Weight Watchers: A Plan that Works

For over 40 years Weight Watchers has been helping women and men across the world build healthier lifestyles. Instead of stressing foods to avoid, Weight Watchers has devised a philosophy to help improve overall health, mental, physical and emotional by offering support through meetings and providing education, awareness, and knowledge about healthy lifestyle choices.

Weight Watchers philosophy for overall health revolves around the support of the staff and other dieters alike. By offering online programs, motivational meetings, magazines, healthy recipes, or mailed information, they've created a strong community to foster new life choices.

Weight Watchers has two basic plans designed to fit your lifestyle. The first plan, The Flex Plan does not have any food restrictions. How this plan works is by limiting your overall food intake by their specifically devised POINT system. Each food type has a specific number of points based on its fat, calories, and fiber. Each Weight Watcher member choosing this plan has a detailed POINT system tailored to their target weight based on height, weight and gender.

On the POINT system, you can eat what you like, but once you reach your designated points, you are supposed to stop. By choosing healthier choices loaded with fiber, which offsets calories and fat, you automatically allow yourself more options. By choosing fattening foods, which have high point values, you restrict how much you can eat throughout the day. This plan is good if you need to occasionally splurge, and won't leave you feeling guilty.

The second plan at Weight Watcher's is the Core Plan. This plan does restrict what you eat to a certain extent. When choosing this plan, you are allowed to eat unlimited amounts of foods that are low in energy density. Simply put, these foods have low caloric value per ounce. Some examples of low energy dense foods are brown rice, lean meats, avocadoes and potatoes. These foods make you feel full longer.