Points-based programmes
What it is
Commercial programmes — the best known is an international one with weekly meetings, now mostly an app — that convert every food into a points value from its energy, saturated fat, sugar and protein, give the person a daily and weekly budget, and add regular weigh-ins, a group, and a community. The points are a simplified energy budget; the meetings are behavioural support. The programmes sell both, and the evidence, read carefully, is for the second.
How it works in practice
Log what you eat as points, stay within the budget, weigh in weekly, attend or open the app. Nothing is forbidden; expensive foods in points get avoided the way expensive foods in money do. The format is portable: local groups and apps in Bulgaria borrow it without the branded products, which is fine, because the branded products are not what the trials tested.
What the evidence shows
A systematic review of commercial weight-loss programmes with trials of at least a year found the largest points programme producing about 2.6 percent greater weight loss than control or education at twelve months, and a meal-delivery programme about 4.9 percent — modest but real advantages, reported with a correction published after the review. The comparison is against weak controls, and the programmes are American, so the figures describe the format rather than any particular local product. In the network meta-analysis of named programmes, the differences between named diets are small at a year, and the programmes with the most support tend to do best. The reading: structure, contact and accountability help people hold a deficit, and a points budget is one way of packaging them.
Who it tends to suit
People who want to eat ordinary food with a simple budget; people for whom a group and a weekly weigh-in are motivating rather than shaming; people who have done well with external structure before.
How it most often fails
When the subscription ends — the trials measure people while enrolled, and the habit has to survive the programme; when the points are gamed with "zero-point" foods eaten without limit; and when the weekly weigh-in becomes the thing that decides the week's mood.
What to watch
Protein, which a points budget does not protect unless the person does; the transition out of the programme, planned rather than accidental; and, for anyone with a history of restriction, the group weigh-in, which is a support for some and a harm for others.
In the app
The app is a different packaging of the same habit: an energy and macro target instead of points, a diary, a streak and a trend instead of a meeting. It has no group component, and does not pretend the meeting's support is something software replaces.