Simple Shifts Podcast: Discovering WW Virtual Workshops

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In this episode of Simple Shifts: Conversations to Fuel Your Body, Mind and Soul, Martha and Peter explore the evolution of Weight Watchers, particularly focusing on the transition from in-person meetings to virtual workshops. They discuss the diverse offerings available in the virtual space, including various classes and community support, and reflect on the importance of staying informed about changes in the program. The conversation emphasizes the significance of healthy habits, personal growth, and the supportive community that Weight Watchers provides.

Key Takeaways
Discovering WW Virtual (Online) Workshops
Video Transcript
More Simple Shifts Podcast Episodes

Key Takeaways

Weight Watchers has evolved significantly since transitioning to virtual meetings.
The workshops provide a supportive environment for sharing challenges and successes.
Diverse offerings include activity classes, food discussions, and mindset workshops.
Community support is crucial for maintaining motivation and accountability.
The concept of tiny habits can lead to significant changes over time.
Personal growth is a continuous journey that requires checking in with oneself.
The virtual format allows for greater accessibility and flexibility for members.
Martha emphasizes the importance of staying informed about program changes.
Engaging with the community can enhance the Weight Watchers experience.
The conversation highlights the joy of discovering new approaches to wellness.

Looking for more details and resources? Read my full article: Rediscovering WW Virtual Workshops

Discovering WW Virtual (Online) Workshops

Video Transcript

Martha McKinnon (00:00)
Hi, welcome to Simple Shifts: Conversations to Fuel the Body, Mind and Soul. I’m Martha McKinnon from the blog Simple Nourished Living and with me is my brother and partner, Peter Morrison.

Peter Morrison (00:14)
Hello.

Martha McKinnon (00:15)
Hi, how you doing?

Peter Morrison (00:18)
Good, how are you doing?

Martha McKinnon (00:19)
I’m doing really well, really well. It’s been a good week. It’s already Wednesday in my world. What day is it in your world?

Peter Morrison (00:26)
Same.

Martha McKinnon (00:30)
So today I’m really excited to explore Weight Watchers a little bit and specifically Weight Watchers virtual meetings, WW virtual workshops. I’m dating myself when I say meeting. I’m showing my age. They’re workshops. It’s been a while, truthfully, since I had tuned in and I was online recently taking a look at the wide range of offerings and so I’m excited to share a little bit more about that with readers because there may be other people who haven’t tuned in for a while or maybe aren’t familiar with the Weight Watchers virtual world. But before we dive into that, what’s new and wonderful in your world?

Peter Morrison (01:10)
We are on episode podcast episode number 29, which is good. As we stumble and bumble our way through topics and trying to figure out this whole online world of podcasting, which kind of is not unrelated to this topic of Weight Watchers virtual meetings.

But I just had a couple other thoughts. One was you had mentioned, or a new and good couple thoughts. You’ve been talking a lot recently and writing a lot recently about component meal prep. And while I haven’t gone to the extent you have of doing a lot of prep on Sunday, I have been kind of moving towards that direction, or leaning in towards that direction, if you will. And I have to say for a small family of two, it’s making mealtime much easier. And I’m really…

Martha McKinnon (02:25)
And I’m not sure component is the right word. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt, but sorry. Yeah, go ahead. But keep going. Sorry. I get excited.

Peter Morrison (02:32)
No, no. I was just gonna say it’s making mealtime less stressful and easier and it’s something I want… I think there’s something there. As far as helping people, I just think we have to figure out the best way to write about it and present it.

Martha McKinnon (02:57)
Yeah, what I’m imagining and what I’m, because it takes a little while again to figure it out or figure out how best to talk about it. And in a perfect world, I guess we could have a studio in our kitchen where we could, maybe I can do that. Maybe I can take some video on Sunday of what, you know, and maybe it’s just little, little video snippets where I share what I kind of put together on a Sunday when I talk about it.

So really what we’re talking about is cooking basic ingredients that you can then mix and match that don’t really require recipes. So it sets you up for success all week long. And like you’re mentioning, it’s easy. It takes a lot of stress out of meal time because you’re never starting from scratch. Maybe you have to make one component.

