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Originally Posted by FallingAwake
What I find most concerning at this point is the fact that WW's offers a great deal of things to calculate what you can simply calculate with calories/proteins/fats/carbs. Besides that part of the program, is the biggest part the community/meetings?
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You can do the calculations yourself, and many people do. There's probably even a website online that will disclose WW's calculation formulas (ones for the old system are allover).
Or you can buy the WW materials on ebay, or you can go to enough meetings to get the whole plan (a couple months on the old plan, I don't know enough about the newest plan) and then quit and do it on your own or join a group like TOPS (taking off pounds sensibly, a non-profit weight loss organization). TOPS has a lot of members who are former members of WW (my group even has a member who is also a current member of WW - she belongs to both groups because she likes the extra support of having two meetings to go to every week).
Most people who go to Weight Watchers aren't first-time dieters. They've tried weight loss on their own, and it wasn't effective. They needed more. Some may find points easier than calorie counting, but usually the "effective" portion isn't so much the food plan, as the group support and commitment.
There's quite a bit of weight loss research suggesting that the most effective component of a weight loss plan, is group support. People who have a an active network of support from other people with the same struggles and goals, tend to be most successful.
That can mean online support or an in-person support group.
For me, in-person support is key. I can't afford WW, and I'm most familiar with exchange plans anyway - which by the way, I first learned in WW, when I joined with my mother at 8 years old in 1972 (WW was an exchange plan until 1997).
I chose TOPS (taking off pounds sensibly) because the group is far cheaper than WW (my expenses in TOPS for an entire year are about what I paid in WW for the first month), and TOPS allows you to follow the food plan/diet of your choosing.
The WW plan isn't "magic" you can lose or maintain without it - that's true of all plans. WW can't force you to stay with their plan for life, though they do offer free membership once you have reached your goal. If you go off their plan, you may or may not gain weight - it depends on what you do instead.
All weight loss plans are like that. We sometimes interpret this as "when you go off any diet, you'll gain the weight back." As if it were magic, and not returning to bad habits that caused the weight gain.
I'm on a low-carb exchange plan. If I switch to a low-calorie high-carb plan, I will gain some weight (but just a little bit, maybe a few pounds) because the human body needs more water to process carbs. That does not mean that eating carbs will cause me to gain weight (unless I'm also eating a lot of calories). Now I can eat more and lose more on low-carb, with less hunger, but if I really wanted to, I could eat 1500 calories of high-carb to lose the same weight as 1800 of low-carb. As I understand it, not everybody sees this dramatic a difference.
You can switch plans as often as you wish. I've lost my 90 pounds on at least half a dozen diets (more than a dozen if you count all the exchange plans variations, with different calorie and carb levels).
A food journal and a scale are the best tools to discover what works for you and what doesn't. What you find doable (for now) and what you make doable (forever) will get you to weight loss. It's a lot harder to maintain than it is to lose, which is why choosing a maintenance plan much like your loss plan is usually more effective than trying to lose by another method. It can be done either way, but the fewer changes you have to incorporate, the easier success tends to be.
If you have no intention of following the WW plan for maintenance, and/or you have no intention of going to meetings, I think paying for WW is a waste of money, because you're throwing away the most succesful part of the program (the maintenance support, and the benefit of meetings - information and support from other members).
If you find online support enough, there are tons of free online sites, like ths one and Spark People.
For me, I need more. It isn't the food plan, it's the meeting and the in-person support that helps me stay on target. When I'm accountable only to myself (or people too close to me, like my family), I find it to easy to procrastinate. I end up thinking, "Just one day off plan won't be a big deal...." Of course the problem with procrastination, is one day of putting off a goal makes it that easier to put it off for just one more day, and then another...
Choose WW (or something else) based on what you find effective, and the only way you can find that is by trying. There are cheaper alternatives to WW, and I believe that everyone should use the simplest, least restrictive and most affordable plan they find effective. For many people that is WW. For me, it's TOPS and 3FC.
