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I tried Weight Watchers several years ago before the new point system and Oprah involvement. At that time I found it very easy to follow while cooking at home.

I think it is. The key for me is portioning. If I do not measure, I can not lose weight.

@travelingnanny: I just did WeightWatchers very recently and had some great luck. I lost about 10 lbs in 10 weeks, I wanted to lose about 15, but was happy with 10 and kinda stopped....

i was almost entirely doing home-cooked meals, which is very easy. The APP was easy to use, yeah portions were key.

The new WW program is very pro protein, fruits & veggies.... Sugar, dairy, and carbs are pretty high in points, so yeah, i guess that's pretty standard diet stuff.

The big thing for me was cutting back dairy, that was hard, and helped for sure. also cutting back on my nightly glass of wine, which was too many points usually.

Honestly, I would say no.

If youre making a home cooked meal (say lasagna). Its going to be hard to estimate points for ever ingredient.

MyFitnessPal has a feature where you can load the ingredients to a recipe and it divides it by the servings and gives you the combined nutritional information (for 1 slice of lasagna). From there you hypothetically could enter the nutritional information into the WW calculators to determine the points for that slice of lasagna but thats an extra step.

@T.H.O.U.: Weightwatchers has a recipe builder too.

I've used both Weight Watchers (online and in person) and My Fitness Pal. Both work equally as well if you're willing to invest the time and energy to do it yourself IMO. The benefit of the points system is that you only have to look at one number when deciding how healthy (or not) a food is. With MFP, you can stay within calories but be way off on other measures (fat, etc) or vice versa. I think WW takes a *little* of responsibility off you to measure each and every thing.

The most beneficial though, I've found, is doing in person WW meetings. I felt like the community aspect and having someone else weigh me in put more pressure on me to succeed.

On scales, I've used ones similar to what @newlypregnantlady: posted her dad had. The only thing I would say you definitely want to make sure it has is the ability to switch from grams to ounces. Grams (because they're smaller) is a lot more precise. When nutritional labels give the option on portion sizes, go for grams!

@travelingnanny: no problem! I get a little over-enthusiastic when people ask me about weight loss. I felt really positive I'd always be obese and it was impacting a chronic pain condition I had, my libido was terrible, and my energy level was crap. Once I lost weight so many things turned around in my life, and I'd still like to lose about 25 more lbs (from my pre-pregnancy weight, from my current weight it's about 35 but I'm 15 weeks pregnant so it'll probably be another year before I really get moving on weight loss again).

Once I figured out how to incorporate counting calories into my life (which for me includes having dessert daily), I felt so in control. For the first time in my life I feel like I can weigh anything I want. I really wish you the best of luck. Losing weight taught me a lot about my own psychology, and while I always knew I was an emotional eater, I wasn't totally prepared for how much it helped me grow as a person.

Have fun on your journey!

Oh, and make sure to pick up spare batteries for the scale. They always come with batteries but they don't ever last very long.

@travelingnanny: I have found it way easier to use while cooking at home as opposed to eating out. DH and I did it *many* years ago and he lost 40 pounds while I lost about 15 (but at the time I didn't have much I wanted to lose).

I started it again this past spring and lost 20 pounds pretty quickly. I'm familiar with the program so I did it with the app on my own, but if you're new I highly suggest the meetings.

The biggest thing to keep you on track is to get a scale, because it all depends on portion control. We were most successful when we were diligent about weighing the portions of our food. The app is super helpful because you can scan the bar-code and it deducts it from your points.

There are TONS of great WW recipes out there where the points have already been calculated for you. In fact, even when DH and I weren't doing WW some of our favorite meals were WW meals we continued to eat.

I think the reason that WW is so successful is because it's NOT a diet, it changes the way you eat and think about food. Everything is given a points value, so you can eat a snickers bar....but it's gonna use up all your points for that day!