16-05-2025
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.
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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]
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