Peter Morrison (03:39)
Mm-hmm

Martha McKinnon (03:40)
Maybe you finished your protein and maybe you have to grill some chicken or something, but you’re going to have some grains, some beans, some veggies all ready to go and so it really is a magical approach to I’m finding it very helpful. I’ve done it for two or three weeks now and so I do imagine in a future podcast and in some future posts sharing more detail where I show the ingredients, talk about the ingredients and then share what I ended up making during the week from those – because you don’t need a specific plan and it can change.

I know here we’re in Wisconsin. At this time of the year, the weather is very unpredictable. So it might be sunny and 80 one day, and it might be in the 60s and rainy the next. And it gives me that flexibility to take some of those ingredients, add some broth, and make a soup if I’m feeling sort of cold. And so yeah, so I’m glad that you’re playing with it too, because the more we play and have different experiences, the more we can just sort of bounce ideas off one another and help people I think because I think it is a very realistic, low stress approach to feeding ourselves.

Peter Morrison (04:53)
For sure. For me, felt like not scrambling necessarily, but trying to find a new recipe and like you said, starting from scratch for three or four dinners a week, is just too much. I mean, this is just us, no kids, no crazy schedules. It’s just my work schedule, two of us, I mean, and that was stressful enough trying to come up with meals.

Martha McKinnon (05:20)
Right?

Peter Morrison (05:22)
So I’m really, enjoying it and looking to sort of keep going with it. Yeah.

Martha McKinnon (05:30)
Awesome, I’m glad you’re experimenting because I’ve had that same, and I can get a little evangelical when I find something that works and I’m always excited when other people sort of get on board and experiment and have the same experience that I have. So cool, that’s great.

Peter Morrison (05:45)
And the other sort of new and good, not new and good, but sort of throwback to something we talked about with simple habits and tiny changes. A while ago, several podcast episodes ago, I mentioned starting to do just like a couple pushups here and there. Well, I’ve continued it most days. Some days I do take some days off because I do think rest is important as exercise, but I’m still like I’m up now to well over 30 pushups, which again is not, you know.

Martha McKinnon (06:25)
It’s impressive from zero to 30 over just a few weeks.

Peter Morrison (06:29)
Yeah. And I’ve actually visited, we have a small gym here at the community. I’ve actually visited a couple times because sometimes, and I think this is the power of the tiny habit is you do one or two and it just sort of builds and I tend to keep going. And I got to the point where I wanted to do more than just pushups.

You know, I wanted to do more shoulder exercises or chest exercises or back exercises. So again, and that hasn’t led to me going to the to the gym five days a week, but I’ve gone several times sort of when my schedule allows and when I feel like I want to go and I’m in a good place.

Martha McKinnon (07:17)
Congratulations.

Peter Morrison (07:19)
Yeah, it’s interesting to watch that evolution of change.

Martha McKinnon (07:24)
Mm-hmm. And I think the whole, yeah, I mean, guess Tiny Habits, Atomic Habits, those are other books that I can’t recommend highly enough because they’re just full of explaining why this approach to habit building and behavior change is so powerful. It’s undeniably proven.

Peter Morrison (07:44)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Martha McKinnon (07:46)
And it’s so simple that we discount it. We don’t believe it until we experience it for ourselves. So go for good for you. Because tiny habits talks a lot about celebrating, Celebrating your habits. Are you doing that? Are you finding ways to give yourself a fist pump or high five yourself?

Peter Morrison (08:04)
No, it just feels good. I want to do it and it feels good and I’m happy for myself that I’m doing it and especially with aging and you know, working on balance and strength and I just think that’s all important. So.

Martha McKinnon (08:23)
Yeah, it is. mean, balance, flexibility, strength is also important as we age. We just naturally lose muscle mass, right? Just through life. And so we have to counter that with working our bodies in ways that we might not have when we were younger. So go, Peter. That’s great. Yay.

Peter Morrison (08:42)
Yay. What about you? Anything new and good to report on your end?

