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New Statesman
16-05-2025
- Business
- New Statesman
The long shadow of WeightWatchers
In 2018, WeightWatchers tried to reimagine itself. The name was too on the nose, not least at a time when 'diets' had become quietly passé (this was the peak of 'body positivity' after all). And so, Weight Watchers became WW. The problem – for then chief executive Mindy Grossman, at least – is that not even this ambiguous initialism could conceal WW's provenance. A new logo and a tagline that promised 'Wellness that Works' couldn't save the soul of a company that was founded on weekly weigh-ins. Maybe the letters didn't stand for anything obvious anymore; but everyone knew that the organisation did. Perhaps this 2018 rebrand was the beginning of the end: on 7 May 2025, WW filed for bankruptcy. The company could no longer keep with the new weight-loss landscape created by fat-loss jabs like Ozempic and Mounjaro. At its cultural height, WeightWatchers offered more than a plan; it sold a moral structure. Eat less, move more, and face a slew of rewards: a lower number on the scale, the praise (and envy!) of your peers, and the inimitable hard-earned smugness that can only be derived by iron-fisted discipline. Jean Nidetch, who founded the company after being mistaken for being pregnant and became the woman who 'took the 'l' out of 'flab'', intuited that shame could be refashioned into hunger-induced solidarity. WeightWatchers became a church for dieters, a sermon on self-control that came with the warm absolution of shared suffering. But such rituals are slow and often ineffective, whereas weight-loss drugs like Ozempic work – and with remarkable efficiency. (One study showed that of the 175 people analysed, they lost an average of 12 per cent of their body weight over 28 weeks.) WeightWatchers tried to adapt, launching AI coaches and lifestyle programs, but the brand was outpaced by a changing cultural landscape. The company couldn't find its footing in a society that considered it outmoded; befalling the same fate as the fax machine once the iPhone took over. Or, as former chief executive Sima Sistani told the FT last year, situating WW in an era of weight-loss jabs is akin to Netflix moving from DVDs to streaming. In March 2023 WW shares hit an all-time low. And, as with many things, it really started with Oprah: she stepped down from the board in February last year after she revealed that she had lost 40lbs by using Ozempic. Within two months, WW's market value stood at $11.6m – diminutive compared to its $6.7bn peak; Novo Nordisk's, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic, was $2.6trn, more than the Scandinavian country's economy. While Ozempic may have helped kill WW, it didn't kill diet culture. It merely re-fashioned it. The WW and Ozempic business model is largely similar: help women lose weight. The difference is that the customer doesn't necessarily care how the desired outcome is achieved anymore. They don't fuss about how they lose ten pounds, only that they do lose ten pounds. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Embracing body positivity in today's culture might be 'inspirational' but losing weight is aspirational. Because it's not just about weight: it's about status. These drugs, for now, are often expensive and inaccessible. It's believed that more than half a million people in the UK are using weight-loss medications, with the majority paying for it privately. Being slim on Ozempic says, 'I can afford this.' It's a body pharmacologically induced, not gym-sculpted or juice-cleansed. As the adage goes, you're not fat, you're poor. WeightWatchers was a cultural institution. It shaped generations of women (literally), and stipulated that smaller bodies could unlock better lives. Ozempic takes the mantle of the WeightWatchers ideology and repackages it in a way that seems more in step with the machinations of today's world. Where WeightWatchers told you how to live like a thin person, Ozempic can let you just be one. So long as you pay up. [See more: Modernity has killed the private life] Related
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
WeightWatchers Got One Thing Very Right
A company dedicated to loss suffered a big one of its own last week: WW International Inc., better known as WeightWatchers, announced that, in an effort to shed $1.15 billion of unsightly debt, it was filing for bankruptcy. The company says it's restructuring and intends to rebound, as it has from previous struggles over the years, but it's hard not to notice that to some degree the world has moved on from the company's model. As happy as people are with their new pharmaceutical alternatives, though, the company's in-person, community-based, mutual-support model of (mostly) female dieters supporting one another on their journeys offered something that no shot or pill ever could. The company, founded in 1963 by a Queens housewife, Jean Nidetch, has been a cultural touchstone for generations. Oprah Winfrey was for years a board member and part owner. There was a WeightWatchers magazine. There were WeightWatchers cookbooks, frozen dinners, desserts, bars, shakes and high-profile celebrity spokespeople. While it never felt like the hippest, trendiest, sexiest way to lose weight, it found ways to stay front and center. In 2002, there was even a 'Sex and the City' story line in which Miranda signed up and started counting points. In better times, WeightWatchers had five million members worldwide. In the pre-pandemic era, the company hosted 3,300 in-person workshops throughout the United States. Those days are gone. WeightWatchers and its commercial diet program peers have struggled to maintain market share in the era of GLP-1s, the class of drugs that includes Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro, which give users