The Success Rate of Weight Watchers
Obesity spells opportunity for many profit-seekers. According to a February 2009 article published on the CBS News website, 45 million Americans spend up to $2 billion a year on weight loss programs, virtually none of which have scientific studies to support the effectiveness or safety of their methods.
Obesity spells opportunity for many profit-seekers. According to a February 2009 article published on the CBS News website, 45 million Americans spend up to $2 billion a year on weight loss programs, virtually none of which have scientific studies to support the effectiveness or safety of their methods. Weight Watchers is an exception, and is worth considering as you evaluate your diet plan options.
Calorie Burning
Your body burns calories when it digests food, The Weight Watchers ProPoints Plan takes this into account. The vitamins and nutrients in healthy foods -- particularly those rich in fiber and protein -- force your body to burn more calories during the digestion process. The plan guides you to foods that give your digestive system a better workout.
Success Rate
While there are no statistics on the new plan's success rate yet. However, you shouldn't necessarily consider this a drawback. Weight loss, like any willful transformation, involves changing your lifestyle -- and most people are afraid of change. There is no dispute in the scientific community or among rational people outside of it that if you burn more calories than you consume every day by eating healthy and exercising, you will lose weight. In the United States, the low success rate of all diet plans -- healthy or unhealthy, scientifically backed or not -- seems to be a measure of how unwilling people are to do the work of changing their lifestyles.
Weight Watchers Online
According to the Weight Watchers website, once you join the online Points Plus program -- for a membership fee -- you'll have access to more than 15,000 recipes. The plan also offers suggestions for lifestyle change -- tips on building a support network, developing an awareness of habitual behaviors that have kept you overweight, and incorporating exercise into your daily routine.
Food for Thought
If Weight Watchers doesn't work for you, it's not a matter of the plan's success rate any more than it's a failure on your part. The Harvard School of Public Health website states that "behavioral, psychological, and social factors are probably far more important for weight loss than the mix of nutrients in a diet." Changing these elements of your life involves personal choices that no diet plan can tell you to make. However, the experience of trying diet programs like Weight Watchers could give you a foundation for making smart choices that fit your individual tastes.