WeightWatchers

I have been a Weight Watchers life time member since the 80's. Unfortunately I had to return. I returned to my goal weight in 2019 and remained at goal through the pandemic. WW permanently shut down the WW studio I attended. As a Life time member at goal, you did not pay unless you were over goal weight. When they shut down in person meetings/studio, they offered on line meetings. I chose not to attend. Then WW decided they would change their policy and require you to sign in and report your weight despite life time status. They then charged my Credit Card for not signing in and recording my weight. When I caught on to this scam I called and cancelled my membership with a live representative, who apparently did not cancel my membership. I asked for a refund for the charges and was told a manager would contact me. Surprise they never did. However now they claim a manager contacted me via voice mail. They did not charge me for a couple months after I canceled may 2021. Then in October 2021 they decided they needed to resume charging me the monthly fee. When I called they said they had no record of me canceling and couldn't explain why they didn't charge me for 5 months but resumed for 6 months. They are now saying they can't help me from 2020 because I didn't return their voicemail. It is unfortunate because the program is great, however the management is very poor.

I have been a Weight Watchers member for more than 20 years and it's a great program. I lost a total of 40 pounds from my initial weight, and my weight has stayed in a healthy range ever since.

The most important things about weight watchers are: It is not a diet, it emphasizes life style changes to improve your health -- eating healthy foods, exercising, identifying the triggers that start compulsive eating and avoiding or battling them, learning to deal with failure (in weight loss and elsewhere) without stressing out, and so on.

The meetings deal with predictable challenges as they arise -- holidays and the parties that go with them, summer and the temptations that come with it, food at work, eating out, and so on. The leader will have suggestions for dealing with these things, but also the other members have suggestions, and sometimes other members' suggestions are the ones that will work for you.

It's a great, proven program. If you're concerned about both your health and your wallet, you should be guided by this direct quote from WebMD (http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/*******/weight-watchers-thumbs-up-study):

"Commercial weight loss programs may offer as good if not better weight loss results than
Those led by a health professional, according to a new study.

It's the first time the two types of group-based weight loss programs have been tested in a
Head-to-head comparison.

The results showed that people enrolled in a commercial weight loss program, Weight
Watchers, lost as much weight as people in a professionally led behavioral weight loss
Program.

In fact, more than twice as many Weight Watchers participants lost at least 10% of their
Starting weight than those in a group led by a health professional or in a combination of
The two weight loss programs.

Experts say the results may open up more affordable and effective weight loss options for
The more than 70% of Americans classified as overweight or obese.

If Weight Watchers focused more on encouraging health, then the program materials would be fairly helpful. However they continue to focus on weight loss, which they have never been successful at. Research repeatedly finds that, contrary to common opinion, intentional weight loss attempts predict weight gain and eating disorders, but they do not predict weight loss or improved health. Weight Watchers is part of the $60 Billion annual industry that teaches us to only focus on the scale - even though their own research studies show that long-term, significant weight loss isn't possible.

Seriously. I bet you didn't realize that. Their own study showed that participants lost around about 10 pounds in six months and kept off half of that for two years. Doing the math, that is a five pound weight loss maintained for 730 days. Karen Miller-Kovach, chief scientific officer of Weight Watchers International at the time, said: "It's nice to see this validation of what we've been doing." Can you imagine? If she is so excited by this study, why don't they change their advertising? Can you see it? Join Weight Watchers and you have a pretty good shot at maintaining a 5 pound weight loss for two years. Is that really worth $20 per month to use their website?

Rather than focus on a program that wants to sell you packaged food-like substances, I encourage people to look at Health At Every Size principles. HAES works with the fact that health is multi-dimensional and includes genetics, environment, stress, access, and past, present, and future behaviors by putting the focus on the health that is possible for each individual body. HAES eliminates chasing unattainable concepts of "perfect health" based on a certain size, and it gives up the ridiculous notion that our health is only a matter of our current behaviors and is entirely within our control.

They have products you cannot buy in a grocery store. Delivered on time and in excellent condition and are fresh. They taste good too.

Its a good site to help you keep your weight in check and help you leave a healthy life. Their app helps you meal planning very easy and delicious.

I am absolutely appalled at the shady operations weight watchers pull on its clientele. I just happened to notice on my bank statement today that I was charged by WW $23 a month when I thought all along, I was supposed be being charged $12 per the promotion I signed up for. Considering I haven't used the app in a while I decided to go online to try to cancel it, but it wouldn't allow me to too because I signed up for a six-month membership. Since I've already paid $92 over the span of the membership, and I should have only spent a total of $72 had I been charged the correct amount I figured if I called in maybe they would just cancel me a month early and I would call it even. Nope. She basically told me I upgraded my account the same day I signed up by pressing "continue and proceed" and when I called her out saying that's shady I thought I was just signing up for the $12- 6 month membership I had selected she told me; had I noticed it sooner they could have done something about it then, but since I didn't I just have to take the loss and wait it out to cancel in September and pay ANOTHER month. This is ridiculous; I couldn't even tell you the last time I used the app and to have paid $115 and gone through all this to just to have tried weight watchers. I have lost 28 pounds other ways and when people ask me how I'm going to let them know it wasn't through weight watchers and don't try it cause if anything all this did was cause stress and waste my time! Also to top it off- The email Weight Watchers providers provided for me to write a review I immediately got an auto-email stating "Please be advised this email address is no longer being monitored." So thats a big eff- you by them.