A Web of support for weight loss
Dieting sites take a bit of hassle out of staying on track to shed pounds
If you're beating yourself up because your diet has gone off the rails, here's hope: Several Web-based weight loss services promise to help.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March concluded that support, through personal contact or a website, helped participants maintain their weight loss. So, the Globe sized up websites run by eDiets, Weight Watchers, the South Beach Diet, and The Best Life Diet to compare services, prices, and usability.
"People need to hold themselves accountable," said Laura Hartung, a Needham-based nutritionist. Among the options we tried, she favored The Best Life Diet. "It instills the right philosophies, and it's the most realistic."
The Best Life Diet was developed by Bob Greene, who has worked as Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer for more than a decade and is a frequent guest on her show. His plan focuses on adding exercise, drinking more water, and eating three nutritious meals and a snack each day.
The site features a daily planner that offers a checklist of goals. The tool provides an adjustable meal plan, a weekly shopping list, and recipes. It calculates the number of calories the user takes in along with the amount burned through exercise. The planner also features a journal so users can track the emotional challenges they face.
Dieters should know that this plan is not designed for quick results: Each phase lasts at least four weeks. In the first phase, you're "preparing your body for weight loss," the site says.
We favored the Weight Watchers' website, the most popular online diet resource with more than 2 million visitors a month, according to Internet data firm ComScore Inc. The site offers a wealth of tools, advice, recipes, and message boards to help customers stick to its points-based program, which assigns a value to a food based on its calories, fat, and fiber.
The most attractive parts of the Weight Watchers site are its "plan manager," a comprehensive database that helps users calculate and log the points of food they eat, and its message boards, which cover almost every topic imaginable and are filled with active members.
The eDiets site seemed the least user-friendly among the services we tried. When users sign up, they're asked questions about their habits, from the kinds of foods they like to how often they exercise. EDiets uses that information to recommend suitable plans from its 20 options, including some of the most well-known plans around.
While some might enjoy eDiets' vast array of options, we found it unwieldy. We also questioned the effectiveness of a diet site that makes suggestions based on users' preferences. It seems like a method that could encourage bad habits rather than challenge them.
EDiets did not return calls seeking comment.
Last, we looked at the South Beach Diet's website. If you're familiar with this protein-rich strategy developed by Dr. Arthur Agatston, you might find the site helpful. It offers recipes, meal plans, and access to nutritionists for an additional fee. But if you find the plan too restrictive or you're looking to start more gradually, check out Weight Watchers or the Best Life Diet.
Danielle Kost can be reached at dkost@boston.com.
Pro's Choice
Price: $19.95 for the first month and $9.95 a month afterward, or $69.95 for a year
Pros: The Best Life plan is customizable and emphasizes slow progress through healthy habits. The site offers a daily planner that helps users plan meals and track exercise, calculating the number of calories ingested and expended. The planner features an exercise database that provides detailed calorie information, down to the number of calories burned while swimming based on the stroke used.
Cons: Because it's a newer program, its message boards aren't as varied as those of some of its competitors, particularly Weight Watchers. Greene's three-phase plan isn't designed to deliver quick results.
The bottom line: The Best Life site presents a common sense approach with practical advice with easy-to-use tools to match. People who are easily overwhelmed by plans with too many rules may find Greene's focus on long-term habits less daunting.
Our Choice
Price: $16.95 a month, plus a $29.95 sign-up fee
Pros: The site's plan manager makes sticking to the company's points system easier. Users can calculate the point values of foods they eat using the manager's calculator or they can look up the item in its huge database. The tool also allows customers to enter a recipe's ingredients to calculate how many points the dish is worth. From there, users can tweak their recipes to lower their point values.
Cons: Hartung said the Weight Watchers site is too flexible, allowing users to eat anything as long as it falls within the target number of points.
The bottom line: The Weight Watchers site is a great alternative for people who don't want to attend the company's meetings. The tools make it easier to stick to the plan, and the message boards are an excellent source of support.
Price: Plans start at $4.49 a week
Pros: EDiets offers 19 diet plans that rely on food you buy, including vegetarian, nondairy, and wheat-free options. The service also offers two meal delivery plans at an additional cost, including one that's designed to be used with the diet drug, Alli. The site's community section allows users to create blogs, profiles, and friend networks.
Cons: The site's approach seems like it could reinforce bad habits rather than help users develop better habits. The nutrition database and log, a basic tool for all diet sites, is clunky and doesn't include foods that aren't household names.
The bottom line: EDiets offers too much information. If you're paying for access to a weight loss website, you should get specific, easy-to-follow advice.
Price: $5 a week
Pros: The site offers meal plans and recipes that are tailored to the diet's three phases, which may be helpful for people struggling to stick to the plan. It's the cheapest site of the group.
Cons: We had to click through four pages of "special offers" as we signed up to join. Some of the site's more interesting tools, such as nutrition counseling and its "supercharged" fitness program, cost extra.
The bottom line: The website seems like a good companion to Agatston's best-selling book, "The South Beach Diet."