Martha McKinnon (08:46)
Everything’s, everything’s, I feel like everything’s new and good and that’s something to explore I think in a future podcast. I’ve been thinking about that in a future episode here. I kind of fell down a rabbit hole in December. It all started with one book that has led now to I think I’ve read over 30 books on the topic along with podcasts and other explorations.

You know, we’ve talked a lot about Mindless Eating. And we’ve shared some videos and podcasts about that. Mindless Eating was one of those books that I read that totally changed my world. You know, it helped me understand that I wasn’t broken. And this whole concept, it’s called, it goes by different names, but it’s called The Three Principles or The Inside Out Understanding. And it’s founded in the teachings of a Scottish mystic, I guess you would call him, Syd Banks.

So that’s been so positive for me every day. I wake up, it’s interesting because one of the comments that comes to mind is that nothing has changed, but everything’s different as a result of this understanding. And so that’s something I look forward to sharing down the road, when I feel better able to kind of talk about it and articulate it in a way that that makes sense.

Peter Morrison (10:10)
Cool.

Martha McKinnon (10:12)
It’s funny, I’ve always said I want to wake up feeling like Scrooge on Christmas morning. You know, I’m here, I’m alive, it’s a wonderful day. And I’m at that point where I do wake up with that feeling. And so that’s been very new and good in my world.

Peter Morrison (10:26)
Well, awesome. That’ll be fun to learn more about as you get more comfortable.

Martha McKinnon (10:32)
Yeah. Yeah. So I look forward to that exploration with a wider audience as well.

Peter Morrison (10:37)
Nice.

Martha Mckinnon (10:39)
Yeah, so what we’re going to talk about today is Weight Watchers. Everybody knows, you know, I’m a longtime Weight Watchers lifetime member. I spent some time in Phoenix years ago as a receptionist and what was called Leader back then, and became Coach later. And we all know that the pandemic resulted in Weight Watchers having to switch from in-person meetings to virtual.

And so they took their workshops and they put them online, which made it very convenient because you could sign in, you know, with several one of many different coaches and, you know, do the meeting in your pajamas, do it virtually, everything’s done through Zoom.

So basically, that’s how Weight Watchers started in the virtual world. They had never done online meetings until the time of the pandemic. And that would have been now back in 2020. So now we’re here in 2025 and to be quite honest, I’ve gotten out of the habit of checking in with meetings.

And for some reason, I don’t know, I just had this inclination to get online and check out a meeting. I was looking for my own inspiration, motivation. I’ve always thought of the workshops – I’ve said to myself many times that back in the day, I found the workshop to be, I called it 30 minutes of sanity, in an out of control food world.

You know it was just a nice place to go get grounded, to share challenges, to share successes, to learn from other people, food finds. It was always just a great place to get new ideas. And I was blown away when I checked in recently and attended a workshop because I started scanning through the offerings for the day and the like the catalog of classes, online classes, online workshops now has just grown extensively. You always have that weekly meeting or the weekly workshop where there’s always a technique discussed and it has a typical format where people, they share their successes, they talk about maybe their challenges and then you go through whatever the topic of the week was.

When I tuned in most recently, the topic was all around taking some of your healthy habits with you on vacation and not just abandoning everything. So what could you pack to take with you when you’re out of your routine or on vacation? And I thought that was very interesting. So there’s always a topic, a technique that’s explored. And then a little time at the end to set and think about what your intentions are, your goals for the coming week. And so that’s great. That’s a standard class that gets offered over and over again throughout the week.

But beyond that, there’s a whole catalog of offerings. It also even includes activity now. And so there are activity classes. So I signed up and took part in a 20 minute breath and stretch class that was very gentle. Mind-body class where you’re able to sit in a chair and the coach took you through sort of a body scan, a check in with yourself, took you through some breathing exercises and then some gentle stretches in 20 minutes.

