Over the past decade I have lost weight by going to Weight Watchers several times and gained weight by not going to Weight Watchers. I have watched the organization evolve over the decade.
At one point I was so impressed that I bought stock in the company.
The most interesting change over the decade has been a 'politically correct' evolution. How do you have a politically correct evolution in the weight watching business?
First you start by punishing sugar. Sugar was not very important in the beginning. A spoonful of sugar really doesn't have much in the way of weight gaining potential. But PC is anti-sugar so products with sugar in it get negative points in the current Weight Watchers.
The same is true for all processed foods which have no technical connection to weight gain but Weight Watchers has gone way overboard in PC in giving rewards for eating vegetables and fruits. Way out of proportion to the weight loss benefits. However they cannot go to the extreme of treating avocados as having no negative points. Modern Weight Watchers members would eat them by the dozens if they were treated as having no negative points.
Weight Watchers doesn't just stop with this politically correct attitudes towards sugar, processed foods, vegetables and fruits it goes to the same extreme when it comes to alcohol which is treated negatively. (Even though alcohol actually has a measurable caloric number, alcoholics tend not to be overweight.)
Again the PC world spends a great deal of time sitting in their chairs being academics or bureaucrats or sitting in front of a television ranting at FOX News. The solution that Weight Watchers has come up with is to give positive awards for exercise and moving around. Very PC.
As a person who has exercised all my life I know that for every calorie I consume exercising I consume twice as much after exercising. I exercise because I love it not because I'm foolish enough to think it helps me lose weight. Go to any marathon and look at 50% of the runners who are not trim even after that ungawdly distance.
But it is politically correct for obese people to get up and start moving, I can't object to that.