Weight Watchers begins
Weight Watchers, founded in 1961 by Jean Nidetch, emerged as a pioneering commercial weight-loss organization. It was part of a broader societal shift in the mid-20th century that increasingly emphasized weight control and societal beauty standards, particularly as obesity became a significant health concern. Initially modeled on support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, Weight Watchers combined group therapy with a structured approach to weight management. Members participated in weigh-ins and shared their experiences, creating a sense of accountability and community.
This model proved especially appealing to women, providing them with both social support and employment opportunities as counselors. Over the years, Weight Watchers adapted its approach, targeting men and integrating new nutritional research and behavior modification techniques into its programs. Despite facing challenges and criticism regarding the long-term effectiveness of commercial dieting, Weight Watchers has maintained its financial success and relevance, including a significant rebranding to "WW" in 2018 to emphasize health and wellness. The organization has played a notable role in shaping the dieting industry and continues to influence contemporary views on weight and health.
Weight Watchers begins
Both cause and effect of the growing social pressure to stay slim in the 1960s, Weight Watchers brought calorie-control dieting to the masses, at a profit.
Origins and History
From the 1880s through the 1950s, science and society combined to promote weight control. As malnutrition and wasting diseases such as tuberculosis waned, obesity became a major health concern. Moreover, from the 1920s through the 1950s, weight increasingly determined attractiveness and social acceptability. The Metropolitan Life Insurance weight tables (developed in 1942–43) provided the goals, and the counting of calories discovered in the 1880s and featured in cookbooks by the 1920s became the method.
Weight-loss groups spread in the 1950s, based on a combination of group therapy (popular after World War II) and Alcoholics Anonymous-style support. TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly), founded in 1948–52, had thirty thousand members by 1958; that decade also produced various “anonymous” groups, such as Eaters Anonymous and Fatties Anonymous. In the 1960s, weight-loss organizations flourished. Two major groups were founded by married women in their thirties: Overeaters Anonymous, developed by three homemakers in 1960, and Weight Watchers, created by Jean Nidetch, in 1961.
Activities
Originally, Weight Watchers, like TOPS, closely resembled Alcoholics Anonymous in that it took a generally religious approach that included prayers for deliverance from overeating. More important, it featured group support or even control. Each meeting required members to weigh in before the assembly, and shame or praise was used as a motivator. Nidetch emphasized her own status as one who was beating a weight problem. She stressed that the individual must never feel the battle is over, even when the goal weight is reached. Remembering the days when the individual was overweight was key in Weight Watchers’ approach: Participants stood in front of their “before” pictures as they spoke before the assembly, and Nidetch’s book equates forgetting the past with sliding back into failure.
However, the real significance of Weight Watchers is that, in 1963, it became the first commercial, nonmedical weight-loss organization. Its first-year revenues were $160,000, and in 1970, it earned $8 million. The concept of combining weight loss with social support was new, although weight-loss products had been around for some time, and this concept became the foundation for much of the diet industry in the late 1960s and subsequent decades. Competing weight-loss companies soon started up, beginning with Diet Workshop, Inc., in 1965.
The concept of a weight-loss group especially appealed to women, many of whom were isolated both by their positions as homemakers and by the stigma of being overweight. The groups also provided a way for active nonworking women, like Nidetch herself, who headed many volunteer organizations before founding Weight Watchers, to influence others and gain recognition. The weight-loss groups provided women employment as counselors, as long as they did not regain the weight. As Weight Watchers became more established, it began to target men as well and rapidly gained male members and leaders. By 1969, Weight Watchers was directing advertisements at male executives.
The Weight Watchers approach was moderate for the time, providing highly structured eating guidelines based on a maximum daily calorie count. Because of Nidetch’s emphasis on weight control as a never-ending struggle, the group also offered post-weight-loss support and lifelong maintenance diets, unusual then but consistent with later theories about weight and eating.
Impact
Weight Watchers was part of a medical and social trend that favored slenderness and disapproved of heaviness and obesity, a trend driven largely by the baby boomer’s desire to look good in clothes and to maintain a youthful appearance. New, revealing fashions such as bikinis and miniskirts meant that more flesh would be exposed and girdles could not be worn, so the flesh itself had to be shaped and firmed. In addition, the Metropolitan Life weight tables were revised during the 1960s so that much of the allowance for the previously accepted midlife weight gain was eliminated, and standards of beauty became more youthful in general. The waiflike, young English model Twiggy promoted the youthful, ultrathin look in the fashion world, and Weight Watchers and similar groups spread the goal of youthful thinness to the masses.
Subsequent Events
Weight Watchers continues to succeed financially, with its own magazine, line of prepared foods, and international membership, despite growing competition as the dieting market continues to expand. Weight Watchers has proved flexible over the years, introducing behavior modification techniques and exercises and adapting somewhat to new nutritional research.
The 1990s saw growing public suspicion, based on long-term failure rates of all commercial dieting programs and some feeling that weight need not be so strictly controlled, leading to calls for government regulation of the diet industry. However, the desire to be thin remains potent and lucrative.
In late September 2018, Weight Watchers announced that it was launching a rebranding effort that included changing its iconic name to WW. After assessing dieting trends, the company decided to put more stress on its commitment to embracing overall health and wellness, emphasizing its program's accessibility and democratic simplicity.
Additional Information
Consult Jean Nidetch’s own The Story of Weight Watchers (1972) and, for a critical view, portions of Hillel Schwartz’s history of dieting, Never Satisfied (1986).
Bibliography
Brodesser-Akner, Taffy. "Losing It in the Anti-Dieting Age." The New York Times, 2 Aug. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/magazine/weight-watchers-oprah-losing-it-in-the-anti-dieting-age.html. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018.
Escobar, Sam. "11 Things You Probably Didn't Know about Weight Watchers." GH, 27 Oct. 2015, www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/a35093/weight-watchers-facts-history/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018.
MacKenzie, Macaela. "The New Weight Watchers Doesn't Want to Talk about Weight—WW Is All about Wellness." Forbes, 26 Sept. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/macaelamackenzie/2018/09/26/the-new-weight-watchers-doesnt-want-to-talk-about-weight-ww-is-all-about-wellness/#621fc47d7986. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018.
O'Brien, Jeffrey M. "Weight Watchers Revamps Its Magic Formula." Wired, 16 Dec. 2011, www.wired.com/2011/12/ff‗weightwatchers/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018.
Wahba, Phil. "Weight Watchers Changes Name to 'WW' in Big Bet on Wellness." Fortune, 24 Sept. 2018, fortune.com/2018/09/24/weight-watchers-name-change/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018.