As people may or may not know, I’m currently on a long and laborious weight loss journey. I’m reluctantly following the WeightWatchers plan to drop my first couple of stone and then I’ll probably work more on my fitness and health using regular old calorie and macro information. But until then, I’m on this “diet” and not loving it to be honest. But as the weight begins to drop off week by week I am getting slightly more enthusiastic while trying to not get stuck in the trap of not being able to rely on any other lifestyle with which to lose weight – mainly because I don’t want WeightWatchers to become a crutch which I have to spend thousands on to maintain slow and steady weight loss over the years to come.

My main issue with it is that I find it overly simplified – so much so that all fats count as bad fats which is simply not true. Foods that I KNOW are good for me like avocado, nuts and sweet potato are incredibly points heavy which results in me simply omitting those things from my diet in order to use less points day to day. I take issue with this because I don’t necessarily see that as a good thing, I love to eat healthily and the upkeep of my motivation to do so relies on a varied and interesting diet. I think the implication of WeightWatchers making these healthy foods so high in points where other fruit and vegetables are 0 points is that they aren’t healthy and we shouldn’t have them.

I feel like they’ve made this for people who aren’t very adventurous with food and are happy as long as they can have low fat crisps and chocolate – this doesn’t really cut it for me. I like to experiment with dairy free, meat free and wheat free cooking which often relies on the use of nuts, avocado and other high energy substitutes. If I have to give up a desire to lead a more healthy and compassionate lifestyle to lose weight then that doesn’t seem right to me? I think it might be the case that I have to eat a little plainer and more boring to start with and work my way up again.

Anyway, I’m sticking with it as it seems to be working but I’m not sure to what end. Keep an eye out for recipes and more diet posts (hopefully with a little less moaning).

Does anybody else feel the same way about WeightWatchers or Slimming World? Am I being a pessimist or is there in fact a way to follow point based diets while still eating adventurously?