Maintenance Phase - Weight Watchers

00:00:00.000 hello welcome to maintenance phase the show where we sit in a circle and make you feel bad about

00:00:17.380 yourself i really thought you were gonna be like the show that you don't need like a food scale

00:00:25.660 for or the show with points free or something. These are all better than mine. Do we want to

00:00:33.600 do this again? No, yours is much more to the point. That is the function of this. We will

00:00:38.520 talk about it. I am Michael Hobbs. I'm a reporter for the Huffington Post. I'm Aubrey Gordon. I'm

00:00:43.140 an author and columnist and fat lady about town. And for the last three episodes, we have been

00:00:48.300 awkwardly piping in canned audio of Aubrey talking about our Patreon, which we recorded

00:00:54.660 separately from the episode and is like extremely evident from listening to those episodes but this

00:01:00.080 time we're going to do it organically we're doing it live yeah so we're on patreon.com

00:01:04.840 slash maintenance phase we also have t-shirts on tpublic you can find both of those links much

00:01:11.400 more easily if you go to our website which is maintenancephase.com or continue just listening

00:01:16.200 for free that's also chill yeah totally do what you want and today we are talking about

00:01:20.540 Weight Watchers. The behemoth. The Leviathan. Yeah. We're going to talk about formerly Weight

00:01:26.360 Watchers, now WW. Oh, yeah. So, Mike, talk to me about like, what do you know about Weight Watchers?

00:01:32.220 Okay. So, my understanding is that it's sort of like a support group for people trying to lose

00:01:38.680 weight. So, you go there on, you know, every Wednesday or something and you get weighed in

00:01:44.760 and you have I guess like weight loss goals or whatever and then you talk about weight and weight

00:01:50.780 loss and your efforts and what's going well and what's not going well and it's sort of like

00:01:55.580 bringing other people along on this emotional roller coaster that everybody goes through when

00:02:00.500 they lose weight where it always works at first and you project this gleaming future for yourself

00:02:05.940 and then inevitably it doesn't work because most people can't maintain the restriction

00:02:09.520 and then you start to gain the weight back and you feel terrible about yourself and it seems

00:02:15.420 like Weight Watchers would amplify both aspects of that. The sort of the false future that you

00:02:19.720 project for yourself at the beginning of a weight loss effort and also the sense of shame at the

00:02:24.040 end of a weight loss effort when it inevitably doesn't work. Yeah I would say that's about

00:02:27.580 right. I was a Weight Watchers member off and on for some time. My first Weight Watchers meeting

00:02:35.240 was when i was 11 which is already just like very problematic to have 11 year olds being told that

00:02:42.180 their bodies aren't cool and that they should lose weight that's already bad weight watchers

00:02:45.960 is like as a person who later developed an eating disorder weight watchers is where i learned a lot

00:02:52.180 of the building blocks oh this is true of a lot of diets right that like folks will sort of have

00:02:57.980 the entry point of a diet and then it will sort of morph into an eating disorder because there's

00:03:04.780 just in most dieting spaces there is not an awareness of eating disorders there is not

00:03:09.380 concern about eating disorders the goal is lose weight at whatever costs right and a bunch of

00:03:14.960 the things that they like actively recommend to you like i was keeping a food journal which is

00:03:20.200 what you're supposed to do when you're weight watchers you write down what you eat you write

00:03:23.040 down how many points it's worth for me anyway it sort of led me down the garden path a little bit

00:03:28.600 to something that turned into something much much worse this reminds me that when i was a teenager

00:03:34.660 my parents sent my brother to an anger management like a city funded anger management course

00:03:41.500 and it turned out when he went there that all the other kids were like super hardcore juvenile

00:03:47.320 delinquents and so instead of learning any anger management skills he would just hang out with

00:03:53.120 these kids and they taught him like how to buy weed and like how to steal cars and stuff like

00:03:58.800 it ended up it ended up being like this escalation of everything that was going on because of all the

00:04:04.140 group dynamics that we're forming. I feel like that's kind of a metaphor. Yeah, I would say

00:04:08.360 that's about right. Can you talk more about your experience in Weight Watchers? Like what was the

00:04:12.420 sort of the narrative arc of you going through this whole process? Weight Watchers is where I

00:04:16.500 got really good at distinguishing between a half cup of something and a cup of something.

