It started as a support group for overweight neoyorcan people in 1963 and became a multimillion -downtown global company that has been selling the dream of long -term weight loss for decades.
The brand -based program of the brandwatchers of the brand has been followed by millions, with cookbooks, groceries, weekly groceries and “without judgments” meetings and a food tracking application.
But soon the Weightwatchers members, who received a WW in 2018, could leave their stairs last. WW International is preparing to present the failure and control of the hands to its creditors in the coming months, if its negotiations with providers and holders of good failure, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The company’s financial problems, which according to reports of more than $ 1.4 million (of £ 1 billion), have not surprised as a surprise for scientists and those who work in the diet industry, who have seen a transformative change in companies since the introduction of weight loss injections and others. These developments may have an effect on the UK operation.
“I think he has had his day,” says Tim Spector, a genetics professor at King’s College London and Zoe’s co -founder, The Science and Nutrition Company. He believes that meetings led by Weightwatchers, who reached five million subscribers worldwide in 2020, have been in the past a small place of refuge for people with overweight and obese who were stigmatized elsewhere. They were once a main point of church and village throughout the United Kingdom, and hundreds of groups still offer meetings across the country.
But Spector said, “I think it’s a good thing. Most calories are largely snake oil … It doesn’t work for the vast majority of people, because if you restrict calories, you increase your appetite and, if you don’t go forth in the quality of food, you are still eating foods that make you upset.”
WW rewards dieters to eat low in calories, but, as it says, dense nutrient foods. The Council of Spector for people who want to lose weight is to eat “ foods that fill you with their quality and fiber: to return to better quality and less highly processed foods, instead of cheap food that says it is “ low calorie ”, “ low in fat ” or “ low sugar ”.
Spector believes that advising people who “eat less and exercise more” is “defective”, because the effectiveness of GLP-1 weight loss drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro has shown the importance of appetite compared to metabolism.
Last week, American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, Mounjaro, announced that he could carry the first daily weight loss pill-which uses the same GLP-1 technology-in the United Kingdom next year after the results of the trial were controlled type 2 diabetes and help people lose weight.
“Until you have dealt with the problem, which is the signal of appetite … that” eating less, doing more “was not condemned to fail. It is a reality than GLP-1 drugs are much better for people who have been suffering for some time.”
Spector says that some people have been paying weight for too long to help them restrict their diets, while they do not achieve a long-term weight loss. “Now they realize that they should not continue to fail. They can take a medicine that works.”
Following the explosion of weight loss drugs, Oprah Winfrey, the most famous WW ambassador, revealed that he had been using the medication. He announced in February last year that he would get out of the company’s board, making his shares drop almost 20%, to the lowest since 2001.
The company did not respond to a comment request last week on the failed reported, but its ex -Director Executive Sima Sistani told the Financial time Last year, the adaptation for the new Ozempical Age was like Netflix that moved from the DVD to the streaming.
In addition to GLP-1 medicines, WW also has to compete with advances in scientific research. Professor Roy Taylor at Newcastle University was a pioneer in an innovative diet program 14 years ago that he showed, for the first time, that type 2 diabetes could be reversed by quick weight loss. Now NHS England offers the remission route program based on your research. Using thinning shakes, limits calorie intake to 800 calories a day for three months for overweight adults recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. One year in the program, participants lost just over 10kg on average and in a long -term study, remained more than 6 kg lighter after five years.
Taylor thinks that WW, who defends gradual weight loss, was not an effective option for many dieters. “I have been listening to my patients for four decades that tell me the real difficulties of losing weight. One of these was the hassle of hunger, because if you cut what you eat a little every day, you will be hungry. But once a person is set on a diet of less than 1,000 calories a day, which takes about a day and a half, the famine becomes a true quiteminimal.”
For this reason, Taylor argues that it is much easier for dieters to lose weight quickly. “It’s nonsense to say if you lose weight quickly, put it quickly,” he says. “If the return to eating is carried out carefully, people usually keep their weight.”
He fears that people who go to the WW have a “unrealistic view” of the amount of weight they may need to lose to prevent them from being at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. “People are excited about losing a few kilos, but this is a fall in the ocean compared to the excess weight that causes mischief in the body,” he says. “We must compare -with our own weight at the age of 21, so that unless you become a bodybuilder, any weight gain in adult life is adipose tissue, that is, fat,” adds Roy.
The Slimming World Weight Loss Club, which is the largest of its type in the United Kingdom and runs thousands of local groups, described the decline of its biggest rival as “extremely sad” last week and reassured its members: “We are going anywhere.”
“Weight loss medicines are not the magic bullet for obesity,” said club director Lisa Salmon in a statement. “Health professionals need a wide range of treatment options for people without medicalizing obesity as the first and only option.
“Everyone who loses weight, with or without weight medicines, needs support to make changes in their diet, activity and mentality. And, despite living in an increasingly digital age, people enjoy and benefit from the meaning of the community that involves being part of a face -to -face group to receive this support.”
Face -to -face local meetings are, in fact, the “point of life” of the Weightwatchers, agreed to the former WW coach Ruth, who asked not to be identified. “There are a million diets and healthy eating plans that you can digitally make; the difference with Weightwatchers joins with people who achieve it,” who understand what you are happening, “he says.
But during the pandemic, WW International sought to save $ 100 million and fired a non -disseminated number from coaches who led these local meetings. “There was this confusing mass redundancy and no one knew what was happening,” says Ruth. After Lockdown lifted, WW was “with too few coaches and there are not enough meetings,” he adds. In his opinion, “they did not manage the pandemic.”
Similarly, the recent introduction of a new program of points for people who took Drugs GLP-1 did not go well with the WW group he trained. “Members said to me,” Oh, it is to deceive. It’s not fair, “says Ruth.” They felt that they had learned new ways of thinking and food, for example about snacks and members who were in weight loss did not. “
Taylor argues that the program is dated. “Weightwatchers started when there was little contact between people who wanted to lose weight and little discussion about the problem. Having a forum to do it -it was very useful for people. Now life has continued. Society has changed with social networks and digital applications.” Ruth recently resigned as WW coach and had mixed feelings when he felt that the business could be bursting. “It’s very sad because Weightwatchers is a lifestyle for so many people, but it’s not a surprise for me.”
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