Weight Watchers on line? Yay or nay?

I did WW online years ago & lost weight. I don't know how they've changed their system since then--there were no smart phones back then. I had a little calculator that I carried around with me. When I was doing it, it was very similar to MFP only instead of calories, the WW site converted the information you entered into points. Plus, they charge you for it. It had a recipe calculator like MFP, a personal food database like MFP. It could be worth a look, but for the money, I would stick with MFP.

I bought WW for online: my opinion? HUGE waste of money. It literally is the exact same as My Fitness Pal. There are forums, socializing parts, tracking calories using a point system (which was very restricting and very hard to follow), and the same aspects MFP has. The only difference is you can talk to the staff who work at WW but they don't offer much help other than common sense knowledge.

eskimohugger wrote: »

Honestly, WW is better suited for people who want to lose a lot of weight. I have had around 7 friends try Weight Watchers online and it only worked out well for my 3 friends who are overweight and needed to lose around 50-80 pounds for health reasons. Other than that, me and my other 4 friends who were only looking to lose 5-15 pounds, it didnt work out well because it was way too restricting considering the little amount of weight we were looking to lose.

From what I remember, you get less points the less you weigh. So if you start out with 50-80 lbs to lose, you get more points, but if you are closer to your goal weight you don't get many points at all. I was always very disappointed when my points went down. Really though, it's the same with calories. The more weight you lose, you have to re-calculate your numbers to make sure you are still eating in a deficit if you want to keep losing.

I agree with those that said WW is the same as MFP but MFP is free. I liked WW and lost 115 on it and switched to MFP earlier this year because the WW app and website were terrible. It's also nice not paying for anything. If you're doing online only, I'd recommend MFP at this point but I always liked WW a lot.

ald783 wrote: »

I agree with those that said WW is the same as MFP but MFP is free. I liked WW and lost 115 on it and switched to MFP earlier this year because the WW app and website were terrible. It's also nice not paying for anything. If you're doing online only, I'd recommend MFP at this point but I always liked WW a lot.

This.

I am also a WW member and have lost >90 lbs. But I am a WW member for the meetings and weigh-ins. I would not be successful without that accountability. I am certainly not a member for their online system.... I actually use MFP for tracking and logging (altho I have added in the Firefox macro that will also give me the WW points in MFP). By doing so, I have learned that to
1) eat all my MFP calories AND
2) stay within my WW points, I need to be sure to eat a couple fruits a day.

If I don't eat the fruit and stay within my WW points, I don't get enough calories (only around 1000).
If I don't eat the fruit but stay within my calories, I simply don't lose as well. I believe its because I usually eat too much starchy carbs for me.

I'm not a big fruit eater, so seeing and balancing the two programs with each other works well for me and keeps me honest.

If you feel you can be successful without the meetings and weigh-ins there is NO reason to pay to use WW online. Their database is horrible compared to MFP.

Ready2Rock206 wrote: »

I think WW is great if you can attend the meetings - for online only MFP is a thousand times better. The MFP app is so much more user friendly, the database is huge and the message boards are so much more useful.

I was on WW online last year, and I agree also. Why bother with it when MFP is free! It's actually better as it gives soo much information on food calories and I love MFP much better now!

As others have said, if you are going to count something it may as well be calories.

I have used it before I found MFP and for me it helped me to start losing weight (after failing on several other diets), so I have a positive experience. However, MFP essentially does the same thing for free. I experienced MFP as quite intimidating at first, with all the calories, macros etc. WW is essentially a simplified version, since they work with points. But MFP gave me more insight on nutritional value of foods in the end, so once I got used to it I definitely preferred MFP. If MFP is not working well for you, try WW and see if does But in the end, it's the same system I guess, just differently presented: more simplified, which might make nutrition/weight loss less 'intimidating' although I do prefer MFP!