Weight Watchers: “not about dieting; it’s about eating smarter”
Weight Watchers leader Dott Strange. Photo: Neil Wilson.
Dott Strange loves her job and it shows. Dott is the leader of Weight Watchers in Golden Bay and also one of its success stories.
“This is a job but it’s more than that too,” said Dott. “I do lots more hours than the two I’m paid for. I get satisfaction from helping people. To lead a programme you have to have done it yourself, reached your goal weight and maintained it. That rule applies all the way up to the managing director in Australia. It means that we all understand that it’s hard to get to your goal, whether it involves two kilograms or 50.”
Dott had been a Weight Watcher about 20 years ago, losing about 20kg at that time. She then set herself a millennium goal at the start of 2000 to get back to her goal weight.
“I started leading Weight Watchers then and I’m still here.”
Weight Watchers uses a points-based system to enable people to track their food intake. One large slice of thin-crust pizza topped with vegetables is six points, while two cups of tossed salad is 0 points, for example. The number of points you are allowed per day is determined by your age, gender, height, level of activity and where you are in relation to your target weight. One person at last week’s meeting was allowed 23 points’ worth of food per day and she had freedom to choose how she used up the points. She said that if she knew she was going to have an ice-cream or some chocolate later in the day, she could ‘save up’ the points for that by choosing to eat lower point-value food at one meal.
“It’s not about dieting; it’s about eating smarter,” said Dott. “On top of that you’re allowed to eat treats so you don’t feel as though you’re depriving yourself all the time.”
There are four “pillars” to the Weight Watchers approach: behaviour, food, support and exercise. They say that their approach is science-based and tailored to the individual, making it more likely that people will lose weight and keep it off for good.
Dott explained that they are subject to the Australasian Code of Weight Management and liable to be audited to make sure they are complying with the code.
“Any time Weight Watchers makes a change to a programme or introduces a new one, the changes are audited before we’re allowed to offer them to the public,” she said.
The Weight Watchers process is more than 45 years old now and, while the brand is a business, it tends to foster a kind of community or team feeling like a club does. People pay to join and pay between $13 and $18 per meeting, where there are Weight Watchers-brand foods on sale if people wish to buy them. The people we spoke to at the Takaka meeting were philosophical about the costs, though, saying that belonging to the organisation made it easier to remain committed to their own process of weight reduction.
One person at the meeting explained how going to Weight Watchers helped her.
“It’s a really supportive group. The others are part of my process. They’re always interested in how you’re going. I’ve found it easy to stay focused and motivated.”
Weight Watchers meetings are held at 5pm every Tuesday in Takaka’s Church of Christ hall in Commercial Street.
Neil Wilson
