Weight Watchers: full point, and win weightloss?

Weight Watchers is one of the largest and most successful diet networks in the world. But there are few independent studies on the effectiveness of the points-food system. Weight Watchers is really as good? Five points of criticism, you should know.

A good day in the life of a Weight Watchers might look like this: For breakfast, pumpernickel bread with cottage cheese and cheese. It takes only six points on the account and makes neat enough. The coffee (black) is even free. Lunch in the canteen no grilled sausages, but only potatoes, gravy and broccoli (twelve points). For this purpose a non-alcoholic beer (two instead of four points), for dessert a little sin: Mousse au Chocolat (four points). After the evening cucumber salad (five points) 29 points from the personal point are used. Two must be burned up yet, but for what? An apple, or maybe a handful of chips?

Weight Watchers makes a point of feeding the world in which there are pineapple and onion soup for all dining and drinkable own point values. For every dieters a daily allowable score is calculated, you may consume. Keeps the Weight Watcher to it, it decreases. But the system has its limits: Five Issues of Weight Watchers.
First The Weight Watchers points system greatly simplifies

After the initial scoring system was for the formula of Weight Watchers points significantly, especially calories, fat and fiber content, it had a handful of chips and an apple the same point values. That can not be properly said to Weight Watchers CEO David Kirchhoff, when he took a few years ago the leadership of the world's largest commercial weight-loss network. He felt that the scoring system is too coarse.

The calorific value of a food to determine food chemist by burning in a calorimeter. Apple pure, arc of, wuuuusch - leaving a pile of ashes. Unfortunately, the human body is no oven, some substances in the diet can not exploit the body, such as contained in plant cellulose. From the measured value, therefore, the calorific value of the undigested residue is removed.

HOW DOES WEIGHT WATCHERS
Principle
The fee-based programs of Weight Watchers is a diet less than a food system. Dieters to change their habits in the long term in order to achieve their desired weight and to keep. All foods are allowed, each has an assigned point value with a specific formula.
Points System
Food-point values
Examples
Meeting
Even this so-called physiological calorific value is only an approximation to the reality that takes place in the stomach and intestines. Chewing salivation, gastric acid production - all this requires energy, which the body needs to invest only once to unlock the food.
Net remain so fewer calories left as indicated on the packaging. For each food, the investment costs are of different heights, proteins are harder to crack than fats. So Weight Watchers points system introduced in 2010, the revised "POINTS" field. The apple and almost all other fruits have since then no points. Nevertheless, the criticism: A point system in the complex processes in the body can not reproduce in its entirety.



Second The human body does not respond to the points system

It is also crucial to make as full food. People tend to always take the same volume of food to him. An apple stuffing more than a handful of chips - so it has a lower energy density. Also taken into consideration in "POINTS". Just as the glycemic index (GI). The theory behind it: Some carbohydrate-containing foods such as white bread, raise blood sugar levels very much. This shoots the high insulin levels in the blood and fall just as quickly again. The solvent from hunger pangs.

The GI-principle but is controversial. The study was not able clearly says the German Institute of Human Nutrition (DIfE) in Potsdam. "The appropriate conclusion is that a diet with low glycemic load reduces the risk of being overweight, do not take the time," according to the Institute site. Weight Watchers uses the GI anyway.

Third Weight Watchers is a company that sells food itself

The concept of Weight Watchers has for decades been economically successful. € 39.95 monthly membership fee of the cost in Germany, 42 dollars in the United States, 19.95 € in France. 14.95 euros, the company asked for the stripped down version without online meeting. A total of 1.5 million subscribers worldwide bring the company has annual sales of approximately $ 1.5 billion.

Mitter while Weight Watchers foods sold in German supermarkets with their own logo on the package, from yogurt to frozen pizza. Weight Watchers also advertises regularly with celebrities: In Germany, among other things, to actress Christine Neubauer and TV presenter Bärbel Schäfer. Sometimes when you shoot them out as well as marketing over the top. Thus, the ZDF television presenter Andrea Kiewel caused a scandal that came out as they had done on television product placement for Weight Watchers and had even contracted with the company.

4th The group leaders are trained lay people, not experts

Weight Watchers has started in 1961 when the 100-pound American housewife Jean Nidetch decided to slim down - not alone in her little room, but together with friends. The group grew quickly and became the network.

Still, the group is one of the pillars of Weight Watchers. Members regularly attend meetings, a nutritionist supervises every dieters. This is especially useful for people, "whose motivation is promoted by a group," says Silke Meyer remnants of the German Nutrition Society (DGE). They criticized, however, that it is "selected by Weight Watchers and trained lay people" are among the team leaders they constitute who have successfully lost weight with this program. "The question is whether they can conduct their studies due to the groups optimally," says Meyer remains.

In fact, it is not difficult to come to Weight Watchers to the title "specialist or expert in nutrition and weight management CCI." On the website it says: "The qualification consists of several modules, self-study, a two-day basic skills, a three-day intensive training and an administrative coaching." Even after ten weeks you could organize a group meeting.

5th Independent scientific evidence is not the effect

The company relies on scientific studies to prove the success of the concept. The latest study, conducted by the UK Medical Research Council, appeared in 2011 in the medical journal "Lancet". One half of the 772 study participants from Australia, Germany and Great Britain should be for one year following the Weight Watchers diet program, the other to comply only with official nutrition recommendations.

The results speak for Weight Watchers: The participants in this group had at one year decreased on average about five pounds, the control group, less than half as much. Discontinuation rates were high in both groups, only about 60 percent were in the Weight Watchers group throughout the year. Slightly less it were in the control group.

However, is the independence of the study and thus their validity into question. It was initiated among others by Hans Hauner. He is director of the Else-Kröner-Fresenius Centre for Nutritional Medicine, Technical University of Munich and President of the German Obesity Society, which emphasizes in its guidelines on "Prevention and treatment of obesity," the Weight Watchers program.

Hauner is also scientific advisor to Weight Watchers International and receives money, as he confirmed to SPIEGEL ONLINE. Weight Watchers also financed the study, Hauner but stresses that "trial planning implementation, and evaluation solely the responsibility of the three main authors were." Since 2000, the concept of Weight Watchers has been studied in three other studies. Two of them financed by the Group, was also Karen Miller-Kovach, the chief scientist of Weight Watchers International, participated in them.

The only study in which no money was flowing from Weight Watchers and is involved in a scientist with respect to the Group was published, 2005, "Journal of the American Medical Association." In it the old point system of Weight Watchers was compared with three different diets: the low-carb Atkins diet, the Zone diet and balanced low-fat Ornish diet. 160 participants were randomly assigned to each of the four groups. Weight Watchers did not cut better than other methods. The average weight loss was three pounds per year, even lower than in the Ornish (3.3 kg) and the zone group (3.2 kilograms). Only 2.1 kg speckten from the Atkins subjects. In this study covered only about two-thirds of the volunteers, the Weight Watchers program through to the end.
Conclusion: Weight Watchers can not perform miracles, and one should understand the limitations and difficulties of the product. Any weight reduction, whether with or without a prefabricated plan is a long-term task, which is less about the weight loss than just eke a long-term dietary changes.

Here, the meeting points of the landscape and help guarantee success, or the only effective way they are not. However, also sees remnants Silke Meyer of the German Society for Nutrition for Weight Watchers "good prospects" - unless they change their eating habits long term.