00:04:23.280 There was definitely this very big normalization of like binge eating and Weight Watchers and this

00:04:31.300 sort of constant vigilance was seen as the natural solution.

00:04:35.960 Wow.

00:04:36.520 Earlier versions of Weight Watchers also had, like, in our house, we had a food scale, like

00:04:43.380 a Weight Watchers branded food scale.

00:04:45.940 Oh, they sold Weight Watchers branded food scales?

00:04:48.900 Uh-huh.

00:04:49.660 So people would, like, weigh their food before they ate it.

00:04:52.600 This was pre, like, the points system.

00:04:55.540 Rough. 1.00

00:04:55.840 I mean, I will also say I grew up around a ton of like boomer ladies who were Weight Watchers devotees, right? 0.99

00:05:04.420 The sort of thinking was diets come and go, but Weight Watchers is the one that's really stood the test of time.

00:05:10.900 It's like Pond's cold cream, right?

00:05:13.020 Like you go get your fancy skincare, whatever.

00:05:16.520 Pond's has been here.

00:05:18.100 Yeah.

00:05:18.260 It's not flashy, but it gets the job done is sort of the vibe at Weight Watchers.

00:05:22.840 Yeah.

00:05:23.020 And what I learned in this research is that that lore is really categorically incorrect

00:05:29.640 in some big ways.

00:05:31.460 First time that's ever happened.

00:05:33.800 Shocking.

00:05:34.820 A widespread societal understanding of a phenomenon is based on incorrect information.

00:05:39.480 It's as if one of the people on this podcast has built a career out of debugging.

00:05:43.840 If only there was some sort of pithy phrase that we could use for this kind of revelation.

00:05:48.700 Your perceptions of Weight Watchers may be incorrect.

00:05:51.300 so here's what i would say for folks who are unfamiliar with weight watchers

00:05:55.540 weight watchers at its core is a low fat low calorie diet you go to weekly meetings you pay

00:06:03.020 a weekly membership fee that ranges depending on sort of how you engage at this point i think the

00:06:09.040 low end is like three dollars a week the high end is 13 a week group leaders are people who have hit

00:06:15.040 their target goal weight and have maintained it for at least six weeks so the belief is that your

00:06:21.500 group leader has done it so so can you right there's sort of like a success story quote unquote

00:06:26.380 in every room right so i kind of want to just start us at the start of weight watchers are you

00:06:31.740 ready for just like the story of weight watchers do it take me down the ww path delightful part 1.00

00:06:39.040 of the lore of Weight Watchers was that it was started by this lower middle class lady. Jean 0.99

00:06:45.820 Neidich was from New York. She was from Queens. She weighed about 210 pounds when a friend of hers

00:06:52.560 mistook her for pregnant. Oh, that was when she decided to go on a sort of drastic kind of once 0.96

00:06:58.760 and for all diet. I feel like that's one of those things. If somebody has an interesting thing about

00:07:03.260 them, like they seem pregnant, you probably should just be like, hey, any news or something like

00:07:08.640 don't maybe don't go straight for the you must be pregnant thing and also like do you need to know 1.00

00:07:14.440 yeah just skip it also that so gene knight is fatter than she wants to be she decides to go 0.91

00:07:21.140 on a diet when she talks about how she was eating before going on this diet what she describes is

00:07:31.820 binge eating disorder oh she talks about eating multiple boxes of malamars in one sitting what

00:07:39.400 are malamars uh they're like cookies cookie candy sort of hybrid proto snack wells except

00:07:45.600 they're like not trying to be good for you okay she is getting boxes of cookies and hiding them

00:07:52.080 from her family and eating them in secret and feeling these big waves of shame after she eats

00:07:58.220 I mean, it's like she's truly just like ticking down the list of diagnostic criteria for binge eating disorder because that's not a framework we had at the time.

00:08:09.360 She thinks, well, I'm fat and I need to lose weight, not, oh, something's going on in my brain.

00:08:14.760 Right.

00:08:15.060 And maybe the solution here is a brain thing and not a body thing.

