A guided weight loss program, such as Weight Watchers, may be more effective than the self-help approach, according to a study conducted by Baylor College of Medicine and sponsored by Weight Watchers. The self-help group was given a set of resources online to read about and then encouraged to lose weight based solely on that library of information.

The study of 292 overweight and obese adults, completed over six months, was split into two groups, 147 in the Weight Watchers group and 145 in the self-help group. Weight was measured at the beginning, half way through and at the end of the study. Unlike previous studies that used Weight Watchers, this one incorporated three programs -- meetings, mobile apps and online tools. While the study offered these resources for free, users would typically pay for the meetings, lead author Craig Johnston, of Baylor College of Medicine, told MobiHealthNews.

"Weight Watchers follows an evidence based model," Johnston said. "Weight Watchers works, it has been shown scientifically. What we wanted to show was there are new resources [available]. Does the program still work when we add these things?"

This study comes a few months after Weight Watchers Chief Financial Officer Nicholas Hotchkin addressed the company’s declining earnings in its second quarter meeting, accrediting some of the loss to the “sudden explosion of interest in free apps and activity monitors”.

Of the Weight Watchers group, those using all three programs to a "high degree" -- which means more than half of the weekly meetings or two or more uses of the website or app -- had the greatest weight loss when the program ended, at 19 pounds. Those who used two programs to a high degree lost 9.5 pounds and those using one lost 9.3 pounds.

The average weight lost for the entire Weight Watchers group at the end of six months, 10.1 pounds, was much higher than what the self help group lost, 1.3 pounds. But the strongest predictor of the Weight Watchers groups' weight loss was the group meetings, which members would generally spend money on.

While study author Johnston didn't initially expect to look at predictors, the results showed that the meetings were the highest predictor of weight loss and the use of the app and web resources were "additives" to the meetings element of Weight Watchers' program.