WeightLossResources.co.uk - www.weightlossresources.co.uk Review

Good Points
Comprehensive weight loss resource; if used properly, it works

Bad Points
Costs money. Times you out

General Comments
Ten years ago I was a 5'7", 29-year-old heavy smoker, weighing maybe nine or nine and a half stone. I was a reasonably active young mum. Like many smokers, I often substituted fags for food. I paid little attention to my weight, and though it was slowly creeping on from my post-baby low of eight and a half stone, it wasn't really a worry.

It's now ten years later, and I'm ten years older. My young daughter is now a teenager, and I am now a non-smoker. I'll be 40 this year (but I don't look a day over 39). I am also (at the moment, but read on) around two stone heavier than I was one paragraph and ten years ago. I allowed the weight to gradually creep on and then pile on once I stopped smoking. I let things slide for a bit, and then realised that I had to do something. I was unhappy, unhealthy, and 'unpretty'. Action needed taking.

Looking for information on the calorie content of various foods, I ran across a few weight loss websites. Weightlossresources.co.uk (known hereafter as WLR) caught my eye - partly because it came up first in my Google search, but also because of its ease of use and functionality.

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Initial views and sign up
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When you first visit http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/, you are confronted with a welcome page with two main links - the 'enter' button and a link to the 'calorie counter' (a list of popular items products and their calorie contents). If you press the 'enter' button, you'll be invited to sign up for the free one-day trial.

Unlike many other 'chargeable' sites, the one-day trial allows you to access all areas of the site, exactly as if you were a member. Furthermore, you do not need to provide credit card details in order to sign up for the free trial. The sign up process is simple - you need to provide your name, postcode, country, email address, a user ID and a password. Once you've done that, you'll be asked for information so that WLR can calculate your calorie allowance: your height, weight, gender, activity level, and your goals. You are now ready to go.

Should you decide after the twenty-four hours to continue using the resource (and the site will save your diary and other details for a week), it'll cost you between £7.50 and £9.50 per month, depending on how often you pay. I pay quarterly by credit card, so pay £8.50 per month (were I paying half yearly it would be cheaper; and if I were paying monthly it would be more expensive). You can also pay by cheque, but only if you are paying half yearly. You can cancel at any time, either by phone, email, or on the helpteam forum. (If you cancel, your membership ends the day before your renewal date).

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Members Only - using the site
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You'd think, upon logging in, you'd find yourself at 'members home.' You'd be wrong - instead, you find yourself at a welcome page, which says 'welcome' and has the logo and a bunch of tabs at the top. Let's look at these.

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Home Page
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If you press 'continue' or the Member's Home tab (or, indeed, the logo at the top left) you WILL find yourself at the home page. You'll see testimonials from successful members, links to various articles (these change - at the moment, they include articles regarding Nordic Walking, a review of the Japan Diet, a link to a cake recipe competition, reviews of food and exercise products and more. In addition, there are links to FAQs and help down the left (amongst other things), and a prominent link to the current challenge (there always seems to be one - as of this writing, it's 'Walk the Weight Off.' The site also sells stuff, and there is the obligatory link to something it sells (in this case a book).

The homepage is really just a springboard, and if I'm honest, I rarely visit it. I have read some of the articles, particular on severely calorie-restricted diets (don't do it - you'll enter 'starvation mode'), Diet Coke (bad, but I still drink it), and breakfast bars (tasteless; I knew that).

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Goals and Results
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Now we're entering WLR's 'raison d'etre.' Here's where you keep track of your weight loss, and, if you're so inclined, inches and body fat lost. You can find ideal weight charts, and it'll tell you how much weight you've yet to lose to achieve your goal (which can be either a final goal or an interim goal), how much you've lost, what your start, current, and goal BMI (Body Mass Index) is and more.

The engine works out how many calories you are allowed. It does this by taking your starting weight (along with your height, gender and activity level) and how much you wish to lose (you can chose to maintain your weight, lose half a pound, a pound, a pound and a half or two pounds per week). I am on 1100 calories a day - it will never go below that. The thing is though; the less you have to lose (the lighter you are to begin with) the lower your calorie allowance. This is because there are a certain number of calories needed just to tick over - to keep your heart beating, to keep you on your feet. The more you weigh, the more you need to keep yourself going.

It will calculate, if you wish, your body fat from your hip measurement, and give you nutrition and weight loss reports (both text and graphic). This is where you discover how successful you've been, in data, graph and text forms. You can see how well you've been eating (there are nutrition reports, so you can even see how much you've been drinking), and how your calories have been distributed between meals.

I update my weight results weekly (every Sunday morning - post tea, pre pee, as it were - I'm giving myself the best chance I can). It does seem that most folks update weekly (though a few do so less frequently, and others weigh themselves daily, though only update weekly). I've seen, thus far, a 19-pound loss since mid-December.

You should give yourself interim goals - if you have 50 pounds to lose, you don't need to make that your final goal. I am nearing my first goal (11 stone) - once I hit that, I can create a new goal, so that I always have an achievable target. Otherwise, you can get disheartened, and give up.

