Don’t be fooled. Diets aren’t cool, and Weight Watchers wants to be cool.
One of the most popular weight loss plans on the planet is changing its name, its motto and its stance on the calories in, calories out for slimming, focusing on the journey rather than a destination, doing away with before and after photos, and almost, but not quite admitting that diets don’t work. Don’t be fooled. You’re a pariah if you’re on the diet bandwagon these days. WW doesn’t want to be un-cool, so it’s catching up to the modern-day world, but its’ still dieting. This is how the revamped Weight Watchers plans on a $2-billion profit by the year 2020.
Wellness that Works, or WW, as it is now being called, 55 years ago based its revolutionary slimming plan on a points system helping you track caloric intake by the numbers instead of calculating actual calories. In other words, the company is abandoning the useless Calories In, Calories Out model, which they disguised as a points system, in a bid to become the world’s partners in wellness.
It’s a move the company had to make, citing declines in revenues since 2010. They got their boost in 2016 when the world’s most famous dieter, Oprah Winfrey, came on as an investor and announced that she lost a lot of weight on the program while also still eating bread every single day. The company’s fortunes have improved since then. Now WW is retooling and free-styling itself as a wellness organization that goes beyond weight loss. The transformation was in the works since 2011.
David Kirchoff, then president of Weight Watchers, said on their website, “Calorie counting has become unhelpful.” Really? He went on to say, “When we have a 100-calorie apple in one hand and a 100-calorie pack of cookies in the other, and we view them as being ‘the same’ because the calories are the same, it says everything that needs to be said about the limitations of just using calories in guiding food choices.”
In January 2018, today’s President and CEO Mindy Grossman revealed that Weight Watchers was moving toward a more “holistic approach” to health instead of solely focusing on losing weight. Huh. Kidding, right? The new system tries to encourage dieters to consume more natural, less processed food. The point system-based diet’s Freestyle program includes more than 200 foods worth zero points, meaning you don’t need to be measured or tracked, because it’s done for you.
Grossman last week said, “We will never abdicate our authority and our position as the best healthy, sustainable weight loss program on the planet.” Besides, Grossman says, fewer and fewer people want to only diet—an activity she calls “soulless.”
I agree. Dieting is soulless.
The weekly in-person meetings and weigh-ins used to be a requirement, but they’ll now be called Wellness Workshops, and an integral part of the holistic experience is through the company’s social media Connect workshops, where people with similar interests, like being gluten-free or vegan, for example, can exchange; Twitter timelines, real-time support, Facebook-like platforms, and more. The new wellness company is removing all artificial colours, preservatives and so on from its many products, of which make up 13 percent of the company’s annual revenue. Consumers can also opt to download any of a multitude of free fitness apps, many of which linked their diet to their exercise regimen.
If you want more, and can pay more, “WellnessWins” may just be for you. This new incentive program awards people products and experiences for meeting certain goals. There is also a bid to attract men to join. Today,10 percent of members are men. DJ Khaled and filmmaker Kevin Smith signed on as spokespeople this year.
Don’t be fooled. It’s dieting updated.
“People were now fasting and eating clean and cleansing and making lifestyle changes, which, by all available evidence, is exactly like dieting,” writes Taffy Brodesser-Akner in an August 2017 New York Times article about Weight Watchers. “Healthy is the new skinny,” Grossman told Fortune.
The message is clear? Or mixed? You can be skinny and healthy? Healthy equals being skinny? Skinny is better than being not skinny? How one answers that question depends on what one believes in, and Weight Watchers prefers you seek out being skinny, it’s the money-maker, but it’s your health and wellness, too, that gets you, well, skinny!
It’s big, this Wellness thing. It was important for me to include wellness in my company name. Wellness is considered an active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life. Wellness, as espoused by Dr. Wayne Dyer, an internationally renowned author and speaker in the fields of self-development and spiritual growth, who says, “Is more than being free from illness, it is a dynamic process of change and growth.”
Say what WW will – your wellness journey is up to you. Just. Eat. Right.
Richard Tardif is a thirty-year veteran of Fitness and Health Journalism, an award-winning journalist, the Author of Stop the Denial: A Case for Embracing the Truth about Fitness, and a certified personal trainer, practicing what he preaches to an ever-growing army of healthier clients.