a much higher chance of success. WeightWatchers couldn't beat them, so it tried to join them, by acquiring a telehealth subscription service that connects people to doctors who can prescribe weight-loss medications. Even so, the once-iconic program feels like an artifact of an era where obesity was seen as a moral matter, not a medical one; a problem of willpower, not biology. The culture WeightWatchers promoted did a lot of harm to a lot of girls and women. Social media is full of tales of women taken to meetings as young girls by their well-meaning mothers or of girls restricting their calories while they were still growing. In 2022, the company settled with the Federal Trade Commission after it was revealed that its Kurbo app, designed to teach children as young as 8 about nutrition and how to avoid so-called 'red light' foods, was illegally collecting children's data. Then there were the adults who went through the program five, 10, 15 times, stuck in a cycle of loss, regain and shame that didn't ultimately leave them any thinner, even as it fattened WeightWatchers's coffers. Studies show that for the vast majority of people, diets don't work in the long term. This did not stop WeightWatchers from re-enrolling those customers, again and again, with the implicit promise that this time would be different. I was one of those rinse-repeat clients. When I heard the bankruptcy news, my first impulse was to perform a vigorous, calorie-burning dance to celebrate the cosmic justice of it all. But, today, I come not to bury WeightWatchers, but to praise it. Or, at least, to note a defining part of the WeightWatchers model that we might not want to toss out so quickly, lest the end of the so-called obesity epidemic winds up fueling our current epidemic of loneliness. When Mrs. Nidetch invented Weight Watchers, back in the 1960s, she didn't just pass along the diet on which she had already succeeded in losing weight. She invited six friends over to play mahjong and talk. She believed that 'finding companionship and camaraderie was maybe even more important than the diet or even weight loss,' as Marisa Meltzer wrote in 'This is Big,' her biography of Ms. Nidetch. As WeightWatchers scaled up, that model stuck. Back in the 1990s, the last time I tried the program, it was still defined by the element of community. You'd get to your meeting. You'd weigh in at reception. Depending on what the scale said, you'd either celebrate or sulk. And then you'd sit on a folding chair, in a church basement or a bare-bones conference room where your leader (later called your coach) would take you through that week's lesson, which could be about anything from exercise to nutrition to 'finding your why.' Members could talk about their victories or their challenges, sharing tips and tricks and encouragement. Business trip looming? Birthday party or anniversary dinner ahead? Help was available, from the leader and the rest of the staff members, from the lessons of the program's success stories and from the fellow members who were still in the trenches, struggling with the temptation to polish off a second slice of sheet cake or to give in to the siren song of the airport Cinnabon. WeightWatchers meetings were a third space, those increasingly rare places that are not work and are not home. In 1990s Philadelphia, as in the rest of the world, WeightWatchers groups were almost entirely made up of women. But they were otherwise diverse, bound not by race or religion, politics or class, but by a common goal. In recent years, WeightWatchers meetings became one of the all-too-rare places in America where conservatives and progressives found themselves sitting side by side, commiserating about the same plateaus or the same frustrations or the same annoyance that the powers that be had changed the point value of avocados, again. It wasn't the diet but the connection — 'the gathering, the community' — that was Weight Watcher's secret sauce, said Zibby Owens, the author, publisher and book influencer who spent some time working as a Weight Watchers leader. 'When you lost five pounds you would announce it and get a special bookmark, and everyone would cheer,' she told me this week. 'There are so few opportunities to have a room full of people cheer you on for doing anything.' Recently, Mrs. Owens has been open about her significant GLP-1-fueled weight loss, but she still sees the value of the connection and support that the old-school WeightWatchers meetings provided: 'The loss of those meeting rooms is another way that our world today is becoming more disaggregated, more separated.' There are, of course, other ways to find community. We can still join a synagogue or mosque, a weekend running club or a local volunteer effort. Mrs. Owens thinks book clubs are one of the more resilient structures — 'Count pages, not points,' she says. The problem is that studies have shown that once we lose community and connection — when it becomes easier to play indoors on our phones than outside with our neighbors, to stream a sermon than to go to church, or to do our shopping online instead of going to a store and interacting with other human beings — we are unlikely to rediscover it. For everything that was wrong about WeightWatchers, once upon a time it did something right. It tapped into the power of women supporting one another. It gave them connection and attention and, in some cases, status and jobs. It gave Jean Nidetch wealth and power in an era where banks didn't even want to give unmarried women credit cards. Now that the new medications are remaking weight loss — now that we can take our focus off managing our appetites, measuring half-cups of pasta and weighing ounces of chicken breast — there's a chance we could lose all of that power and intention. Or we could redirect it; to remaking the world, not just reducing our bodies.
