Weight Watchers' Weight Maintenance Program: Success or Failure?

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

--Abraham Lincoln

How well does Weight Watchers do in helping their members manage maintenance?

I know for a fact that Weight Watchers offers a good maintenance program for its graduates, a.k.a. Lifetime members, but why do so many members fail at maintenance and, as a consequence, end up returning again and again to WW to lose the weight they have regained? To understand WW members' frustration, one just has to go on this posting on Weight Watchers' Facebook.

When Consumer Reports rated the best diet programs, the editors rated Weight Watchers as the second best program, basing their opinion on the fact the fact that soup, high in sodium, was offered as a menu option to help dieters to stave off hunger.

Never mind that this was just a sample menu among many other sample menus. In other words, Consumer Reports was splitting hairs and needed to justify selecting another program as it's "top" program.

But now I would like to cut through the BS and see how well diet programs, in general,) really work in the weight maintenance department.

We all know that weight loss programs, even dangerous ones (which Weight Watchers is not), work for taking weight off. For example, I could go on a fasting diet for a week and lose a significant amount of weight, although it's not likely I'll keep the weight off.

But how well do the safe established programs help members keep the weight off?

This is what I would like to find out.

If you have been on Weight Watchers, paid for your own fees and food (in other words, not given free Weight Watchers' products as part of a study or trial), and have completed the program by reaching goal weight, I would like to hear from you, either via email or comment on this post (below).

If you are a current Weight Watchers' member, still in the weight-loss phase, I'm not really interested in hearing from you. I would expect you to be gung-ho about the program.

My questions:

1. How long have you been on Weight Watchers?

2. How much weight have you lost?

3. How long have you kept the weight off? Are you at or near your goal weight right now?

4. Have you regained any of your weight? If so, how much?

5. How would you rate program support during the weight-loss phase?

6. How have the optional Weight Watchers' foods helped you? Not helped you?

7. How would you rate program support for weight maintenance? Do you receive any special rewards for maintaining your weight loss, such as a free/reduced cost lifetime membership or program fee rebates?

8. If you could go back in time, would you still choose Weight Watchers? Why or why not?

9. What is your gender and age? (I'm not interested in personal information, for example, no need to reveal your actual name, just some general info).

10. Is there anything you would like to add that I might have forgotten to ask?

We all know that most commercial programs help people lose weight successfully, but how do they help their members keep it off? That is what I'm trying to find out.

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