Weight Watchers?

I am no expert so take this for what it is worth. I did WW for a while and had some marginal success. I found the software easy to use and I like having the accountability of having to track everything that I eat. I find having some sort of food log or tracking to be key in one's diet. I found my daily allowance of points to be somewhat realistic but I was very hungry at times when training hard. I did NOT find the activity points to be accurate whatsoever. I found the AP to be grossly overexaggerated in several situations. Therefore, I tried to stick to my daily allowance and my extra points for the week. I did not have a lot of success and lost interest. Having said that, I feel into the "I am training more so I can eat more", which is the premise if you follow the point system to the letter of the law. To lose weight while training, you have to lead with your diet and train accordingly. I have seen folks training for marathons and IM events GAIN weight. Yup GAIN weight.

Having said this, I think that WW can work for folks if they dial it in so that it fits their situation. If I ate all of my daily points, plus my extra allotment, plus my AP points during any given week, there is no way that I was going to lose weight. Further, I struggled a bit with the fact that many foods were treated the same. For example, a small snack size bag of chips was the same points as 4 oz of pork tenderloin. One is a lean protein whereas the other is junk food. All calories are not created equal!

Bottom line though, if you were down 55 lbs at one point using WW, then it worked for you on some level. You might just need to tweak your points and to be careful that you are not consuming more points than you realize. Not measuring food for example, or a bite here and a bite there. I seem to recall that WW does have a couple of helpful hints as to how to recognize if this is happening.

Nope.  Stagnated over the winter.  Then had bronchitis for February and surgery in March.  Finally able to start training again.  But that 40 lbs in 2 years is just NOT sat.

I can only speak from my personal experience. I tried WW twice. The first time was several years ago, so before they did all the changes to the points structure. I lost nothing. The last time was early last year. I felt really good, but in the three months I dedicated to following the program exactly, I only lost about five pounds. It seems to me that WW is good for exactly what its name indicates, watching your weight. Once I am down to where I want to be weight wise I will likely join again to maintain my weight. It seems like it would be a good maintenance program, but I don't think it causes enough of a nutritional imbalance to cause a lot of weight loss. I know there are tons of stories out there about people who have lost hundreds of pounds on the program, but for me, didn't happen.