Author, obesity researcher .

Weight Watchers New Year’s Day advert

Weight Watchers are running one of the longest adverts on British television, simultaneously on commercial channels, between 6.30pm and 7pm on January 1 2012. The advert was announced in the media so that coverage could start before the advert. The advert (three minutes and 10 seconds long) is fronted by Alesha Dixon who has never [...]

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Weight Watchers ProPoints plan – what’s it all about?

Weight Watchers put out a press release “embargoed to 1st November 2010″. The press release that I saw had two pages – each page looked like it was designed to fold into a two sided postcard. One page was called “The SCIENCE behind the Weight Watchers ProPoints Plan” and the other was called “The Weight [...]

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Weight Watchers works – according to a study funded by Weight Watchers

“One pound of fat contains 3,500 calories. To lose 1lb a week you would need to cut out 3,500 calories from your overall weekly nutritional requirements, this equates to needing a deficit of 500 calories a day.”[i] (Zoe Hellman, Weight Watchers dietician) This is the formula believed by Weight Watchers, NICE, the NHS, the Department [...]

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The Calorie theory is everywhere, and wrong

I keep a pile of newspaper articles to blog when I get 5 minutes. I kept one from 28 September about a book written by Brian Wansink – something like “Why we eat more than we think.” Strategy number 1 (out of 8 ) in the book was “Just ten extra calories a day – [...]

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WeightWatchers Adverts – Summer 2009

Have you seen the WeightWatchers adverts all over the press at the moment? The tag line is “I’ve discovered all my cravings were in my head, not my tummy.” Followers of The Harcombe Diet will realise that I could not disagree with this more. Two thirds of the UK population (and US) are overweight. I [...]

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