At the beginning of the year I signed up for Weight Watchers online. I lost 50 pounds between January and June. Then I stalled out. My weight stubbornly held steady for over a month as I grew increasingly desperate. I was eating well within my Weight Watchers daily points allowance (and rarely dipped into the weekly points bucket). But I was stuck.
When a friend mentioned that she was using SparkPeople, I grilled her on the specifics. I switched two weeks ago, and the weight loss began again almost immediately.
While SparkPeople tracks calories, Weight Watchers uses the points system, which is basically a weighted scale. The mechanics behind "points" is a closely guarded secret, but it has to do with the balance of fat, fiber, and nutritional wholesomeness (as determined by Weight Watchers). I can't argue with Weight Watchers too much - after all, I did lose 50 pounds on their system - but some of their scoring is wack.
For example, one serving of low carb meatloaf is a whopping 13 points. (Your daily allowance of points is somewhere around 30 for most people.) However, it has only 157 calories.
By contrast, a Larabar (230 calories) is only 6 points. And fruit - including apples, bananas, oranges, and berries - are all zero points. Eat as many bananas as you want (105 calories), Weight Watchers doesn't care.
Weight Watchers also stubbornly refuses to track your daily intake of carbs or protein, which forced me to manage those numbers by hand. SparkPeople makes them readily available (and you can add a lot of other custom metrics if you like).
However, it's not all sunshine and roses. It's true that while Weight Watchers costs $19/month, SparkPeople is free. However, it is heavily ad-supported. Chock full of ads, enough to make your head hurt.
I also find that Weight Watchers has much more sensible portion units and default portion sizes. For example, on SparkPeople the default portion size of mayonnaise is 1 cup. Seriously, what?!
I think Weight Watchers is a great way for people to take those first steps towards eating healthy and losing weight. Their clean interface and weighted scoring system are definitely helpful. But if you get stuck on Weight Watchers, give SparkPeople a try!
Image courtesy Flickr/Clare & Dave
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