As a fitness trainer and weight loss coach with 30 years experience, I believe this from my head to my toes. Please read this article if you pay to get weighed, or have been going to a slimming club. The Organisation isn’t all that it seems.
I’m not going to apologise, but I really do not like Weight Watchers or their ilk. I know many people who use them. I even know some Leaders who run their classes. This rant is not about the actual people involved. They are all lovely, lovely people.
No, don’t worry, I’m not having a go at individuals here.
My dislike is the multinational organisations taking money and breeding dependence from the unsuspecting public who are quite simply just looking for help with weight loss.
Weight Watchers wins because they are able to make you a “customer for life”.
Did you read the article in The Guardian recently, by Susie Orbach on this subject? It’s a brilliant read in full, but I’ll bring it to you in brief today.
This shows that Weight Watchers isn’t about weight loss. Weight Watchers is about money.
Proof of that is right here.
Susie Orbach writes that recently shares in Weight Watchers increased by 70% following its purchase of Sequence, a US service linking patients with doctors who prescribe semaglutide medications, which suppress appetite for weight loss.
97% of dieters regain everything they have lost within 3 years. This almost guaranteed failure brings almost guaranteed repeat custom.
A parliamentary analysis in 2012 found that Weight Watchers’ appeal is based on evidence showing a modest weight loss of up to 10% of body weight can be achieved. But sadly weight loss oike this, through calorie restriction, is unsustainable. 97 people in 100 will need help again within 3 years.
Susie Orbach goes on to say that semaglutide (brandnames Wegovy and Ozempic) can be useful. It suppresses appetite and could make a real difference for some people. But it only works as for as long as you take the drug. It’s a sticking plaster covering crucial related issues.
The real issues are –
- Causes of food cravings.
- Complex psychology of dress size.
- Emotional dilemmas for people of either reaching, or not reaching their Goals.
- Education around appetite, eating when hungry, foods to satisfy hunger, and how to stop eating when you are full.
“Eating with one’s hunger, and being conscious enough to stop when one is full, is hard to do in our culture where food is sold as aspirational and is designed with the precise amounts of salt, sugar or fat to hit what’s called the “bliss point”, not nutritional values.
It’s a TRAGEDY
Disordered and troubled eating is a tragedy for individuals, families and the NHS.
Eating and food can occupy minds from the moment you wake up in the morning to last thing at night – as you lie awake for being “bad”, vowing to do better then next day.
Eating can be considered a fault, criminal – even a “sin”.
Overweight is frowned upon by societies norms.
Actual “health” is given a back seat.
Horribly, all of this is seen as a cash cow – an attractive growth industry – for large scale investment.
Overeating and undereating will continue to make money.
Actual health of body and mind take a back-seat.
Weight Watchers and all within the diet industry benefit if you become a partner for life.
Weight Watchers win financially when you fail.
Surely if their products worked really well, and obesity were to disappear. they’d become redundant. And there’s “fat chance” of that.
Article by Susie Orbach, The Guardian, 16-3-23
Here’s my TIPS
- Dieting and calorie counting do not work for long-term weight loss. Question your beliefs in this. Is it well known that they work? For Life?
- You know what foods are healthy – like plant based home-cooked meals which smell amazing and taste even better.
- You know which foods and drinks are unhealthy – and you know that having a glass of wine is like having a donut for your body.
- You know that diet foods do NOT work.
- Do a real food/drink diary of your intake for a whole week.
- Take a long hard look at it, and decide with yourself which changes you can make.
- When you’ve decided – maybe to cut out the daily bag of crisps or glass of wine and have a banana instead – then get some support to help you stick to it!
