Weight Watchers Works Better Than Doctors' ‘Standard Care’

People who are overweight often try going to their family physician for advice.  The quality of the advice they get can vary, but it’s often followed by failure of the patient to achieve, or maintain, weight loss.  After trying other approaches – information from the Internet, portion control plates, fad diets, or tips from friends – many overweight people are tempted to try a commercial weight-loss program, even if it’s quite expensive.  One of the major programs is Weight Watchers, and this company has sponsored a study to compare the effectiveness of its program with ‘standard care’ offered by family physicians.  The results are now published in the medical journal Lancet.

The study was conducted in the UK, Australia, and Germany with overweight or obese adults recruited through family practices.  The subjects were randomly assigned to either 12 months of ‘standard care’ – as defined by national treatment guidelines – or free membership of Weight Watchers.  The main outcome was weight change over the 12-month period. 

There were 377 participants assigned to the Weight Watchers program, of whom 230 (61%) completed the full 12 months; 395 were randomized to standard care, of whom 214 (54%) completed their 12-month assignments.

In all the analyses, the participants in Weight Watchers lost twice as much weight as those in the standard care group.  The average losses were 11.06 pounds (5.06 kg) for the Weight Watchers subjects, and 4.96 pounds (2.25 kg) for those on standard care.  When only those who completed the 12-month period were analyzed, Weight Watchers subjects lost an average of 14.7 pounds and standard-care recipients 7.4 pounds.

These results speak for themselves.  Weight Watchers is cheaper than most effective commercial programs, and the authors of the study (which was conducted without active participation of the company) suggest that healthcare providers should fund patients to attend such systems.  They note, however, that men are less likely to attend such programs, which tend to be female-dominated.  So men should probably join the special Weight Watchers for Men program.