MyFitnessPal vs Weight Watchers (WW)

Which lifestyle program should you join?

From our perspective, you have two options:

1. If you want to count calories, track your food intake, weigh your macros, lose weight fast and have a higher risk of weight regain, you can consider MyFitnessPal or WW. In our opinion, WW might be the better option as they have more educational resources and support from coaches that can be motivating.
2. Suppose you’d like to lose weight sustainably, be supported by a UK-registered dietitian or nutritionist, and follow a program trusted by the NHS and backed by scientific evidence published in the British Medical Journal. In that case, Second Nature might be the better choice.

Lifestyle programs can provide a helpful structure for your health journey when you feel out of control with unhealthy habits.

They can also be a great way to join individuals going on the same journey, which can be incredibly motivating.

Everyone is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to choosing a weight management program.

It ultimately depends on what suits your individual needs and what fits into your lifestyle. Some people want rigid rules and a quick fix, whereas others like more flexibility and a long-term lifestyle change.

To save you some tiresome research and help to answer some crucial questions, this guide compares two popular lifestyle change apps: MyFitnessPal™ and WW. We’ve included comparisons to the Second Nature program.

MyFitnessPal and WW are calorie-counting programs

MyFitnessPal relies on you logging food and exercise. Through logging exercise and meals, MyFitnessPal calculates the number of calories consumed and burned to try and help you achieve a calorie deficit (where you’re taking in less than you’re using up).

Counting calories and logging them in the app works well for some people. However, this can lead to obsessive tendencies and isn’t sustainable in the long term for others.

WW and Second Nature take a more holistic approach to weight loss but differ in their features and coaching support.

Like MyFitnessPal, WW focuses mainly on counting calories through their SmartPoints system. This is despite WW’s marketing as a sustainable weight loss and wellness program.

Is WW a strict crash diet?

WW uses a points system called SmartPoints to identify foods based on their calorie, sugar, protein, and saturated fat intake.

For example, foods high in sugar and saturated fat will be high in points, whereas most fruits and vegetables are 0 points and considered ‘free foods’.

You have a personal points target based on your current weight designed to help keep your intake lower, put you in a calorie deficit, and lose weight.

WW claims this approach is better than calorie counting and has no adverse psychological effects that people can experience when becoming obsessive about calorie counting.

However, dietitian, nutrition writer, and food psychology expert Abby Sharp delivered a scathing review of WWs new program on YouTube titled “Dietitian Reviews Weight Watchers (YEP, IT’S STILL REALLY REALLY BAD)”.

You can watch the full video here, but here’s a quick summary of Abby’s analysis:

• The new WW is “just expensive calorie counting”.
• The points system on WW to create a ‘food budget’ is unnatural. 
• The ‘rolling over’ of points might mean people intentionally restrict themselves too much to then binge at the weekend. 
• WW promotes restriction and binging cycles common in people living with patterns of disordered eating. 
• WW demonises natural, healthy high-calorie foods like Brazil nuts. If you were to enjoy 28g of Brazil nuts, you’d use up half your SmartPoints for the day. 
• The points system doesn’t help you identify the quality of the foods you’re consuming. Instead, it mainly focuses on a reductionist approach to calorie density.

The risks of calorie-counting and strict dieting

Strict calorie restriction risks putting your body into what’s known as ‘metabolic adaptation’. This is essentially a starvation response by your body when energy intake is very low.

This triggers a cascade of events designed to encourage you to eat more and continue to store fat. You might feel lethargic and hungry, and your mood might also experience a dip.

Because of this starvation response to strict dieting, Second Nature has taken a different approach – one where you determine what level of intake works for you, and surprisingly, it can lead to more weight loss in the long term.

Second Nature’s approach: Indulgent but supports weight loss 

In 2022, the NHS published data in the British Medical Journal from the National Weight Management and Diabetes Prevention program, where five providers delivered weight loss services in the UK.

Interestingly, WW was one of the five providers in this national program but was removed due to poor results.

The results showed that after 12 months, Second Nature was more than twice as effective as the four other providers.

How does Second Nature’s approach work?

We approach nutrition and healthy eating differently. We don’t count calories, track macros, weigh food, or assign strict targets on your intake.

We provide you with evidence-based guidance on a balanced diet and teach you to understand what your physical and emotional drivers for eating are to reach your weight loss goals.

We also provide tools, such as our hunger scale and mindful eating techniques, that help you tune into your physical hunger cues and manage your food choices.

Alongside this, we help you build healthy habits that you can enjoy for a lifetime to help you maintain a healthy weight.

Our feedback inbox is filled with people like Jo, who lost over eight stone to achieve a healthy body weight on Second Nature after following our nutrition guidelines and receiving the support of our app and health coaches.

The difference is that members of Second Nature learn to love food again. They’re no longer restricted. They’re liberated.

If you’d like to join over 150,000 others who’ve joined Second Nature, lost weight and kept it off, then click here to take our health quiz.

Otherwise, keep reading as we look at other key differences and similarities between MyFitnessPal, WW, and Second Nature.

Did you know?

Second Nature was the first-ever digital behavioural change program commissioned by the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. It continues to be part of their weight and type 2 diabetes management service.