Weight Watchers PersonalPoints Review: Personalized Weight Loss?
Weight Watchers, aka WW, seems like itโs always trying to reinvent itself by coming out with new plans. The latest, PersonalPoints, claims that itโs โcustomized like never before.โ Seems like WW is jumping on the โpersonalized just for youโ trend.
The company promises that their โnutrition and behavior change scientistsโ design each and every plan to ensure a PersonalPoints budget and Zeropoint foods list thatโs tailored for that specific person.
Weโve seen a lot of personalized diets and supplements lately.
From Persona vitamins to G-Plansโ metabolic typing to VShredโs somatotypes, it seems like companies are banking on the fact that people love feeling like theyโre getting a product thatโs tailored exclusively to them.
WW also loves to market itself as a โlifestyle change,โ not a diet. Oprahโs posts and ads are all about how fun the program is, and how easy it is to integrate into your life.
That all seems nice, but is it really the case?
Is WW a lifestyle change, or is it a diet in disguise?
Oprah: YOU GET A DIET! AND YOU GET A DIET! AND YOU GET A DIET!
Letโs take a look at PersonalPoints and see whatโs going on.
Getting started on WW PersonalPoints.
The new WW PersonalPoints program begins with a PersonalPoints โEngineโ – basically a quiz that you take to let the algorithm know which foods to put into your plan.
The plan has two parts – a PersonalPoints budget, and a ZeroPoint food list.
The budget is the number of points youโre allowed to eat in a day. To stay within these points, just like in other renditions of WW, youโll measure your portions and track your intake, except when it comes to ZeroPoint foods. Those are โfree.โ
Your budget is determined by your goals and your metabolism, which WW canโt possibly know anything about from a short quiz. In fact, while basal metabolic rate stays mostly the same, daily calorie needs fluctuate. And making caloric determinations from โmetabolismโ sounds science-y, itโs mostly worthless, unless you have a metabolic chamber that gives you an accurate reading of your individual metabolic rate. You can get a rough estimate from our calculations, but really, itโs sort of a gamble.
There are only 30 metabolic chambers in the world, the majority being at major teaching hospitals. So itโs safe to assume that WW basing your points budget on your metabolism is mostly for show.
Plus, as I said, while metabolic rate is mostly static, energy needs vary day to day. This is one huge problem with calorie counting and budgets.
(Read about why I donโt recommend calorie budgets and calorie counting here)
WW says that โyou can eat anything you want, just follow your budget!โ which is code for โweโre saying that you can eat anything you want, but you actually canโt.โ
Once a program introduces a budget into the mix, whether itโs points, carbs, calories, or whatever, this takes away your freedom to eat intuitively. It immediately introduces restriction, regardless of how many โZeroPoint foodsโ youโre told you can eat.
Please sit me down and have a talk with me if I ever go on a diet that penalizes oat milk over almond milk.
The daily allotment of points is different for everyone, but appears to be somewhere around 25, give or take a few. Some peopleโs budget goes as low as 18 points a day.
When you have to count calories or points, you get some people trying to game the system. While a lot of people will do WW PersonalPoints and eat lots of fruits and vegetables, for others, it becomes a sort of game to concoct the lowest-point meals and desserts possible.
This sort of behaviour is completely disordered, and it arises when people feel like they donโt have โpermissionโ to eat what they truly want. So, they try to find a way around the โrulesโ to give themselves what theyโre really craving.
Can you eat anything you want on WW? Sure. But at some point, youโll come to the realization that if you eat a real chocolate bar or milkshake instead of some concoction with powdered peanut butter, a protein drink, and sugar-free pudding mix, youโre going to be spending a heck of a lot of points that you could spend eating other foods.
And when you’re already hungry, that just doesn’t sound like a good option.
This is the push-pull that goes on in a lot of peoplesโ minds when theyโre on a program like WW. Itโs exhausting, guilt-producing, and not healthy.
And just so weโre clear, I think itโs healthier to eat the chocolate bar and move on, than it is to eat this other type of food and pretend that itโs something โindulgent.โ
Thatโs not healthy to me.
