I hate doing this because I don't want everyone to think I'm a shill for any one company.
Weight watchers is for the most part a calories in/calories out diet. They use points instead of calories, so you are counting your points, but the idea is the same. Typical diet ideas are factored in, Low fat, low carb, high fiber foods are generally less in points, and things like ice cream and cake are a lot of points. Stay at or below your points for the day and you will lose weight.
Being able to track points is essential, and having a support group is what you pay for. It will work, as it did for my parents who each lost 50 lbs for my wedding a four years ago on weight watchers. My mom said the only thing that kept her going was that she knew she was paying for it, so she felt guilty if she didn't follow it. That was a good motivation for her.
Here's what I do, it's not weight watchers, and it's not free, but it's works for me, mainly because I travel for work, and have my computer with me everywhere. If you don't have access to a computer where you can keep info this might not work for you, and please don't think i'm against weight watchers because I'm pro every diet plan out there (except Adkins). Everyone has different circumstances and preferences, and every diet has it's advantages to someone.
I bought the biggest loser book, and I follow their calorie and food choice recommendations...mostly. The book and DVD was about $28 after it was shipped to my house. I also bought a piece of software called Calorie King (
www.calorieking.com), which was $30 for 1 year when I bought it, but it might be up to $50 now. You get updates frequently as they are contantly adding foods to the list, after your year is up, you either renew your subscritpion or you stop getting updates. You can still use the software, but you won't get any more updates. Calorie King is a daily food journal that has almost every type of food, and it's nutritional content. It's not a perfect piece of software, but it works. You can add foods that you make at home, adjust your goals as you go along, and it gives you and idea of many restaurants food content. For example, I was about to head out to Chipotle one day for lunch and I thought I should look up how many calories are in a burrito before I got there... good thing I did, there are over 800 calories in one of their burritos. I choose the burrito bowl without sour cream and 1/2 the cheese...
I track my calories every day, and add in my exercise. I generally try to be right at 1000 net calories a day (1400 calories in, 400 out).
This kills two birds with one stone. It allows me to plan for the day, and it is my food journal for each day. They have their own recommendations for what you should eat in a day, but I choose to follow the biggest loser diet plan.
It took about 7 or 8 days to get used to keeping the journal and the software has some querks when you are searching, but now that I've used it for over a month, it's very effective.
As I'm sure is the case with Weight Watchers, counting calories was tricky at first, and overwhelming, but now that I'm used to it, I know what most foods have in them, and I know what I can and can't eat daily to meet my goals.
Again, just my $.02....
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