Sky News
08-05-2025
- Business
- Sky News
WeightWatchers files for bankruptcy - what went wrong?
WeightWatchers has filed for bankruptcy. The diet brand, which was founded more than 60 years ago, said on Tuesday that it was filing to write off $1.15bn of debt and to focus on transitioning into a remote telehealth services provider. Founded in 1963 by American businesswoman Jean Nidetch, the company aims to help members monitor their diets by using a points system, with the goal to try and avoid foods with higher points. At its peak in 2018, WeightWatchers had 4.5 million subscribers, and its stock traded as high as $100 (£75). But it has since lost value and rebranded to become WW International. So what is behind the slimming down of WeightWatchers? Its overall revenue for the 2024 financial year was $786m (£592m), down 11.7% on the previous year. The report said the decline was "primarily driven" by recruitment challenges and the closure of the consumer products business. While the company also sells a range of ready meals, snacks and low-calorie wines, it has been primarily focused on subscribers. Big names leaving the brand In September, WW International CEO Sima Sistani resigned, and Tara Comonte was named interim chief executive. In a statement on Tuesday, she said: "As the conversation around weight shifts toward long-term health, our commitment to delivering the most trusted, science-backed, and holistic solutions -grounded in community support and lasting results - has never been stronger, or more important." In another blow to the company, Oprah Winfrey, a long-time ambassador, quit the WeightWatchers board last year. In March 2024 the television personality announced she had quit ahead of the airing of a special programme titled An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame And The Weight Loss Revolution, saying she did not want a "perceived conflict of interest," as she wanted to publicly discuss her use of weight-loss medication. She said she had donated all of her shares in the company to the Smithsonian Museum Of African American History And Culture. Targeting the younger generation The company has also struggled to attract younger customers. In an attempt to do so in 2018, WeightWatchers bought the app Kurbo. A year later, it launched the platform to the public, aimed at helping children aged between eight and 17 create healthy habits. The app followed a paediatric weight control programme made by Stanford University and offered 15-minute personal training sessions as a way to log food intake and recipes. However, it was met with criticism by celebrities, including actress and activist Jameela Jamil, nutritionists and members of the public, who raised concerns it would make children obsessed with weight and counting calories. 1:22 The influence of weight loss injections WeightWatchers has also been struggling to keep up as a key player in the industry due to the introduction of effective weight loss drugs, including Wegovy, created by Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. The drug soared in popularity by offering a quicker fix to obesity, which is a growing health concern around the globe. Some people also take Ozempic to lose weight. The medication, also used to treat Type 2 diabetes, slows down how quickly food is digested and can reduce appetite, making people eat less. Both Ozempic and Wegovy are different brand names for the same injectable drug, semaglutide. The drug works by making you feel fuller for longer. To try and compete with the booming industry, WeightWatchers bought subscription-based telehealth platform Sequence in 2023 to expand into obesity drug prescriptions. In its latest earnings report on Tuesday, WeightWatchers' first-quarter revenue declined 10% while its loss on an adjusted basis totalled 47 cents per share. However, it clinical subscription revenue - or weight-loss medications - jumped 57% year over year to $29.5m. WW International has said it expects to emerge from bankruptcy within 45 days, if not sooner.
