Weight Watchers Review: Proven Weight Loss?

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Food with ruler (caption: Weight Watchers Review)Weight Watchers, now rebranded as myWW, has been one of the most popular weight-loss diets for decades. Does Weight Watchers really work? And how hard (or easy) is it to follow? Our Weight Watchers review gives you all the information you need to see if it’s the best diet fit for your lifestyle.

Visit Weight Watchers’ Website

Article Overview

Weight Watchers

9.3
Easy To Follow 8.5
Food Variety 9.5
Weight Loss Success 10.0
Value 9.0
Community/Online Support 9.5

Pros

  • No enrollment fee
  • Affordable basic monthly plan
  • Backed by independent medical research
  • You can include as many organic and sustainable foods as you’d like (within diet guidelines)
  • Great access to dietitians and nutrition counselors
  • Excellent community support online and at meetings
  • Excellent online and mobile app tools, like weight tracker, food log, point converter and much more
  • Good exercise plans and tutorials on website
  • Great online resources — FAQs, blogs, articles

Cons

  • Higher monthly plans are expensive
  • Learning curve to work with points system
  • No money-back guarantee

SmartPoints System screenshot of app

What Is The SmartPoints System?

On Weight Watchers, you get a personalized daily SmartPoints budget based on your current weight, gender, age and lifestyle, to help you reach your weight loss goal.

Every food and drink is assigned a SmartPoints value based on its calories, saturated fat, sugar and protein content. You can eat whatever you want as long as your combined daily foods fall within your given daily points.

You also get extra weekly points to use to splurge occasionally. And you can rollover up to 4 unused weekly points. But not all foods have point values.

They also give you a customized list of ZeroPoint foods (with a SmartPoints value of 0) that you don’t need to weigh, measure or track. Depending on your personal assessment you fill out when you join, these can include anywhere from 100-300 foods. Many fruits and veggies are zero points for everyone, but some people’s zero point foods can even include lean proteins and whole grains.

How Flexible Are Your Daily SmartPoints?

Very. It just depends on how you want to use them. For example you could eat a cheeseburger and fries for lunch (which likely would take up all of your daily points) and then eat ZeroPoint foods for breakfast, dinner and snacks. Or you can spread your points throughout the day with each meal and snacks if you prefer.

Key Features

  • Android and iOS apps let you track your exercise and all the food you eat
  • App has a food barcode scanner that gives you point values
  • Ability to search the app/website for point values for thousands of popular restaurant and fast food menu items 
  • Many fitness trackers, including the Fitbit, sync with the app
  • Database of thousands of recipes with points values
  • 24/7 live chat with Weight Watchers coaches
  • Free mobile access to Aaptiv‘s audio workouts

Pricing

  • $3.07 per week for Digital
  • $6.92 per week for Workshop + Digital (meet with in-person coach and local members)
  • $12.69 per week for Personal Coaching + Digital (1:1 with a dedicated personal coach)
  • View all options

My Personal Experience

I’ve done Weight Watchers two separate times, first 16 years ago to lose baby weight after I had my second child and then in 2019 to lose the weight that had crept on during my 40s. It does take some time to get used to the points system, but once you get the idea, it’s pretty easy to follow.

Both times, I lost 25+ pounds in less than 3 months without feeling like I was starving to death all the time.

Of course, it’s up to you to make your meals so it can be a bit time consuming if you have a busy lifestyle. But I prefer eating fresh, organic produce and free-range eggs and chicken, rather than getting prepared meals that contain ingredients that aren’t organic and have lots of preservatives.

The points system had changed the second time around — and for the better! The zero points foods I could eat without having to worry about portions included a wide variety of vegetables, beans, lean proteins, fish and other seafood and even eggs. You can load up on zero points foods and then still have daily points to use if you’re craving a slice of pizza or cake.

I also find one of the best parts of Weight Watchers is that it teaches you which foods to limit in your diet and which ones are healthier options. This helps you maintain your weight loss long after you finish the diet, as long as you don’t fall into bad eating habits again.

What Other Diets Should I Consider?

Visit Weight Watchers’ Website

As long as you follow the Weight Watchers point system, you’re sure to lose weight. But if you don’t have time to prepare meals, there are several other diets you should consider. See our reviews of the best weight-loss diets, which include popular brands like Atkins, Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem.

What weight-loss diets have you tried?

Weight Watchers

9.3
Easy To Follow 8.5
Food Variety 9.5
Weight Loss Success 10.0
Value 9.0
Community/Online Support 9.5

Pros

  • No enrollment fee
  • Affordable basic monthly plan
  • Backed by independent medical research
  • You can include as many organic and sustainable foods as you’d like (within diet guidelines)
  • Great access to dietitians and nutrition counselors
  • Excellent community support online and at meetings
  • Excellent online and mobile app tools, like weight tracker, food log, point converter and much more
  • Good exercise plans and tutorials on website
  • Great online resources — FAQs, blogs, articles

Cons

  • Higher monthly plans are expensive
  • Learning curve to work with points system
  • No money-back guarantee
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