Weightwatchers in France is an interesting thing to do. It’s not as hugely popular here as it is in the UK, and I don’t think there are any competitor diet clubs (I’ve seen no Slimmers World or Rosemary Conley), and it is much more expensive than in the UK (38 Euros/month rather than 18 quid/month !!). However given that my documents were posted in Maidenhead, I guess there are some postal overheads involved here. And it’s still cheaper than French lessons, even if the vocab is somewhat limited.
In the UK, as you approach the scales, there’s a kind of scruffy striptease, in which everyone ends up in skirt and blouse or trousers and t-shirt. No coats, very few jumpers, and definitely no shoes. Some people insist on wearing the same clothes to meeting each week. Here in France you see nothing of the sort. There’s even a sign on the scales saying “Keep yer shoes on” (in French, obviously). Another major difference is that in meetings in the UK you might get one or two loud contributors but the leader often has to really work to get the group to contribute ideas. At both the meetings I’ve been to here the leader (“animatrice“, I like that word) has real difficulty getting people to shut up and listen to the talk rather than discuss food, recipes, progress and so on. There also seems to be a more scientific edge to the French WW – over the last three weeks we’ve covered lipides (fats), glucides (carbs) and proteins (I don’t need to translate that one, do I?). But it’s not been about what to cook with them, it’s been about why the body needs them, how to maintain the bilan alimentaire (balanced diet), how many calories it takes the body to store 100g of fat (4kcal) or protein (35kcal)… It’s seriously been quite a biology lesson.
One other difference is in the calculation of Points® – to work out what you have to count for eating a thing, you need to know the calorie content and the fat content. In the UK this is based upon saturated fat, and in France it’s just based on fat (this has to be because the food labels here don’t include saturated fat content by default). The formula for Points® is a closely guarded secret but those of us with a small amount of scientific or mathematical background find it fairly easy to work out from the documents – it’s a simple linear simultaneous equation (X calories + Y fat). Without going into details, in the UK X is 10 calories higher than it is in France, so here, a Point® doesn’t go quite as far. Boo! Exercise Points® don’t seem to be as generous here either – 1 hour of walking gets me 3 Points®, which seems rather mean as it doesn’t even equate to a pint of beer.