There are other activity classes that include what they call walk and talk where the leader’s there and everybody sort of just gets out, listens on their phone and takes a walk together while supporting one another and getting motivated. And so I’m interested in exploring more of those. There’s something called Dance Break and a couple of other activity classes. And again, I don’t belong to a gym. Most of my activity comes from either yoga that I do or walking. So I’m interested in checking out, I found the Breathe and Stretch.

Peter Morrison (14:40)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (14:42)
So if anybody’s a member and wants to check that one out, I thought it was great.

Peter Morrison (14:46)
So with these workshops or classes, are all the participants muted or are you able to actually all talk?

Martha McKinnon (14:56)
It depends on the particular class. Like during the workshop, you can raise your hand. So there’s usually two people. You’ve got usually the workshop coach, but there’s usually another coach. They are kind of running the dashboard, if you will, helping oversee, muting people, unmuting people, letting people know what’s getting shared as you type in chat.

Peter Morrison (15:21)
Okay.

Martha McKinnon (15:23)
So it’s really a tag team approach to keep the workshop moving. With the stretch class, everybody was muted and you always have the opportunity of whether or not you want to be on camera or not. You can just have your camera turned off so that you can be participating but not showing up.

Some of the workshops are set up, for example, with the weekly technique one, there’s an abridged version of it, sort of the express version. So if you don’t want to take part in all of the sharing that goes on, it’s basically just the leader doing in a webinar style, hitting off the technique for that week. So if you’re short on time and you just want to know the technique, there’s a 15 minute offering for that – for people who are, you know, are short on time.

And then there’s, so we’ve got activity, we’ve got the weekly workshop, we had what’s called just sort of your, your Weight Watchers 101 offering, which where there are about four different classes there where you can get a deep dive into if you’re new to Weight Watchers to better understand the program and then one to better understand the app, sort of take you through the in and outs of the app.

Peter Morrison (16:30)
Okay.

Martha McKinnon (16:31)
Another one to talk about tracking, you know, and how to track. So then there’s a whole tool and techniques library which probably has at least 15 or so classes that cover lots of mindset type topics. So self-compassion, journaling, dealing with your planning, goal setting, if you have issues around perfectionism, if you have areas that are sort of tying you up, if you have issues around not liking to weigh yourself, there’s one called Weigh With Me, where you can actually step on the scale and have a coach there, you know, kind of supporting you through that and talking you through it, so.

And then there’s all these community meetings. So they’ve got all these workshops around food. So if you’re a foodie, you can get together at a specific time and talk about favorite food finds, different food topics, meal planning. I tuned into one of those as well and the topic was all around grilling. So you had two leaders, just two were really avid grillers sharing your favorite tools or spices or sauces and things that they liked, different recipes that they really enjoyed on the grill.

And again, these are all interactive, so you are able to ask questions and participate. So I was just, and then yeah, then community meetings. So for people over 60, for people who are on the GLP-1 meds, specific workshops for that, for people who maybe have more than a hundred pounds to lose., there’s a group for that. For women of color, any kind of group that you could think of is kind of represented in these communities so that you can bond there.

And then what the workshop leaders are doing in the regular workshops is then creating in Connect, which is that area of the app where you can sort of, it’s like the Instagram or Facebook, you know, within Weight Watchers where you can be sharing photos, sharing questions. They’ve created groups there so that you can really start to feel like a community. If you happen to go to, you know, Coach Becky’s, Tuesday at 10 o’clock workshop, or if you’re familiar with Coach Becky, you can join her group and sort of be sharing in that way too, beyond just the workshops. They can take it a step further and to connect. I was just, I’m really re-enthused because when I think about it, I really believe that what makes Weight Watchers special, what always made it special, was the community and the support of that. And the only way to get that for a long time was in those weekly in-person meetings. But now you just have this way to build community and get support from 5:30 in the morning into early evening.

Peter Morrison (19:33)
Hmm.

Martha McKinnon (19:34)
In five years there’s been a lot of change and change that just kind of escaped me because I wasn’t paying attention. I wasn’t tuning in. I’ve been so focused on what we’re doing that I hadn’t taken the time to check in with what Weight Watchers was doing. And so I just wanted to let everybody know about that because I am genuinely excited. I’m excited to check out more, especially around, you know, being a food person, checking out more of those food topics and some of the activity topics. It’s just a much more robust offering than it was when they made that transition to virtual five years ago.

