I am sorry that I do not agree with you xYTx, I am very familiar with the membership procedures of Weight Watchers and other structured plans-I have spoken to many head honchos (so to speak) via email from diet centers, as well as reading up on the posts here at 3FC to learn about what the consumer thinks of whatever plsn they are doing-and LA Weight Loss is a far cry from those other plans. I agree with you that all centers have to make their money-but there are some simply wonderful Weight Watchers counselors out there who go grocery shopping with their members to help them with good food choices, exercise with them, and so on-almost all of the time they were once members who became couselors after reaching their goal weight-not just some thin person hired who knows how to hard sell to desperate overweight people. On Nutrisystem, you can go have a personal one on one live chat with a counselor at any time you want to-even if it is 3 in the morning-at no additional charge to keep you from eating that cheesecake, or to get a question answered. That is a prgram where you buy food from them, but you can only do it for a week if you want to-there is no month or year you have to pay for. Try to get someone to do any of those things with you at LAWL. You can go to any of these "good" structured programs and find out what you can eat on the plan, etc. before you join. Even Richard Simmons shows you exactly how the Food Mover works on the commercial! When everything is hidden until the pocketbook opens-BEWARE!
From what I have found out through members of LAWL and from talking to a nearby center myself-they won't tell you anything really about the plan, until you fork over the cash, and you can't pay for a small membership-you have to pay a year in advance, and about 3/4 of their "structured" plans are unhealthy crash diets centered around their products-NOT structured calorie counting. I have talked with a few LAWL members and found out what they are eating on their plan-I calculated the results, and a lot of them are eating 800-1200 calories on their plans-which you should never go below 1200, or risk slowing your metabolism down into starvation mode. Add the fact that the calories you are allowed are consisting on some of their plans of 48 hour type diet juice, and their little nutrition bars-it is pretty much just a rotating crash/fad diet with way too low calories on most of their plans. Even if you are not using their bars or products-it is still too low in calories and the strange food restrictions are just uncalled for. They are simply setting you up to fail on purpose.
As well as being a moderator here, my mother is a nurse, and my stepfather a former pro bodybuilder-I talk with them about my findings in the weight loss industry to get their professional opinions-and we can truly find no "pros" to joining LAWL.
I truly believe it does belong right here in the buyer beware section, because of their simple lack of not telling you everything when you sign up. Your center may have-but from what I am hearing from members, that is the minority of centers-as well as the diet being unhealthy, and having all of the rules to which there is no medical reason behind-such as some of the food restrictions, etc. The silliest one I have heard as of yet is being allowed to have one color of grapes, and another color of grapes were not allowed. Do they sit around in a room just to think this stuff up? I would hate to think that a women are going around labeling a grape a bad food choice because of its color...but are guzzling down their processed $30 juice for 2 days on the Take off plan....
I do say, however-that if you have already joined-YES, make them work for all that money you shelled out, and hate every minute of it!!!!
We need to teach them they cannot take advantage of us any longer!!!
I do not want you to be offended because of all of the moderators take here on LAWL, but with all of the things they are doing to their customers, it would be totally unfair for us not to state the risks of joining. If you do not feel scammed-fine-but if I can have the peace of mind knowing that I have told what I have found and possibly save someone their hard earned money-then I feel better.
Aphil