00:08:17.960 Right.

00:08:18.240 That's also an interesting thing of how we talk about on the show a lot.

00:08:21.360 The sort of the difference between behavior and weight.

00:08:24.520 Yeah.

00:08:24.800 Like, you can be alarmed by your binge eating behavior and try to work on that behavior in a way that is not necessarily about weight loss or about seeing yourself as a fundamentally failed person.

00:08:35.900 Yeah.

00:08:36.140 Losing 20 pounds is not her primary problem right now. 0.99

00:08:40.560 Like, that shouldn't necessarily be the goal.

00:08:42.360 Totally and absolutely, right? 0.99

00:08:44.100 So, interestingly, she famously lost, like, 70 pounds.

00:08:49.840 Oh, wow.

00:08:50.100 She lost her weight, interestingly, through the New York City Board of Health's clinic.

00:08:56.880 Oh.

00:08:57.240 Which developed like a weight loss program and a diet called the Prudent Diet.

00:09:03.360 Wait, so this was like a municipal program?

00:09:05.920 This is like socialist weight loss?

00:09:07.860 It sure was, yeah.

00:09:08.900 Okay.

00:09:09.300 So it was developed by the Board of Health.

00:09:12.060 It included a support group element.

00:09:14.760 Oh.

00:09:15.260 The diet itself is like extremely early 60s.

00:09:19.480 that's when all of this is happening right so just like breakfast aspic lunch aspic

00:09:25.580 and dinner it's like crab cocktail it is fish five times a week nice and two glasses of skim milk a 0.94

00:09:35.700 day and like whole wheat bread basically like she went through this whole program she lost 70 pounds

00:09:43.260 using this program but she didn't like how their group leader ran the group okay so she started 0.87

00:09:49.040 running it out of her living room with other like people predominantly women trying to lose weight

00:09:55.440 and she started charging people wait so is this a story of private sector quote-unquote innovation

00:10:01.200 it's actually just a person stealing an idea from the public sector 100 like how tech people

00:10:07.580 in silicon valley keep accidentally inventing buses what if uber but it was like lots of people

00:10:14.720 at once yeah that's exactly right so basically she lifts the prudent diet whole cloth and like 0.98

00:10:21.880 copies a bunch of their materials nice like runs these support groups out of her house 0.98

00:10:26.820 just using the exact diet that she got for free from the new york city board of health clinic 0.97

00:10:33.340 but she's like a better camp counselor or whatever totally yeah yeah so the business takes off like

00:10:40.180 wildfire yeah by 1967 so just four years in she has over a hundred franchises in the u.s

00:10:48.640 in canada in puerto rico in israel in the uk oh wow and that same year their franchises reached

00:10:55.060 43 of the 50 states this is what we're always saying fat people are like a massively underserved

00:11:01.480 market people are leaving money on the table not thinking of fat people as like an actual

00:11:06.180 consumer demographic. Totally. So around the same time they published the first Weight Watchers

00:11:13.420 cookbook, there have been many since then. It sold 1.5 million copies in 1966, which is humongo,

00:11:23.820 right? So like half of the sales of what we don't talk about when we talk about fat.

00:11:28.620 One third. Half to one third. How dare you? One quarter. Yes. The 60s also saw the launch

00:11:35.840 of Weight Watchers branded foods, spas, scales, and fat camps. Oh, that's dark. The scales are 0.69

00:11:45.600 dark, but then it got even darker. Yeah. So Weight Watchers fully operated fat camps for kids.

00:11:50.940 And in my notes, it says, fuck all the way off. 0.99

00:11:58.120 So interestingly, the seventies roll around and Weight Watchers starts to shift its approach. 0.99

00:12:02.880 It talks less about dieting and more about like eating skills.

00:12:07.680 Okay.

00:12:08.260 They also branch out.

00:12:09.780 They no longer stick just to the prudent diet.

00:12:13.160 They start coming up with different eating plans for different members.

00:12:17.520 So they now have these sort of like tailored eating plans is the way that they talk about it.

00:12:22.240 And this is like the beginning of a trend that will continue with Weight Watchers where they sort of start like they keep trying to sort of adapt to popular thinking about food and eating and dieting.