Donโt forget that WW has a lifetime membership for a reason: if it worked, why would they need to offer that?
Weight Watchers Food Lists.
The ZeroPoint food list is a list of foods that you donโt need to weigh or measure or track. Everyoneโs ZeroPoint food list is different, depending on what your goals and preferences are.
This is where the โcustomizationโ piece comes in.
Unlike previous WW plans, foods like legumes, avocado, whole wheat pasta, plain nonfat yogurt (whyyyy), brown rice, and potatoes can be ZeroPoints. Not everyone will have all of these on their list, but itโs interesting to see WW making starchy carbs a โfreeโ food.
Each foodโs PersonalPoints value is determined by its calories, fibre, protein, saturated and unsaturated fats, and added sugars.
Thatโs all fine, but you know what Iโm going to say about that: food is a lot more than its nutrition: itโs also how you feel after eating it; itโs memories, community, socializing, and love. And ALL OF THAT IS OKAY.
Again, WW says it isnโt a diet, but it has essentially reduced food to numbers.
Thatโs. What. Diets. Do.
I know that WWโs PersonalPoints are supposed to make eating healthier easier, but the counting and tracking and gaming and points budgets are justโฆ.and interference and a distraction from all of the other aspects of food.
You can โearnโ points.
On Weight Watchers Personal Points, there are three things you can do to โearnโ more points:
Drink 60oz of water every day. This will get you one more point a day.
Eat green vegetables. For every cup of non starchy vegetables you eat, you earn another WW point.
Exercise. Followers can earn points based on their activity.
WW says the โearning pointsโ thing is to โto help turbo-charge a healthy habit loop.โ In other words, you get something (more food) for doing something healthy. Except rewarding yourself with more food for doing stuff you should be doing anyway, is a really unhealthy way of doing things.
Even though WW claims that the research shows that incentives like points earning help people lose more weight, I have a massive issue with this sort of โearn foodโ thinking, and it solidifies in my mind the fact that WW is nothing but another diet.
Like, I don’t really care how much weight you lose, if you come out of this with a messed up idea of what food is. Not worth it.
Working out to earn food isnโt good because exercise then becomes punishment for eating or a way to earn food which..well, you deserve to eat. You should never have to โearnโ your food. You should work out because itโs physically healthy and fun and because it makes you feel good. Not because it earns you a couple more points.
Aside from that, recent research has shown that our bodies essentially make up for the calories burned by tough exercise by slowing metabolic rate. So in other words, your body doesnโt work like that. You canโt just eat and then burn that food off.
(Read my post about the exercise and metabolism study I mention above)
Eating to earn more food doesnโt make sense, and it corrupts your relationship with food. Why should you stuff yourself with vegetables to earn points, instead of eating what you want, right off the bat?
Weight Watchers claims that Personal Points is about establishing healthy habits and the earning points thing is incentive. But what good is an incentive if it messes up the way you see food and the way you believe your body works?
That just doesnโt make sense.
WW coaches.
To support their members, WW hires a lot of coaches. I was curious to see what sort of qualifications one has to have to be a WW coach, since I feel like the coaches arenโt only there for moral support, but also to give nutrition and wellness information and advice.
Turns out, qualifications like โnutrition classesโ or โpsychology trainingโ arenโt required. You just need to have a computer, have 1:1 coaching experience, and a desire to live the โWW lifestyle.โ
WW coaches undoubtedly give valuable support and encouragement to their group members. I think thatโs valuable and important. But I cringe when I see nutrition MLMs and companies like WW hiring โcoachesโ into positions where they are naturally supposed to give nutrition advice to others.
Thatโs when things can get a bit dicey. You know?
The CEO of WW said in the press release for Personal Points: โEveryone’s truth is unique. Everyone’s life is unique. That’s why it’s important to have a weight-loss program that is just as unique as youโ
But sheโs wrong. Everyoneโs truth is not unique, not when it comes to diets and the way our bodies work.
The universal truth is that WW is a diet thatโs masquerading as a non-diet.