With all the touchy-feely friendliness of a Weight Watchers meeting, it’s easy to forget that it isn’t a club, it’s a corporation. It’s not staffed by well meaning volunteers, it’s staffed by employees. Ultimately, it isn’t our wellbeing that interests the corporate entity, Weight Watchers. That’s not their primary interest at all.
We might think that it would be a good thing for Weight Watchers to establish a program for their lifetime members. That it would keep them active in the program and give them an unquestionably accurate statistic about the longterm value of the Weight Watchers program. Wouldn’t that be a valuable advertising tool, to be able to say that x% of their members reach their goal and maintain it for y Years?
They could have presents on anniversaries and special lifetime member meetings. And other meetings where the lifetime members could share their wisdom with those still struggling to reach their goal. And they could have parties at intervals where all Weight Watchers could mingle with people from other centers and other meetings. And learn how to handle a party atmosphere without cracking.
How hard would that be?
It wouldn’t be that hard. But, that’s not what they do. It isn’t what they want to do. All they want to do is to teach us how to lose weight. They want us to be successful at that. Because then we’ll come back the next time we need to lose weight.
Let me clarify that. They want us to lose weight, gain it back and lose it again. And go back and do it again.
At any Weight Watchers meeting, they’ll be some new people. But again and again you will hear people introduce themselves by saying that they lost XX pounds 5 years ago (or whatever) and now they have to do it again. Weight Watchers members think that WW is a success because they lost weight once. They don’t think that Weight Watchers is a failure because they gained it back.
Which it is. It is a failure (for us, not them) because almost all of us gained our weight back.
I am a lifetime member for 5 months now. I worked and continue to work so hard to keep off the 42 pounds I lost. It really is a constant battle. I have thought of the same idea about having meetings for Lifetime Members. Your idea of a whole program for Lifetime Members is even better. The awards and goals during my weight loss gave me much needed inspiration, and I miss all those during this lifetime member maintenance. It’s a lonely existence! I’ve started getting very irritated at meetings with all the whining and failures that go on. I want to just be with people in my same situation, not get dragged down by the others’ failures. I don’t think WW will ever have a program like you and I suggest for LT members. They want LT members at the meetings to inspire the others. They also hope that we will eventually fail, too, so they can collect more money from us. If everyone became a LT member, Weight Watchers would go out of business-no money would be coming in. The only thing I’ve noticed is a separate check-in box for LT. It’s a small box of LT members compared to several big boxes of other members. I’ve been searching the internet for a community of LT members. Also, I’m going to start asking and figuring out who the LT members are at my meetings so I can talk with them. I think the only community of LT members is the group that works for Weight Watchers (leaders and staff are LT members). I really enjoyed your posting about LT members, thank you.
{{Did it!}}
We’ll figure out how to keep it off. It may take some trial and error, but I know we can do it.
Hey KatieBird – love your posts!= – I know this one is a bit old but I just had to comment!
Weight Watchers is one of those things that works great for some people, not so great for others. It is something that we all need to experience at one point or another to know though, don’t you agree?
What I don’t like is that the program talks so much about losing pounds but doesn’t talk about gaining muscle at all (which, as we all know, burns fat!).
For those that don’t want to go to the local grunting meatmarket (you might know it as your local gym) there isnt much of a solution left.
I told my husband about your post (he is honestly the best personal trainer in Colorado) and he told me to let you know he would be happy to gift you a couple of free sessions so you could stay on track and beat the cycle.
He does his personal training all via the webcam – which I am sure you are very familiar with
If you havent heard of webcam personal training sessions before here is a blog entry that talks about it if you want to know more.
http://jamieatlas.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/to-foolishly-go-where-no-personal-trainer-has-gone-before/
Just leave him a comment and he will know who you are (I told him all about your post)
Very best,
Taryn
Hi Taryn! That’s a wonderful offer, thank you. And I will do it. I’m not sure what my schedule is for the next week, though. Should I hold off on the comment at his site until I know more?
And will I need a webcam on my end?
I agree with you about the Weight Watchers muscle issues. I’ve been wanting to write more about Weight Watchers — that sounds like a good topic. I hope you won’t mind if I steal it?
My wife has had great success on weight watchers. Taryn’s comment about exercise and increasing muscle mass are dead on. She doesn’t mention another advantage of increasing muscle mass but I’m sure she knows this – more muscle, more efficient calorie burn.
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