ABC News
08-05-2025
- Health
- ABC News
From a celebrity success to another fad diet: How did Weight Watchers fall into bankruptcy?
It was an emphatic and often-memed commercial. Queen of the daytime talk show, Oprah Winfrey can't hide her excitement. "I love bread!" she says, hands gesticulating in the air. She was, of course, advertising weight loss program Weight Watchers, now known as WW. In 2015, Winfrey became the public face of the program, but only nine years later the relationship would sour. Winfrey announced she was stepping down from the board last year "to eliminate any perceived conflict of interest around her taking weight-loss medications". Perhaps it was a sign of things to come. On Tuesday, local time, the US company announced it was filing for bankruptcy, citing a "rapidly changing weight management landscape". So, from a celebrity-spruiked success to a relic of diet culture — how did we get here? It was Brooklyn housewife Jean Nidetch who first envisaged the company which would become a global juggernaut. After years of binge-eating and fad diets, Nidetch came up with a system in which she periodically met with a group of her friends who were also interested in losing weight, and together they charted their progress and offered encouragement. Her first official meeting in 1963 attracted more than 400 women. Just five years later, WW had amassed 1 million members worldwide. Even in the beginning, Nidetch was quick to differentiate it from other diets. "The word 'diet' is one we refrain from using at WW because one usually goes on a diet to lose weight, and then ultimately goes off the diet," she said in 1968. "We refer, instead, to a 'program' of re-educating one's eating habits, which then becomes a way of life." Australia was among the first international bases, opening in Sydney in 1969. The phenomenon would eventually grow to more than 400 locations in every state and territory. Nidetch would continue to cash in — from cookbooks, frozen meals and even scales — and Weight Watchers not only became a diet but a bankable brand. In 1978, she sold the brand to HJ Heinz Co (the sauce brand) for a whopping $US71 million ($541 million today, with adjusted inflation). An undeniable part of WW was its celebrity influence. Excluding Winfrey, the brand was known for recruiting celebrities to divulge their before-and-afters to the public, including Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Hudson and even Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson. Simpson, who was brutally ridiculed for her weight after the birth of her daughter in 2012, said she felt "pressured" to lose weight as she spruiked the program. "My body, like my life, is a work in progress, but I'm getting there with Weight Watchers," Simpson says in one commercial, between long shots of herself smiling on the beach. But it wasn't just celebs. Every day people found a community in the weekly weigh-ins, and were able to stay motivated by a group of judgement-free peers. But while the program was praised for its flexibility and social aspects, it was also criticised by dieticians for not being run by medical professional but instead "coaches". In 2018, the brand also garnered controversy for offering free memberships for teenagers aged 13 to 17. It later responded acknowledging teen years are a "critical life stage" and that it was not providing a diet but "healthy habits for life". At times, it also struggled to differentiate itself in a market full of diet alternatives such as similarly celebrity-endorsed rival Jenny Craig. As the years went on, the world of nutrition changed rapidly, and in 2023, Jenny Craig filed for bankruptcy. In an attempt to shift towards wellness, Weight Watchers abandoned its iconic name to not mention weight, rebranding to WW in 2018. Adding the tagline "Wellness that Works" amid a cultural move away from diet culture and growing competition from phone apps, social media influencers and online programs. In 2023, struggling to adapt to the changing world, the company introduced its own clinic — which provided telehealth access to weight loss medications such as semaglutide (better known as Ozempic or Wegovy). But despite WW's restructure, a new generation of consumers were leaving WW behind, and turning to TikTok and Instagram for a health information instead. Emily Denniss, a lecturer at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Deakin University who researches the relationship between social media use and dietary patterns, said people have moved away from traditional restrictive diets in what she calls a "rebranding of diet culture". "Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers have failed because they haven't changed how they are talking about weight-loss," Dr Denniss said. Nicholas Fuller, an associate professor at the University of Sydney's Central Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, who researches at The Boden Initiative — a centre focused on the global obesity epidemic — said people have been following the same approach to weight loss for the past five decades. "There are so many programs out there and only three have real-world evidence. "This continuous calorie approach doesn't work, and people are fed up of being stuck in this cycle of losing and regaining weight." Natalie Spicer, the Butterfly Foundation's head of clinical and support services, said diet culture has not disappeared, but evolved. "The demise of weight loss organisations is sadly not an indicator of a move away from the diet culture we live in, but more a move towards quick fix solutions like injectable weight loss medications," Ms Spicer said. "Many of the same harmful ideals are now repackaged under the guise of 'wellness', 'clean eating', and 'health optimisation'." The company says it has about $US1.15 billion in debt, according to its bankruptcy announcement. Parent company WW International Inc said it has the support of nearly three-quarters of its debt holders. It expects to emerge from bankruptcy within 45 days, if not sooner. "For more than 62 years, WeightWatchers has empowered millions of members to make informed, healthy choices, staying resilient as trends have come and gone," Weight Watchers CEO Tara Comonte said. "As the conversation around weight shifts toward long-term health, our commitment to delivering the most trusted, science-backed, and holistic solutions — grounded in community support and lasting results — has never been stronger, or more important."
