Others go online to find support in bringing on lean times

Julie Phillips lost 60 pounds and now maintains her weight with the help of the Weight Watchers website. (Pat greenhouse/globe staff (left); erik jacobs for the boston globe (above))

At age 25, Julie Phillips was attending the weddings of many friends and like most of the other women, she went through the usual agonies of deciding what to wear. But Phillips was more than 60 pounds over her ideal weight and the whole thing was becoming a burden. She was tired of looking like she did.

For help, she turned to the 40-year-old dieting veteran - Weight Watchers. But it wasn't her mother's Weight Watchers, which included weighing in each week at a meeting near home or work. "I've never been to one of the meetings," says the Weymouth resident. "But I pictured it to be about middle-aged housewives needing to lose weight. I'm sure that's not true, but it was the image I had."

So Phillips, like many of her generation, logged on to the medium on which she was raised: the Internet. As the number of online websites catering to weight loss has grown, their users have proliferated, with several boasting millions of members. "We get between 8 and 10 million unique users per month," says Weight Watchers Online spokesman Jason Carpenter. Last year marked the group's strongest year ever online, with membership up about 35 percent. And the 20-something demographic, which he admits has not typically been the organization's focus, is among the fastest growing segments. "The folks who grew up online are now getting to a point where they're old enough to seek us out on their own," he says.

After an upfront fee, Phillips makes monthly payments to Weight Watchers. That includes access to the online tools, such as calculating her food intake, exercise plans, and recipes. Sites such as fitday.com or sparkpeople.com are free. Southbeachdietonline .com, eDiets.com, and personal diets.com all charge for a three-month package. Most of the sites offer tools to track calories consumed according to portion and food choice. Several compare users' nutrient intake with the federal government's recommended daily allowances. Most also offer exercise journals and calculators for calories burned according to activities performed from gardening to bicycling.

The online program worked for Phillips. When she started in 2003, she weighed 172 pounds. By March 2005, she had lost 62 pounds and had reached her goal weight of 110. "I'm short, just 5 feet," she says. "So 172 was a lot." She's maintained her weight between 110 and 120 pounds since.

Members appreciate the 24/7 nature of an online community and tools. "There's so much freedom in it," says Phillips. "I can go on at 1 a.m. if I want to log on. It's instant gratification." While she was losing weight, she recorded meals she ate and the site calculated how close she was to her limit for the day.

Privacy is an important reason many young dieters are writing down a day's consumption online. "I pictured the Weight Watchers meetings as touchy feely," Phillips says. "All that sharing with strangers. And I wasn't sure how it was all going to go, so I wanted to keep it quiet. 'If I fail,' I thought, 'no one knows except me.' "

Carpenter said he's heard that sentiment echoed by another new online segment that's also been growing rapidly at Weight Watchers: More men are participating online. "It's like when guys are lost and they don't want to ask for directions. It's similar with weight loss. They've tried Atkins, they've tried cutting back, they've tried everything else. They don't want everyone to know."

One question that plagues weight loss sites is whether you can succeed online without being accountable to anyone. Research studies are scant, but those that have been conducted have shown mixed results, with participants losing some weight, but not more than if they had just followed a diet plan on paper.

Phillips believes that logging in is the key to her accountability, and continues to check in with the site. "I've never stopped it," she says. "Now it's still there for questions, for reference. I do better when I log in. I gain a few pounds when I don't."

She also thinks the low cost of maintenance helps keep her in check. After an initial outlay of $65.95 for the first three months, Phillips maintains her membership by paying $16.95 per month, which she thinks is reasonable.

One of the cornerstones of the Weight Watchers mission has always been group support - those meetings Phillips was so reluctant to attend. While the online site means no physical meetings, Carpenter, the spokesman, says the message boards offer individualized support. "They are very robust," he says. In Phillips's case, that online community has proven a powerful one. She has met a group of women from all over the country who have spent years together on the same message board. They now meet a few times a year to encourage each other in races and have even formed their own team for the breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.

"Online friends really make a difference," says Phillips, who ran her 10th race of 2007 just before Christmas. "People on the message board really cheered me on."

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