Teen Weight Watchers Program

Weight Watchers has decided to start a new program… for teens. In an effort to increase overall health and revenue, Weight Watchers, a famous dieting program, has made the decision to start a six week program over the summer for adolescents aged 13-17 years old. Since the announcement, many news outlets have criticized Weight Watchers for their attempt to involve teens in an unnecessary dieting program. The problem with that, however, is that it isn’t unnecessary.

According to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, childhood obesity has quadrupled among adolescents in the past 30 years. And to say that involving healthy dieting practices in teens isn’t good for their health, both physically and emotionally, is absurd. Not to mention that Weight Watchers is different than most other dieting programs. Their system is point based and, according to Gary Foster, a Chief Scientific Officer at Weight Watchers, “The daily SmartPoints target is based on age, gender, height, and weight to determine how much they need to eat each day to lose weight at a safe rate,” which is information withheld from most complaints about this new program.

The idea today-that you are perfect in any size and shape- is unhealthy. While loving yourself, and accepting that not everyone must look like a twig is progressive and a step in the right direction, it’s sometimes not the thing teens need to hear. Or anyone, for that matter. If someone is obscenely over or underweight and aren’t healthy in the slightest, they don’t need to hear they’re perfect the way they are. They’re not. They need to seek help, regain a healthy lifestyle, and not stay with the same toxic habits.

Many of the journalists writing about this new program, outraged by the fact that a company would try to give teens a healthier lifestyle, are doing what they can to align themselves with the “righteous” side; to condemn the evil businesses who try to make a buck off teens’ insecurities. But that’s just not the case. Many adolescents today are not living healthy lifestyles. They’re accepting bad eating habits because they’re told that they’re perfect the way they are. That they should “accept” themselves. And, yes, while living a life loving yourself will make you a happier person, you have to prove that love by keeping yourself healthy.