00:12:32.200 Right.

00:12:32.480 And that means that they change their formula quite a bit.

00:12:35.960 Which also gets us to the sort of eventual dropping of weight from the name too, right?

00:12:40.360 That it's like they're basically surfing on whatever the diet trend is at the time.

00:12:43.680 They're just incorporating it into what they're already doing.

00:12:45.640 Pretty much.

00:12:46.680 So during this same time, the 60s and 70s, Jean becomes more and more of a celebrity. 0.88

00:12:54.260 She's like gorgeous. 0.54

00:12:56.220 She's glamorous. 0.99

00:12:57.560 She's like now thin. 1.00

00:12:58.980 she is famously like very good friends with maya angelou not the cameo i was expecting in this 0.85

00:13:06.040 episode fucking me neither man it's so weird yeah gene has since i'm not spoiling anything to say 0.56

00:13:12.340 that gene has since passed away so i'm going to read you a little quote from the new york times 0.96

00:13:17.800 obituary for gene in 1973 16 000 weight watchers jammed madison square garden for the group's 10th

00:13:26.060 anniversary no way it was like a revival bob hope pearl bailey and roberta peters were there

00:13:32.800 but the star in a drift of white chiffon was mrs neidich a combination cinderella and amy

00:13:40.200 semple mcpherson with her own evangelical message overeating is an emotional problem with an

00:13:46.540 emotional solution she looked as if she had never eaten a cookie in her life so she kept the weight 0.98

00:13:52.240 off the rest of her life she sure did so famously she actually died at her goal weight and so her 0.84

00:13:57.660 explanation for that was her getting the emotional eating under control yep through this sort of

00:14:02.160 support group setup right but not through treatment of an eating disorder right like

00:14:06.680 so gene stays involved in the company until sort of like the 80s ish in 1979 she sells the company

00:14:16.200 to Heinz ketchup okay so Heinz ketchup fully owned Weight Watchers for like 20 years no way

00:14:24.520 from 1979 to 1999 until they sell it to a group of investors who had just

00:14:29.900 made all of their money off of no joke a sugar factory

00:14:34.180 I can just see your face when you found this out Aubrey I was so delighted

00:14:40.220 the Heinz ketchup one ketchup nowhere on any diet right ketchup is basically a red milkshake

00:14:46.760 it's just high fructose corn syrup as far as i can tell yeah it's just yes which is fine have

00:14:51.940 ketchup if you want ketchup have ketchup but then i also think there's something in here about

00:14:55.080 capitalism too that in these sort of i don't know big conglomerates that buy up a bunch of companies

00:15:01.000 and spin them off and sell them and merge them whatever they're kind of content neutral right

00:15:06.600 Like they don't actually care whether they own a sugar factory or a weight loss company.

00:15:11.220 Like it's just profit and loss margins.

00:15:14.420 That's exactly right.

00:15:15.200 So the company that now owns Weight Watchers is called Invis, which is short for like invest

00:15:21.980 in the US.

00:15:22.820 It's a Belgian, a family of quote, Belgian sugar barons, according to Forbes.

00:15:29.500 This is what they say about Invis, quote, private equity firm Invis is essentially the

00:15:35.760 family office of eric wittek a descendant of belgian sugar barons who now lives in monaco

00:15:41.320 and spends most of his time exploring the world in his 164 foot luxury yacht the exuma which

00:15:48.700 includes an amphibious car wittek who's 72 is worth an estimated 7.6 billion dollars so he's

00:15:58.640 just straightforwardly a james bond villain that's what we're that's what we're dealing with

00:16:03.300 here his sort of investment manager apparently saw value in weight watchers because of the ways

00:16:10.940 in which it had so many repeat users right because people would lose weight they would drop out they

00:16:19.220 would come back they would lose weight again they'd stall out right yeah part of the appeal

00:16:24.520 of weight watchers it is this sort of constant state of being and that's how weight watchers

00:16:29.260 sells it right because they're just like it's forever like this is how you manage how you eat

00:16:33.660 which is the same as sort of every consumer product like people buy pringles because they

00:16:37.240 like pringles and they eat pringles habitually which is fine but then pringles isn't promising

00:16:43.000 to get you to never eat chips again right like this this represents the complete failure of the

00:16:49.800 reason that weight watchers exists totally that indicates that like maybe they don't have the

00:16:54.640 secret to weight loss figured out. So we're going to backtrack a little tiny bit and start talking

00:16:59.980 about like a thing that I wasn't fully tracking before doing this research is that Weight Watchers

00:17:05.720 has been in pretty severe financial trouble for like a while. They'll lose like a million

00:17:11.620 subscribers in a couple of quarters or that kind of like really significant hits, right?