Daily Mail
07-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Bankruptcy shocks fans of brand that dominated the world for 60 years after humble kitchen start
WeightWatchers has finally filed for bankruptcy after months of negotiations with its lenders. The weight loss company has been struggling under $1.6 billion of debt after losing business to the new generation of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy. The company, now known as WW, has already negotiated a deal with its creditors so will enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy with a pre-packaged filing. This should allow the company to move out of bankruptcy quickly and keep its business running as normal in the process. In response to the rise of Ozempic and other drugs, WW will invest more in its own clinical business offering customers a chemical solution to shedding pounds faster, the company said in its filings. However, CEO Tara Comonte said the company is not giving up entirely on its legacy business based around selling low-calorie foods, diet and exercise advice to overweight people. Weight Watchers was founded in 1963 by Jean Nidetch, a housewife from Queens, New York. It all began in her kitchen, where she invited a group of friends over to talk about dieting and offer each other support. At the time, Jean was following a diet prescribed by the New York City Board of Health, but she realized that support and accountability made all the company will be taken over by the institutional investors that own its debts. The company has influenced millions of people in the U.S. and around the world, selling diet meals, magazines, books, and memberships to its weight-loss programs. Over the years, celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Jessica Simpson have helped market the brand. In 2014, Simpson appeared in ads at age 33, showing off her post-baby weight loss in a form-fitting black dress. Alarm bells first rang in March 2023, when shares hit an all-time low amid declining sales. The situation worsened when longtime investor Winfrey — who admitted to using weight-loss medication — stepped down from the board. Since then, the stock has continued its downward spiral. On Wednesday, WW's market value stood at just $63.4 million — a shadow of its $6.7 billion peak. By comparison, Ozempic-maker Novo Nordisk is valued at around $297 billion. Last month, WW took the remaining $121 million from a $175 million loan due in April 2026. Bosses said it was for financial flexibility rather than immediate bills. As well as the $175 million debt due next year, the company also has more than $1.4 billion of loans and bonds due in 2028 and 2029. WeightWatchers became a byword for the traditional weight-loss industry - but it is now struggling as Americans turn to weight-loss drugs like Ozempic WW's stock will be largely wiped out in the takeover, but existing shareholders will retain nine percent, the Wall Street Journal reported. This will cut the company's debt by around $1 billion. WW and its lenders both declined to comment on the record when approached by Pharmaceutical companies like Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly took the world by storm last year with a new generation of so-called GLP-1 diet products - Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound. The drugs were widely effective and soon became popular among Americans and others around the world wanting to lose weight. Ozempic has already been blamed for the demise of another legacy diet brand. Jenny Craig, a household name since its launch in the 1980s, announced in May 2023 it was shutting down after drowning in debt. Last year, WW announced its own weight-loss injection in an attempt to compete with the likes of Ozempic. It was considered a surprising move for a company that has built its global success on the premise that healthy controlled eating and iron willpower are the key to achieving sustainable weight loss. However, the move has not resulted in the hoped for turnaround - with WW chief executive Sima Sistani stepping down after two years at the helm. During Sistani's tenure, WeightWatchers acquired the telehealth platform Sequence, now known as WeightWatchers Clinic, expanding into obesity drug prescriptions. Board member Tara Comonte, who will lead the group on a temporary basis until a new boss is found, said: 'I am confident that we have the right team in place and are focused on the right strategies to drive growth.'
