New year, new me? Why WW is not the answer.
Written by: Angelica Guadalupe, Intern
WW, or formally known as Weight Watchers has been around for so long. I don’t know one person who hasn’t heard of it, or maybe even tried it themselves. If you don’t know what Weight Watchers is about, let me elaborate.
Weight Watchers is mainly a weight loss focused company. You plug in your weight, height, age, and they tell you how many points you are allowed to eat. Each piece of food you eat is allocated a certain number of points. There are some foods that are 0 points, like fruits and vegetables.
If you’re confused, luckily for you, I went along and signed up for WW to solely break it down step by step for you.
When signing up, you take an assessment to see how well your nutrition, activity, sleep, and mindset is. With this approach, they make it seem like they’re interested in your mental health. I am here to tell you that they are not. WW’s main goal is to make you lose weight, and their system often causes under-eating.
For someone who is my age, height, and weight, I am only allocated 25 points a day. When I plugged in what I ate for breakfast (an egg and cheese croissant) I already used 13 points. That’s already more than half of my points. Now my options for lunch and dinner are to restrict for lunch, so I can eat my dinner, or eat 0 point foods. There are SO many problems with this. This teaches people restriction, and even starving yourself is the answer.
Let’s say you want to lose weight on WW, so you eat all the 0 point foods. 0 point foods still have calories attached to them, and can still add up. Although you should not be focused on calories, this just debunks the idea that WW actually works.
When you exercise, they give you points back, so you can eat more. This encourages the idea that you need to earn your food which can lead to disordered eating, or an eating disorder. Remember that you deserve food no matter how much you moved today! You need food to survive and to nourish your body!
Just like Keto, or any other diets, WW will cause you to feel irritable, fatigue, and lead to bingeing, as you’ve restricted all day.
Just as suspected, WW is another fad that will eventually be replaced by another new diet. Every single time, they do not work. The one and only answer is to eat intuitively, and include all food groups on your plate, if you can. Once you stop dieting, you will start to feel better and gain that confidence you didn’t know you had.
