The WW commercials caught my attention, I have to say. I thought they were really different, thoughtful, moving even, and a brilliant advertising effort.
That said, Oprah never seems to maintain and that troubles me.
I don't know about WW, I did eDiets. I liked it. But there were several things I brought to the table as a professional patient. One is the idea that diets don't work. You need a permanent, comprehensive way of life. The human body evolved for walking at a moderate pace all day - not sessions of excercise once a day. You need a regular, habitual schedule. You need to know how much of what to put on your plate - you need a real eye for that. You need to know how your activities affect you and for how long. You need personal food amount targets calculated for height, weight, gender, ethnicity (!) and activity level. You need to know 5 shrimp can have 2000 calories and how that can be so. BMI is just one of several numbers to look at. Stuff like that I think made a difference as to how eDiets worked for me and on the maintenance front.
That's a long-winded way of saying that I don't think that anyone is trained to utilize these plans properly, where they fit in the scheme of things. You get taught the diets like you get taught to do math... just do these little operations without any context. And yes that affects the answer you get, if you subtract when you should have added.
I also think - and big gold star to Angie and YLF - there is a big problem with body dysmorphia. I used to watch Big Rich Texas because I was morbidly fascinated with the standard of beauty. All that surgery. Everyone was grotesque and a parody of human, if you ask me. I know women like this personally, with 20 year surgical plans. They want to LOOK LIKE they've had surgery. Other people come along and think they want to look good and this is the standard - but they don't. They want to look hacked up. I give Oprah props in this respect. She's not on that bandwagon...