Weight Watchers is a fantastic business model, no doubt about that – it generates a fortune! But does Weight Watchers work?
It’s based on foods being assigned points. This basically is a simplification of the calorie content of the food. It always has been, and still is a calorie counting diet – vaguely disguised as something else with the other more palatable names given to it.
So essentially, if you follow it and stick to your daily amount of points you are doing a calorie controlled diet.
It’s easy to count calories, but that is not the same as burning them. There are lots of things that vary the rate that your body burns calories, and simply just counting them doesn’t tend work for very long to keep your fat off.
Calories come from fat, protein and carbohydrates. Too many calories from any of these sources are stored in your body as fat. However, your body burns some foods better than others.
Here are 2 things that aren’t taken into account by a calorie controlled diet, like Weight Watchers:
Vitamins and Minerals are Essential to Burn Calories
Healthy bodies need minerals and vitamins – these don’t have calories, but their presence ensures efficient burning of calories. Calorie counting doesn’t take this into account. But worse than that, some of the most important vitamins are only found in fat, and because fat is high calories you are encouraged not to eat it.
With the amount of refined and processed food eaten it’s easy to get the ‘perfect’ number of calories (points) everyday, but at the same time suffer malnutrition (due to lack of these smaller nutrients).
Lack of essential nutrients causes weight gain.
The calories (points) in foods can’t be used by your body properly without vitamins and minerals, so instead they are more likely to be stored as fat.
Not All Calories Are Even Burned
Some calories aren’t even burned as energy.
Essential fatty acids (fats found in whole grains, nuts, seeds and oily fish) for example, are used for structural and hormonal functions rather than for energy.
Essential fatty acids, like all fats, have a lot of calories (and a high point score) but they speed up your metabolism!
Some of the protein we eat is used to repair and rebuild bits of our bodies.
Does Weight Watchers Work?
So, does Weight Watchers work? In my opinion calorie (point) counting doesn’t work for most people.
It doesn’t address the mindset required to be slim. Neither does it address psychological issues that often keep people fat.
It doesn’t teach you what foods work in harmony with your body to keep it healthy and slim.
I really cannot believe the appalling processed rubbish ‘food’ that has the Weight Watchers label all over it. For the most part this is not nutrition. But it is part of a hugely successful money making business designed to keep people in the dark about losing weight successfully, overweight, and dependent on Weight Watchers for the long term.
A better way to lose your excess fat is to work in harmony with your body.
A big part of this is to learn what your body needs to be healthy – being healthy means getting slim. You can find everything you need to know in my book – click here to get yourself a copy.
Does Weight Watchers work for you? Comment below!
Have a fantastic Uber Healthy week
Dr Julie
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