Wieght Watcher's Products

This is a bit longer than your usual post, but shorter than an article you'd read in a magazine. I tried to break it up for ya. Thanks for dropping by!

My mother is doing Weight Watcher's, and after carefully studying their programme and nutrition in general, I found out a couple interesting things:

First of all, the Weight Watcher's method of quantifying food (the 'points' method), is an interesting one. It takes into account the fat, fiber AND calorie content of a food item. This is more of an integrative way of looking at and measuring food; it gets the ww consumer to start paying attention to more parts of their food than just the calories.

The problem comes when we come to Weight Watcher's product line. It seems they take advantage of thier own point system to offer products that are counter-productive at worst and ww dependence forming at best.

A good example is how someone in another post mentioned Weight Watcher's ice cream having less points than a banana. If you're budgeting points, it would make more sense to eat the ice cream, no? But what kind of habit does this form, and worse yet, what is that ice cream doing to your body?

Weight Watcher's products don't generally have fiber in them to start with. They ADD fiber, usually the insoluable sort. As we know, there are two kinds of fiber: Soluable and Insoluable. Soluable is the good fiber we find in whole grains and whole foods in general. Soluable fiber is the one that helps delay the absorption of glucose into the blood stream and lowers cholestoral. Insoluable fiber basically helps improve the weight and amount of your bowels, but past that it is merely indigestable and passes through your system without really doing much good.

So here's the catch 22: We know that in the 'Points' system, the fiber content lowers the points value. So Weight Watcher's pumps their products with insoluable fiber to lower the points value, and make 'great tasting' products that are still high in fiber and therefore, low in points. This is a deception, because while it is true what Weight Watcher's says about the benefits of fiber, it is not that kind of fiber that they add to their products!

So basically, you end up eating junk food that has an indigestable powder in it! It doesn't help with cholestoral, and it doesn't help your blood sugar. So you end up developing a false dependency on Weight Watcher's products (i.e. 'normal food doesn't have this much fiber!'), and your weight loss stalls, making you spend even more money in Weight Watcher's meetings and products.

Just thought I'd share~ 

As an EX WW member, I concur.

I lost 70 lbs back in 02-03 on the points program - and after having a son in 04, I have gained it all back - and now I am learning that just because one of the "Smart Ones" meals is called "Smart", doesnt really mean Jack SH^%.

LOL - long live C-C!

Wow, that's really interesting... my suitemate counts WW points and I always wondered about that method. Like, a huge bowl of cereal is only a point for her, but it's around 250 calories! It never seemed to make much sense to me. Maybe I should share this with her... although I don't think she buys the WW merch.

I agree. In theory the point system is great. It helps you learn which types of food are actually good for you, and how it all adds up to one nutritious whole. But adding these products into the mix is really counter productive. Calculating points without understanding how they're earned is blinding. It isn't going to help anyone really change their eating habits, and it isn't even going to help anyone lose weight long term.

I am all for a system of calculation that can help with nutritional choices, but I find examples like the ice cream you've mentioned here deceitful. I would choose the banana every time, because points or not, I know that's probably just a better food. 

Do people actually have so much faith in the system that they would fall for that? Common sense *should* have a place, points or not.   

You know, some people do fall for that deception; actually, a lot of us do. It's not just points. Even with calorie counting, we can say 'Oh, Easy Mac is only 220 calories. That's a lot better than a whole grain quinoa salad with walnuts at 350 calories per serving. I'll go for the Easy Mac.'

This comes when we focus on weight loss ONLY. This is why I posted what I did on the Dr. Oz post; Dr. Oz's reccomendations are not necessarily for weight loss (at least, not in his book), they're more for developing and maintaining life long health. The foods he reccomends in You: The Owner's Manual are high in antioxidants and good fats, and benefit your body in so many ways; they're not always low cal or meant for weight loss.

I like what Dr. Oz says in his book: "Focus on health first; weight loss will happen if it needs to if you're focusing on health, but don't make weight loss your primary concern. Health should be."

Interesting article....My girlfriend is a life time member of WW she has been maintaining her weight for over a year BUT she didn't use any of their prepared foods.  MAybe that has increased her success of using WW?  This method has worked for her.

I would hope all people trying to live a healthy lifestyle would pick what nature has made (a banana)  over what man has tinkered with  when given the choice.  

I agree with what your saying,

I joined weight watchers to learn about portion control and how much to eat/when to eat etc. I honestly would eat for dinner a bag or Oreos and thought... there's some fibre in here! haha

I never did the Smart Ones meals I couldn't afford it for one and I needed to learn how to prepair my own food/portion size.

I stuck with it for 6 months (as a member) and then really couldn't afford to pay $15 a week to "weigh in" so I just left! haha

I've lost 150lbs so far and help it off, so Weight Watchers I found was a good stepping stole in helping "me" learn how to eat right.

cmora, I noticed we have similar start and end weights. I will add you as a friend, hope you don't mind.

I read an interesting nutrition article that said frozen meals can be a healthy part of your diet if you follow a couple of rules:

No more than 3 grams of fat per 100 calories and 1 gram of saturated fat for same 100 calories.

I was suprised at how many healthy meals I ended up having to put back based on that rule.  Of course I look at sugars and fiber as well, but it's a nice rule of thumb.

Frozen food is better for you than canned food and other packaged foods, hands down. Little, if any, nutrients are lost during the freezing process. Frozen vegetables and fruits are a great way to get fresh tasting produce when the rest of the stuff isn't ripe or is out of season.

I just want to clarify that I'm not saying ww doesn't work, as a system. I actually think there's a lot of value to the points system; as I said, it teaches you an integrated way to look at food. This is useful. Also, ALL weight loss systems have some truth to them, otherwise they never would have made it successful.

There are just some things you have to be careful about; companies get weird when they have a vested interest in furthering their own profits.

Curves is a good example. They started out with a good idea, but they became so focused on simplifying their product so it could be easily franchised and distributed, their idea became limited and almost useless. People quickly outgrow Curves, and a lot of people find Curves to be limiting right off the bat.

But yes, there are amazing amounts of weight lost in ww every year, and they're not all bad, inherently. It's just the marketing people taking advantage of people's ignorance, is all.

You're right in so many ways. I tried WW a couple times, but always sort of slid away (or up in points). I have my old materials for 1-2-3 and am using them again to focus on portions and quantity.

A key factor in understanding how their food is made or marketed is to know that Weight Watchers doesn't "make" the product, Heinz foods does and they use the approach most manufacturers do- make it tasty, cheap and follow the "rules", but not necessarily the best interests of the consumer. They are in it to SELL their product, not make us thin or healthy.

I buy some of their frozen foods, when they are on sale, but MUCH prefer my own recipes which focus on whole grains, veggies, good fats and all that stuff. For me, though, the points are easier to count than calories and the focus on low fat high fiber is ok because I pick real food over manufactured food 80% of the time. It's making things manageable for me and that's the most important trick to staying with this for me right now.