00:17:16.940 Is this why they dropped the full name? Because they couldn't afford all those letters anymore?

00:17:20.640 like we're trimming the fat we're down to ww that challenge the financial troubles that they're in

00:17:28.680 starts in earnest in the 1990s when the field starts to become more crowded right like right

00:17:36.220 there are other diets there are other sort of fads but in terms of like enduring corporate

00:17:41.120 you know faces of weight loss weight watchers is like the main deal in the 90s jenny craig joins

00:17:48.500 the phrase fast Nutrisystem future episode future episode future episode yeah so according to Forbes

00:17:57.660 in 2012 Weight Watchers stock was $80 per share by 2015 it was less than $4 per share oh wow

00:18:06.940 they lose about 7% of their subscribers in 2014 they generally don't have men participating in

00:18:17.620 Weight Watchers at the same level. Oh, yeah. I forgot about men. What do you think actually

00:18:23.380 explains it, though? Like, why do you think it just stopped being successful in the 90s?

00:18:28.760 I mean, I do think like they were not very good at running a fucking business. 0.95

00:18:32.240 Oh, OK. Like it genuinely sounds like, oh, what? We're surprised that there might be competition, 0.98

00:18:38.580 right? They were sort of resting on their laurels is what it's that's the impression that I've

00:18:42.160 gotten from the research. They also get caught off guard in the early 2010s when people start

00:18:47.980 getting smartphones. So suddenly there's this new flood of competitors. That's when we get

00:18:53.820 MyFitnessPal. That's when we start getting all of the, like, chronometer. That's when we start

00:18:58.040 getting all of these, like, diet apps. Right. Counting steps, going to Chipotle, counting

00:19:03.440 calories. Making copies. That's right. I went on a single date with a guy who's a data scientist

00:19:09.780 who specifically studies fitness apps and he said one of the central problems with these apps is

00:19:16.100 that it's much harder to calculate the calories for foods that you make at home so like if you're

00:19:20.940 making a salad at home it's like nobody wants to weigh out ounce by ounce all the sort of those

00:19:25.920 three walnuts that you put in like it's a massive pain whereas if you go to panera bread the calories

00:19:33.520 are right there on the menu so a lot of people that have these fitness apps or these sort of

00:19:37.340 point system, like any sort of quantification of their diet and exercise, it actually pushes them

00:19:43.180 toward eating more fast food and eating more packaged foods and eating out more. And anytime

00:19:48.780 you eat out, it's generally going to be less healthy than when you eat at home. Yeah, totally.

00:19:52.620 So Weight Watchers is continuing to take these big hits. In one quarter alone, they lose 600,000

00:20:00.400 subscribers wow and that's when they start making big moves to uh try and get more again like

00:20:08.340 lifelong members right like that is their language that is how they talk about their sort of approach

00:20:13.280 and as their stock continues to tank they start making really big bold and i would argue extremely

00:20:22.340 shitty choices yeah when companies get desperate this is when they get extra unethical right

00:20:27.140 so their first big weird play for new members happens in 2018 weight watchers announced that

00:20:35.960 it was going to start offering free six-week memberships to teens as young as 13 nice so like

00:20:43.940 i don't know do you know any 13 year olds currently absolutely not okay it would be so weird

00:20:51.340 if i was like yes i know jenny i know tom i know steve like no no i just mean like i have a

00:20:57.120 niece that's what i'm thinking of like i have a niece who's 13 just hanging out at playgrounds

00:21:02.380 high to the kids gay man hanging out alone near some teams just an effeminate man in his 30s

00:21:10.480 introducing myself to the neighborhood children no i i do have a niece but she is seven oh god 0.75

