What is sustainable living?
Sustainable living means leading a style of life that employs the minimum amount of resources. It’s a lifestyle that results in the least amount of environmental damage, ensuring a more human-friendly environment for future generations.
How sustainable living relates to our diet? How should our diet be in order to minimize resources and environmental damage? And how Weight Watchers promotes sustainable living?
1. Weight Watchers supports local food consumption
Sustainable living entails that you eat food that has been grown locally to reduce the problems caused by transporting food over long distances. Many people try to grow their own produce in their yard or in a community garden near their home. Local farmers markets can also be a good source for sustainably grown fruits and vegetables.
On Weight Watchers, you cook your own food. Unlike other popular weight loss programs (Nutrisystem, Medifast, Jenny Craig) which are based on diet food that is delivered to your door, on Weight Watchers you cook your own food that you buy from your local grocery store. Therefore with WW you adapt a more regional, seasonally based diet that is more sustainable as it entails purchasing less energy- and resource-demanding produce that naturally grow within a local area and require no long-distance transport.
2. Weight Watchers encourages a Vegetarian diet
When you follow a “sustainable living” type of diet you eat foods that are at the base of the food chain. Of all diets, a vegetarian lifestyle follows the principles of sustainable living the best possible way. This is because it does not require the amount of resources that other diets demand, and it has the least negative environmental impact.
Weight Watchers approves and even promotes a vegetarian lifestyle. Any type of vegetarian diet can be incorporated into the Weight Watchers plan. Research has shown that vegetarians have a lower BMI than meat-eaters. When you eat fewer calories than your body burns, by either lowering the size of your meals through your diet and/or burning more energy through physical activity, you lose weight. And that’s the only way you can lose weight. Of course, the question is, how do you reduce the food you eat. One way to decrease caloric intake is to become a vegetarian.
Weight Watchers supports the vegetarian type of diet in various ways:
- They provide recipes for vegetarians (source),
- They offer specific guidelines to ensure all nutritional needs are met. Vegetarians are at high risk of malnutrition. Weight Watchers helps them follow their meatless diet in a way that is nutritionally balanced.
- There is a thriving vegetarian community in the official Weight Watchers site with discussions covering topics from menu sharing to recipe ideas to fitness
- They publish books for Vegetarians, like the Versatile Vegetarian, awarded the title of “Best Books for 2014″.
3. Weight Watchers supports members who eat organic food
Sustainable living calls for organically grown food without the use of life threatening chemicals, including pesticides and herbicides, that not only pollute the environment but also cause health problems to animals or humans.
Weight Watchers encourages its members to eat organic food in two ways:
- They published a shoppers guide to organic foods explaining what organic food is and when it is worth it to buy organic.
- They invited all of their members who are interested in organic eating and have a passion for sustainable and local agriculture while losing weight to form a group and support each other in the site’s forum (source). Currently there are 309 participants.
Weight Watchers is not just a diet. It’s a way of living that respects others and the environment.
