DozenDiets.com

 Final Weight: 195.0

Well, Weight Watchers is behind me. It was an awesome diet. If there has been one downside to it, it is that I had a hard time updating both this blog as well as the Weight Watchers online tools.

Still, I found the points easy to maintain and the online tools make it pretty easy. I did find that the weekly “emergency points” and even the “activity points” should be used extremely sparingly. I didn’t do that at first and my weight loss sort of stalled out. Once I starting guarding those much more jealously, it really helped out.

Okay: Here is the summary.

On Weight Watchers, I lost 8 pounds. (I started at 203 and finished at 195). My body fat stayed pretty flat. I am now in the 20’s pretty consistently when it comes to body fat.

So, for the ranking of Weight Watchers:

• For “Ease of Understanding” I give it a 10 out of 10. It is extremely easy to understand and follow. Of course there are online tools, but if you join a local support group there are Weight Watchers counselors to help you out as well.
• For “Forgiveness of a Cheat” I give it a 9 out of 10. They figure a cheat right into the points with the weekly emergency points, but there is not much guidance for what to do if you go past that figure. I did that one day though and recovered pretty quickly so I still rank this category pretty high.
• For “Ease of Execution” I give this one a 5 out of 10. It does require constant attention to points values and some mathematics when you have to figure a points value. There is some estimation involved and then lots of online tracking or weekly meeting attendance. I think the tracking and the meetings are part of the keys to success so you pretty much need to do them, but they can be inconvenient. The plus to this diet though is that almost any food is allowed, it will just offset something else. The other piece that lowered this rating is price. There is a fee to do Weight Watchers so that lowers this value over some of the other diets that are in books only. Of course the fee does get you some tangible benefit in the support and online tools.
• For results I give Weight Watchers a 9 out of 10. It didn’t exceed my expectations, but it met them exactly. 2 pounds per week is what was promised and that is what happened.

That gives Weight Watchers a 34 out of a possible 40. Pretty good diet and one that I could see working as a long term plan. I love the encouragement of physical activity and all of the tools really help out!

Okay. Now it is June and I am off to “The Advanced Mediterranean Diet”. I won’t be spelling that out too much so look for it as the AMD.

Later

JG