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Food
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In some ways, dieting is harder than quitting smoking, because you simply cannot (safely) quit eating. The food section of WLR is, unsurprisingly, the place where you log your food intake. There is a substantial database of foodstuffs and their calorie contents. They have both 'average' products (say carrots or pistachio nuts) and branded products. Furthermore, if the product you are consuming isn't on the database, so long as you have the nutritional information, you can enter the details yourself.

There is a favourites area, so that you can store the stuff you're eating frequently without having to constantly re-enter it. The downside, however of the favourites area is that items are by default added to it. This can make for a very cluttered favourites area, with lots of stuff in there that isn't actually a favourite (you'll never find, if I can help it, Brussels sprouts or marmite in my favourites)

You can also enter your own recipes, or use recipes that either WLR have provided, or that members have shared. Again, this allows you to accurately track your intake, and removes the guesswork. Having said that, though, it can get tedious entering every recipe that you use, especially in the early days (before you've built up a database). Also, for it to be accurate, you need to weigh your ingredients, and don't take it on faith that you know how much four carrots weigh (or whatever). Many people search the database for something similar to what they are making. I, however, faithfully enter everything.

I am quite anal about entering my intake - I include nearly everything (including single boiled sweets - they weigh about 7g - I weighed it on a postal scale) both stuff I feel guilty about (beer - bitter - about 185 calories) and drinks with very few calories (Diet Coke - 1.3 calories per can).

WLR promise that if you accurately enter your food into your food diary, and stick to your calorie allowance, you will lose weight (or your money back). This is true - you will. However, many people (judging from the forums) are not quite so diligent when entering their food and drink intake. Just because you don't enter that cream cake or bottle of wine doesn't mean that it wasn't there. Just because your diary says you've eaten 1000 calories doesn't make it so! Like with any aid of this sort, it is only as good at the user. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.

As in the Results tab, you can generate reports. You can look at a history report, which tells you how many calories you've eaten since your last weigh in, against how many you were allowed (plus your calories earned through exercise, which you are supposed to eat), you can see a nutrition report for either the day or a given amount of time, which tells you how balanced (fat v carb and so forth) your diet is. There is also a favourite foods report, so you can see how many calories you are taking in from your most frequently consumed items.

This section is the section of the site I use the most. Since I really do enter 99% of what I eat and drink, I usually have this open if I'm near a computer. If you're a member, WLR will also send you a jotter, so that you can write down what you've eaten to enter into your diary later.

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Exercise
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You can 'earn' calories. Simply exercise more than you normally do (keeping in mind that, for example, 'moderately sedentary' (which is defined by WLR as For example an office worker, who is mainly desk-bound and who sits watching TV most evenings.)

WLR calculates both your calories needed to maintain your weight, and how many calories your exercise burns by your activity level, height, weight, age and gender. They take into account your base activity level, so the calories they say you've burned is likely to differ from that on a heart rate monitor or gym equipment.

There are all SORTS of activities listed in the exercise database. You can include the calories burned whilst dusting, hovering, floor scrubbing. You can even select 'sex'!

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Research & Member's Guide
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I don't tend to use either of these tabs much. The Research tab allows you to search for topics that interest you. Are you curious as to the importance of water in your diet? Type 'water' in the search box and you'll get eight results - from drinking water, to drinking alcohol, and how they affect your diet.

Member's Guide is essentially the help pages. Here you'll find the FAQ, along with links to your profile and its settings (including payment dates).

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Message Boards & Chat
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The final tab has WLR's message boards. The boards are split into categories (help & advice, off topic, maintenance and so forth). These are not php boards, unfortunately, and contain simple lists of topics.

I find the boards quite difficult to navigate. Topics with new replies do not get bumped up the list, and replies to replies (as it were) are nested, and so takes extra clicks to see all the replies.

Whilst the forums can be useful, and are a good place to get general advice ('my partner's not supporting my diet') or to crow (or commiserate) about your latest results, there can, as you might expect, be trolls. A few members are a bit smug for my tastes, whilst others have creative spelling, grammar and sometimes even content. But that is to be expected.

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The Thick and Thin of it - My views
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I've lost weight using Weight Loss Resources. I've lost a fair amount of weight - 22 pounds as of this writing. I find the calorie database invaluable, and get more than my money's worth from the food database and the exercise database alone. I love being able to track my results, and the day my body mass index (BMI) reached the 'normal' range was a great day.

I do use the forums, although not THAT much. I like to brag when I've lost the weight, and I've asked for (and mostly received) advice (of varying quality) on everything from restaurant food to bowels.

Annoyingly, the site will time you out of you are inactive for any length of time. The problem is, it doesn't tell you it's timing you out, so that if you try to navigate around the site after it's logged you out, you'll just get a page not found. You then need to revisit the login page to re-login. This isn't the end of the world, just irritating, if you've (for example) started entering a recipe, gone to eat, and then you go to finish entering the recipe, only to discover you've been logged out.

In sum, though, Weight Loss Resources does it for me. It helps me keep track of how much I'm eating, how much exercise I'm getting, and how much I'm losing.

Recommended.