Can we all get behind being furious with Weight Watchers for its new App?

[Anonymous]

I support it. We need to change this mentality learning healthy eating habits is a “diet.” Looking at the obesity rates of children, its needed.

[Anonymous]

I am on board. Fat isn't a bad word and if talked about matter of factly isn't going to lead to body image issues or eating disorders.

My parents always talked about healthy weight just like they talked about healthy foods, proper sleep, being physically active and everything bad in moderation.

There is an epidemic of obese kids who are going to have terrible healthy issues as adults and who already deal with quality of life and social barriers as kids - they need to learn how to eat healthy for their mental, physical and social healthy.

[Anonymous]

I lost 120 pounds on weight watchers. I wish this was around when I was a kid so I could have saved a lifetime of sadness and obsession with food.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I lost 120 pounds on weight watchers. I wish this was around when I was a kid so I could have saved a lifetime of sadness and obsession with food.

Hi Do you think Weight Watchers is a good stock to buy?

[Anonymous]

Let's be clear, the obesity epidemic is so bad that kids today will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. I dont understand why people are up in arms about this app. Its focused on healthy eating.

Think about it this way, this app will potentially help reduce the adult customer base for WW. Can you imagine a tobacco company doing this?

[Anonymous]

Wow. Clearly none of you have looked at the app. It’s not focused at all on healthy eating habits. Hummus is a red food for example. It’s focused on weight loss and making money. it will encourage black and white thinking in kids that are already prone to black and white thinking. Do you really think it’s improving health to have kids think hummus and avocados are foods you should feel guilty about and avoid? If you really think that’s health, then you are probably also dealing with disordered eating yourself. And I say that with no judgement because I deal with it too, stemmed partly from these types of approaches that teach you foods are either bad or good.

Also, kids NEED healthy fats to GROW. Their bodies are growing and these things are even more essential for them, but it’s pushing an old school low fat adult diet that hasn’t even been standing up to research. This is really concerning. It’s also normal during puberty for kids to gain a significant amount of weight as their body grows. Telling kids this is a terrible thing and teaching them to restrict when their body is just going through a normal process is so concerning. The app is geared to as young as 8 years old!

If you really want health for your children, teach them to enjoy a variety of nutritious foods (hummus and avocado included!), to listen to their body, and eat together as a family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let's be clear, the obesity epidemic is so bad that kids today will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. I dont understand why people are up in arms about this app. Its focused on healthy eating.

Think about it this way, this app will potentially help reduce the adult customer base for WW. Can you imagine a tobacco company doing this?

You haven’t looked at the app. It’s not focused on healthy eating, the nutritionists and RDs looking at it are finding that it is focused on weight in very inappropriate ways for children. I would have thought this too awhile back, so I understand, but this is just not this simple.

[Anonymous]

I love WW and lost 30 pounds on it.

But I disapprove of this app.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. Clearly none of you have looked at the app. It’s not focused at all on healthy eating habits. Hummus is a red food for example. It’s focused on weight loss and making money. it will encourage black and white thinking in kids that are already prone to black and white thinking. Do you really think it’s improving health to have kids think hummus and avocados are foods you should feel guilty about and avoid? If you really think that’s health, then you are probably also dealing with disordered eating yourself. And I say that with no judgement because I deal with it too, stemmed partly from these types of approaches that teach you foods are either bad or good.

Also, kids NEED healthy fats to GROW. Their bodies are growing and these things are even more essential for them, but it’s pushing an old school low fat adult diet that hasn’t even been standing up to research. This is really concerning. It’s also normal during puberty for kids to gain a significant amount of weight as their body grows. Telling kids this is a terrible thing and teaching them to restrict when their body is just going through a normal process is so concerning. The app is geared to as young as 8 years old!

If you really want health for your children, teach them to enjoy a variety of nutritious foods (hummus and avocado included!), to listen to their body, and eat together as a family.

Agree with all of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I lost 120 pounds on weight watchers. I wish this was around when I was a kid so I could have saved a lifetime of sadness and obsession with food.

Hi Do you think Weight Watchers is a good stock to buy?

OT, but No!

I am a lifetime WW member who is at goal weight, for now.

WW has gone way off track this past year. They’ve lost their focus. Used to be an awesome resource for simply losing weight.

Now, they’ve gone into other things that make the process more complicated.

IMO, it’s not good for the company.

[Anonymous]

I am on and a big fan of the current WW plan for adults.

I just read The NY Times piece coming down hard against this app and encouraging the teaching of intuitive eating. I get that we should not be putting young kids on diets.

That said, what I struggle with is how we can help kids, particularly teens with weight issues.

I attempt to do this with modeling to my kids (11 and 14 year old girls) and offering good choices. We cook at home 90% of the time, we (the adults) exercise and we support our kids participation in sports and exercise. Our kids help plan the meals and make dinners sometimes. We have an everything in moderation approach to healthy eating.

We talk about healthy body images and media distortion and that people come in all shapes and sizes.

All of this is well and good, but what if your teenager wants (and should) lose about 10-15 pounds to be a healthy BMI?

What if your teenager is 30 or more pounds overweight? Is talking to them about making better food choices consistently over time a futile effort that will send them down a life destined for obesity?

I love WW freestyle because I only have to track food with point values. It is a varient on the traffic light model. Is talking with my teen about the choices I am making to lose or maintain my weight a negative for her? She does not have a weight problem but she has stopped growing taller and has filled out so she does not want to gain weight and probably would like to lose 5-10 pounds.

[Anonymous]

bump. anyone have more recent experience or opinions? thinking of signing up my overweight/obese 16-yo son for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I lost 120 pounds on weight watchers. I wish this was around when I was a kid so I could have saved a lifetime of sadness and obsession with food.

Hi Do you think Weight Watchers is a good stock to buy?

OT, but No!

I am a lifetime WW member who is at goal weight, for now.

This is why, ethics aside, WW is an excellent investment: It creates an unhealthy relationship with food so its members are stuck forever.

If there's a company that allows you to bet people will lose weight and keep it off in the long term, *that's* a terrible investment. A tiny percentage will -- you hear from them all the time -- but statistically, it's a rare event.

[Anonymous]

You know I struggle with this. I started gaining weight as a teenager after puberty and slowly gained and gained. I was diagnosed with PCOS at 22 and still no one really told me anything except 'go low carb.' Also 'being fat is bad' and 'take this medication that will make you feel like garbage' and 'just exercise.'

PCOS is a condition that effects insulin and I started IF and started losing for the first time in my life. I have been doing it for 18 months, I'm down 45 pounds, still losing, and I'm now 20 pounds from being a 'normal' weight.

I don't want to give teenagers complexes by putting them on diets, but figuring out how to stop obesity before it happens is way effing easier than losing 15 years of your life to figuring out how to fight it. And this isn't even about how anyone looks, I feel better, younger, more capable, etc. My only concern with the HAES type movements is that they don't seem to care about this preventing the loss of control of your weight. And this is important, if there is a way to help kids not get so far down the path, then we should be doing it.

But I fully agree with the above PP that things like hummus and avocado being labeled bad is bad. And that this is really hard because all weight gain is different so weight loss solutions are very different in different people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it sounds great! Wish I would have something like that as a teen. Pasta IS a yellow light food. Sounds like it teaches portion sizes and moderation ie have red foods and get less of them allotted in the weekly budget.

Agree. Yes to learning which foods are healthiest and MODERATION. That can be a hard one for both kids and adults.