters are allotted a certain number of POINTS each day and each time a food is eaten the POINTS are recorded. The Core Plan has an allowed list of foods and a weekly allowance for other foods not on the list.
What does research say?
A 2005 comparison of Weight Watchers, Atkins, Zone and Ornish concluded that each helped participants lose a modest amount of weight but adherence rates were low in all. A 2007 study of people who successfully completed a commercial weight-loss program included 699 lifetime members of Weight Watchers. About 80 percent said they maintained atleast five percent of their weight loss after one year, 71 percent after two years and 50 percent after five years. About 27 percent said they were below their goal weight after one year, 21 percent after two years and 16 percent after five years. The study concluded that maintenance of weight loss is more feasible than other studies have suggested.