How To Assess A Weight Loss Forum

Judging A Weight Loss Forum

Having found a diet program which offers an online forum, the next question is: How good is the forum?

This is not as easy as it sounds. Nearly all customer diet forums are (by definition) closed to non-customers. So you can’t visit them to find out if people are losing weight, or how much real support is being offered. I have come across numerous online support forums that are no more than window-dressing. They have very few active members, the threads and posts are often quite out of date, and are all but useless for anyone who needs real help to lose weight.

To make the right choice, therefore, be sure to email the weight loss company with a number of questions before joining their diet program. For instance: ask how many members their forum has. Ask how active it is, and whether it has special areas for (say) dieters above a certain weight, or for dieters with PCOS or insulin problems, or for dieters who are trying to lose weight for their wedding day, or after having a baby.

Any weight loss company with a successful forum will be only too happy to provide you with answers to these questions, whereas those firms whose support service is unreliable and inactive will tend to stall, or ignore your queries altogether.

For those of you who are keen to reduce weight, let me just re-emphasize the importance of a forum, because in my opinion it’s a vital element in successful dieting.

The reason why most of us gain weight, is because we eat too many high calorie foods and take too little exercise. In order to improve this imbalance and lose weight, the first thing we need to do is change our eating habits. Unfortunately, by definition, these “habits” are fixed, and highly resistant to change. So while part of us wants to eat better and reduce weight in the process, another part of us wants to continue eating as before. This tension causes all kinds of personal, family and social eating problems, none of which are insurmountable, but nearly all require help. To put it another way, knowing what to eat is easy: actually doing it is another matter. Joining an active community forum is the best way to get around this whole issue, and achieve your weight loss goals.