Peter Morrison (20:14)
So these are available to any Weight Watchers member? I don’t know if they’re just different levels.

Martha McKinnon (20:20)
Basically once you’ve signed up, I mean, I think the only difference would be if you, I’m not sure if the offering is the same if you’re actually attending in-person workshops and those have gotten harder to find. I think you have to be in more of a major market. A lot of people have found that, if they were in a smaller community that those meetings went away. They just didn’t have enough people showing up to, justify their continuance.

Peter Morrison (20:44)
Hmm.

Martha McKinnon (20:46)
So, so yeah, so there’s not, different levels. If you’re a Weight Watcher you have access, because we have the most basic membership and I’m able to just tap into all of that. Yeah.

Peter Morrison (21:01)
For these online offerings, is there like a library of them where you could go in and watch them anytime?

Martha McKinnon (21:09)
So you have to attend live, they’re not recorded. Yeah, and I think that’s, in my mind, it probably, it would be a space issue and I think it would be a privacy issue because so many members are participating. That’s my only thought is that that would bring up a lot of privacy issues if they were to record those and make them available. So right now there is a library, however, of articles, which is very powerful too. It’s a huge library of a lot of technique information – a lot around mindset and that is available in the app. I’ve only been able to find it on the app, I haven’t been able to been able to find it on the website itself, but it is It is on the app. It can be really helpful too if you just want to go research a particular issue about a specific question, there’s lots of of online articles – but you can’t go back and watch a workshop that happened this morning. You have to watch it live.

Peter Morrison (22:08)
Wow, very cool. I guess they’re adapting to the times, right? So many people are on the go these days and working from home and here and there, and it gives you the flexibility if you’re traveling, if you’re, like you said, out in the country and don’t have access to in-person. It’s a great tool.

Martha McKinnon (22:31)
Absolutely. So that’s cool, but also like just the diversity. If you have a specific issue, you know, if you’re struggling with your positivity or if you’re struggling with perfectionism or if you really need help around planning, that’s what got me excited. In addition to that weekly workshop, there’s a whole bunch of other topics that are being explored. It’s sort of like there’s something for everybody. If you’re really into food, there’s food. If you’re really into activity, there’s that. So if you’re focusing on you know mindset, behavior shifts, habits there’s some workshops for you there as well.

Peter Morrison (23:12)
Excellent.

Martha McKinnon (23:14)
So that’s it, my plug for Weight Watchers and just how they’ve expanded and how, I guess it’s just important for me to remember that life is always changing and you got to keep checking in. Sometimes I can become a creature of habit and I just make this assumption that I know what’s going on because I attended a few years ago and that’s a good reminder for me to always be double checking myself and not be assuming that I know what it looks like because I didn’t know anymore what it looked like. It was just very different and in a very positive way.

Peter Morrison (23:49)
Well, and now we know with the reader comments and the people who write in wanting support or missing that in person support, now we know and you know that.

Martha McKinnon (24:00)
Exactly. So I feel in a much more informed place to direct them and to let them know. And I intend to explore more. And a good question for readers would be, if you are taking part in these virtual meetings, if you have favorite coaches, if you have favorite topics, share those in the comments so other people can benefit from that information.

Peter Morrison (24:21)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Great. thanks for sharing.

And if you found this video helpful or think you know someone who might benefit, please share with them. if you can like and subscribe and help us grow our channel, we’d be very appreciative of that.

Martha McKinnon (24:43)
We sure would. Keep us going with a little atta girl, atta boy.

Peter Morrison (24:55)
Well great, we’ll sign off for today unless you have anything else.

Martha McKinnon (24:59)
Nope, that’s it. Just onward and upward and I hope everybody has a great week and we’ll be back soon.

Peter Morrison (25:05)
Thanks everyone.

Martha McKinnon (25:07)
Bye bye.