Weight Watchers is another of the old-time standby diet programs, with over forty years in the business and an estimated 1 million followers across the globe at any given time. One of the reasons this weight loss plan has continued success is the focus on overall health: mental, emotional and physical.

Weight Watchers provides the tools and support to change the way you eat and live. Rather than tell you exactly what to eat, they teach you to make healthy food decisions. During your journey on Weight Watchers, there is a system to provide motivation and support, as well as encouragement to engage in an active lifestyle.

Group meetings are held worldwide to help you through the weight loss process, but even if there isn’t one near your home or place of employment, you can find community and support online.

(1) Basic Diet Tenets/Nutritional Philosophy - 5

The four tenets of the Weight Watchers program are Eat Smart, Move More, Helpful Habits, and Get Support. In the Eat Smart category, Weight Watchers provides common sense advice, a Weight Watchers point list program that allows you to choose what you want to eat, and prepared meals available for purchase at supermarkets, online, and in Weight Watcher Diet Centers. There is also an extensive listing of recipes and meal suggestions available in books, at centers, and online.

Helpful Habits are built on learning what is best for you body, nutritionally and otherwise. By changing the way you live, and developing healthy eating habits and exercise routines, you can take the weight off and keep it off long term. Weight Watchers wants you to sustain the weight loss, not bounce up and down on the scale.

Support is offered to help you reach your Weight Watchers goal. Members are encouraged to attend weekly meetings that include confidential weigh-in, information about weight loss and healthy habits, and will allow you to share with other members and gain insight and ideas into weight loss. If you do not live near a Weight Watchers center, there is help online. The online portion of Weight Watchers offers eTools and allows you to log in your plan, find recipes and meal ideas, assess your exercise habits, and monitor your weight.

(2) Exercise/Fitness Component - 4

Your Weight Watchers advisors can help you put together an activity plan that will address the Move More portion of the program. You are not limited to yoga, spinning, walking or swimming, but guided toward activities that will interest you and become part of your daily and weekly routine. It will allow flexibility and work with your lifestyle, whether at home, at work, or on the road.

Additionally, the Weight Watchers website provides workout ideas and fitness demos on a variety of topics, fitness tips, and articles on basic fitness and exercise modalities.

(3) Food - 4

Weight Watchers employs a POINTS system and assigns point values to hundreds of foods, both prepared and fresh, based on calories, fat and fiber. You use these points to keep track of what you eat. It's not too terribly complicated or different from counting basic calories or carbs, but it does require you to be vigilant and stay within your points "budget." The downside is that points don't always take into consideration the overall effect of a food. For example, 2 cups of fresh pineapple is 2 points, but so is a 100-calories snack cake. You can eat either and only count 2 points, but one is obviously significantly better for you than the other, and will probably leave you fuller. So technically  you could continue to eat foods that are less than good for you, as long as you stay within your point system. Hopefully, guidance from the website, attendance at meetings, and your own common sense will kick and you will make better decisions, but that may not always be the case.

Weight Watchers allows your to prepare your own foods utilizing their extensive recipe collection, or you can purchase prepared foods at your supermarket, Weight Watcher Diet Center, or online. There is also an extensive listing of foods to order while you eat out, including items at national chains like Applebees, Olive Garden, Quiznos, Dunkin Donuts, and McDonalds, among others.

Prepared food includes chilled ready meals (available at Hannaford Markets, Stop&Shop and Giant Food stores), cheese, yogurt, frozen ice cream items, cookies/brownies/muffins, bread/English muffins, pita, and frozen Smart Ones meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner options).

(4) Ease of Use - 4

The reason that regular face-to-face meetings are the best bet is to help you learn all the things necessary to follow the program and change your lifestyle and eating habits. All-encompassing, you need to relearn about food, how to count points, find an exercise program that suits you and the motivation to stick with it. Without those, it may be harder to get into a groove.

(5) Cost (per month) - 5

Membership: Yes, fee varies.
Food: Slight increase. $
Other: none

As with any diet program, do your research first. Go to the library, search the internet, and above all, consult your doctor about any diet regimen that you are contemplating.