Does Slimming World make sense?

All dieting programmes are literally just ways to allocate the nutritional information to a simpler system for people who can't be bothered to actually keep track. Most of them are terrible at doing so, and even with unique little quirks ("a banana is less points because it contains an appetite suppressant") are largely absolute bollocks. It's an irony that people who can't be bothered to count calories, etc. then think that counting points in a complicated and arbitrary and largely inaccurate system is somehow going to work better for them. They can't count calories, but somehow they're going to remember, lookup and count points, right, and pay money to do so? It's a nonsense. Nothing you eat is zero calorie, and if you did have something like that it wouldn't make you feel less hungry at all, and you'd set yourself up for failure with it anyway. You'd malnourish for a start. If you want to follow ANY programme whatsoever... just realise that they are all as effective as "eat less". If you "eat less", you'll lose weight. Not losing weight? Eat less. That's literally all THEY'RE telling you to do, and you can do that already yourself. The fact that you have to eat to live and need a balanced diet regardless and need nutrients isn't really accounted for in any of these things except in the most primitive way. It's dumbing down "nutrition" so you think you're doing something and that they're helping you to the point it's worth paying for. The absolute biggest non-placebo effect of being a member of these things is: sitting in a room with other people with the same. That's it. That's all you're getting. The points systems are nonsense. Eat what you're currently eating (which, as an adult is a balanced diet, right?). If you're putting on weight eat the SAME THINGS but LESS OF THEM. That's it. That's every diet ever in a nutshell. Without the risk of coronary problems (Atkins), malnutrition, deficiencies, cheating the system and still putting on weight because it's not accurate, and so on. Eat less of your existing balanced diet. If you can't balance your diet? Sorry, but the points systems have dumbed it down out of their system anyway, so they're not going to help at all (exactly why you think a "cheat" food is "worth" 0 points, etc.). It's trying to boil down dozen of essential-for-life vitamins and mineral, fibre content, protein content, sugar content, calorie content, even water content down to a single number per food. It's nonsense. Physics tells you: If you eat 1kg of food a day, and you eat 900g of THE SAME FOOD instead the next day... you cannot PUT ON more weight today than you would have yesterday. And if you keep dropping the amount one of two things happens: You drop it below where a vital nutrient is insufficient (because your diet wasn't balanced properly) and you start being malnourished and/or passing out, or you start to lose weight. These programmes prey on the vulnerable and desperate and extract money to tell you to eat a balanced diet and eat less of it. That's it. Please stop giving these things airtime because it just reinforces pseudoscientific nonsense. You want to lose weight, see a doctor, who will get you to do basic things, potentially ultimately referring you to a DIETICIAN, the only medically-recognised title for such in the UK. (Nutritionists? Nutritional therapists? Any other bollocks job-title? Unqualified snake-oil con artists). But you know what they'll tell you to do first? Eat a smaller, balanced diet, and see how much of each nutrient you're eating in total over a much longer period than a day or a week. (22 points a day or whatever? Bollocks. Too much variation in a day. You need to track per week or month to get a true average because your body does not crave foot in a strict, regulated, controlled daily manner when every day is different). Stop taking information on how to avoid malnutrition with a dumb points system from a bunch of unqualified multi-level-marketing women who are charging you for the privilege of making up a number with little to no relevance to nutritional content and which certainly isn't detailed enough to ensure a balanced diet.