I'm debating if I should rejoin weight watchers or not. I learn about portion control but I've been doing alot of thinking. How do I know what to eat? I could waste all my points on junk food every day or I could eat fruit all day...Does anyone see my point? Do they really teach a balanced diet? I'm not trying to offend anyone but noone really taught me about balance last time I did it. Thanks for any feedback.

These days when you join, you stay at the end of the class, where everything is explained to you. You are given a daily journal to write in, where you record all your food, and there are little boxes to check off to indicate that you have had all your servings of fruits & veggies, dairy, water, and healthy fats. They also give you healthy meal ideas and a few recipes. I love Weight Watchers, it really helps!

If you need to be taught how to plan a balanced diet, you will be taught. If you ask for help, it is there for you. There is a lot of information out there and more often than not, people generally know that a diet of junk food isn't healthy. Just as a diet of all fruit each day isn't healthy. (I know that you were just making a point) You will also be taught self-reliance. It is entirely up to you if you want to succeed. WW gives you the tools to succeed, but if you don't initiate your education yourself, no matter what tools you are given, you won't succeed.

The United States Department of Agriculture has an excellent web site
http://www.mypyramid.gov/ that teaches how to create balanced diets.

I had a basic knowledge of what to do, and I was given some sample daily meal plans. It was up to me to continue on with those suggestions and pick foods that would follow the healthy guidelines.

I don't know when they instituted them but WW now has the "8 Healthy Guidelines" which act as a guiding principle of how to eat healthfully, not just eat to lose. It's what kofarq referenced - getting in your dairy, your fruits and veg, your water, and your healthy oils. These things will take up a certain amount of your points each day (the fruit and the oil and dairy, anyway), and the rest is up to you.

Most people realize early on that we just don't feel as good when we subsist on 100-calorie packs, which can be enough to guide people towards healthful eating. WW does have those guidelines that we are all supposed to be meeting but it is entirely up to us whether we follow that or not. If you ask for help with moving your diet to a more healthful one, your leader/anyone here would be happy to help guide you in that direction. It may just need to be asked. Don't be afraid to ask if the info is not offered up front.

I have been heavy all my life and this is the first time I have tried weight watchers. I use e-tools so I calculate everything online. I treat the check marks for the healthy guidelines like a daily game. I have been on since January and really feel like I have learned how to eat healthier. Don't get me wrong I am the queen on the one point snacks but the check marks come first.

Personally I haven't learned anything from my meetings; the ones I go to are completely focussed on how to get your chocolate and crisps in (usually by avoiding something nutritional) and that you should eat less each day so you have more points for alcohol at the weekend. I never thought about it before but now i come to think about it thats just encouraging people to keep the same bad habits, but to compensate for them by reducing calories in other areas. Very often theres entire meetings devoted to how many points in alcohol, which is useless to me because i dont drink. Id much rather have a class explaining about nutrition, but the leaders seem to know very little. anad we are never ever encouraged to exercise!
Does this sound normal to any of you? Maybe its what the average Irish wwer wants, but when i think about it no one in my meeting is losing weight steadily, or we keep gaining ever 3rd week or something. hmm...

My first thought Irish, is if this were me, I would find another meeting if I could, or ditch them all together. If all you are getting out of the meeting is how you can keep up bad habits and still lose weight, then it isn't a very productive meeting.

This is just me. I have tried many diets in the past and at this time of my life I am different than I was before. Before I was very dependent on others to guide me but now I am more selfish I guess.

I realized that 'this time' other's ways or views as to how to lose weight may not work for me and that I have to establish my own path. I can use some of their info, but need to find my own way and my own motivations.

Some people need to go to meetings and some meetings are very productive for them as members have the same mindset. I do this at home on my own and with the help of people on 3 Fat Chicks with materials I purchased 7 years ago. It is working for me.

I agree with Chey. That doesn't sound like any kind of environment you want to be a part of. Know that this isn't reflective of all WW meetings - there certainly isn't any WW mandate stating that that is how meetings must be run. I suppose if everyone in a meeting is concerned with the same thing, i.e. getting in chips by sacrificing healthy food, the group discussion might inevitably be led in that direction. Shop around for other meetings - they can vary GREATLY from group to group even if you have the same leader. This is something I had to do earlier in the year - I loved my leader but really did not get good vibes from the group, so I switched times with the same leader and love it now. It's worth a shot!

I dont think its a case of individual leaders picking what they talk about, they seem to have a schedule of topics from ww headquarters because they mention "we'll be talking about packed lunches in 2 weeks" or similar, so changing meetings wouldnt do any good. The topics of the meetings are very frustrating but its nice to get the feedback from other people and hear how they're getting on. and my leader knows me really well by this stage and I like her knowing that im losing progressively, so i think i will continue going. (it never occurred to me not to!) I suppose its my own responsibility to learn about nutrition if i want to do this healthily, and to share the information with others at my meetings. or i could ask when theyre going to be all about alcohol and not go to that week!

That is true, IrishRover, meeting topics are usually set by WW headquarters. However, I guarantee you no one gets a memo saying "this week, we want you to talk about how to squeeze out every healthy food and replace them with junk." The topics are broad, and from what I can tell, they don't take 30 minutes to talk about in their entirety, so that leaves a lot of room for individual leaders' personalities to come through and for the group to get to talking. This is what leads me to believe it's the specific group you went to and not WW meetings as a general rule. Of course there's also the fact that you're doing this in Ireland, and perhaps meetings are manged differently over there? That's also a possibility!