00:21:17.940 we'll get to your niece's age group in a minute sorry but christ the the reason that i ask about 0.85

00:21:23.460 like whether or not you know a 13 year old is like i know fucking 13 year olds and i would be 0.89

00:21:27.720 so fucking heartbroken if they started on weight watchers not just because of my politics but just 0.98

00:21:32.180 because of like you know that this is the long death march toward like a lifelong path of just 0.97

00:21:39.920 like hating your body and wishing you looked different right and i'm just like if we can just

00:21:44.360 delay the onset of that that would be great right weight watchers meanwhile is like aggressively

00:21:49.500 marketing specifically to those kids and there is this really strong response the national eating

00:21:57.280 disorders association issues a statement like a big public statement they say quote in a large

00:22:05.140 study of 14 and 15 year olds dieting was the most important predictor of developing an eating

00:22:10.480 disorder they also say in that same statement that teens who diet are twice as likely to become fat

00:22:17.280 regardless of the size that they start at trying to lose weight generally leads folks to gain

00:22:22.160 weight right what they're saying is like you're also saying you're trying to get kids thin but

00:22:27.040 this is going to make them fat right can you not it's also really pouring gasoline on like

00:22:33.580 hormonal fires at that age too where kids are really if you're 13 14 15 you're like just going

00:22:39.520 through puberty you're in adolescence you're like just becoming aware of yourself as like having

00:22:44.800 looks and being judged on your looks. So much of sort of the experience of puberty is like

00:22:49.240 discovering self-consciousness. I remember when I was like 13, my parents told me I couldn't wear

00:22:55.020 sweatpants to school anymore. And I was like devastated. I was like, what do you mean?

00:23:01.580 Because literally I had like not thought about the fact that other people would be assessing

00:23:08.020 my appearance. Like that was not something that occurred to me. And like, I'm being way too

00:23:12.700 universalistic here but like in general self-consciousness is something that is a big

00:23:17.780 part of puberty and so when kids are in this like they're they're literally discovering how to feel

00:23:22.300 self-conscious like throwing in your looks aren't good enough at that age you're just unleashing

00:23:27.500 Godzilla into like a Walmart at that point totally this is the John Mulaney horse in a hospital bit

00:23:34.220 right yeah like it's already gonna be bad and you are hastening that and yes ending that in ways

00:23:40.020 that are like totally unnecessary and then those kids are going to end up 38 years old and still

00:23:44.720 mad about the fact that they can't wear sweatpants in public anymore or 37 years old and still mad 0.95

00:23:51.300 that they had to go to fucking weight watchers or that for example yeah yeah hypothetically yes 0.97

00:23:56.100 so the national eating disorders association releases this big response like you don't have 0.98

00:24:02.560 doctors working with kids you're not screening for eating disorders and here is weight watchers

00:24:08.700 response are you ready give it to me last week we shared the future vision of weight watchers

00:24:13.060 including some changes we are making to bring health and wellness to all not just the few

00:24:17.880 as part of that we announced that we would open ww to teens for free we know that the teen years

00:24:24.800 are a critical life stage and opening ww to teens with consent from a parent or guardian

00:24:30.160 is about families getting healthier not dieting we have and will continue to talk with health

00:24:35.980 care professionals as we get ready to launch this program it's so it's so biggest loser trying to

00:24:42.560 disguise a literal weight loss competition as some sort of form of empowerment yeah it's literally

00:24:48.960 called weight watchers you are there to focus exclusively on your weight it's not like

00:24:54.260 cholesterol reading watchers yeah that's right and like they're sort of recasting dieting as

00:25:01.660 some kind of like radical accessibility thing like we're the champions of the people we believe

00:25:07.640 that wellness belongs to everyone not just the few i know like that not just the few statement i'm 0.81

00:25:12.700 like what the fuck are you robin hood it's also i love the thing where people repackage the most 0.96

00:25:18.100 fucking normie conventional wisdom as somehow like forbidden knowledge like the idea that people need 0.99

00:25:25.460 to lose weight to be healthier is the most like widespread societal belief imaginable this thing 0.98

00:25:32.600 of like it's only the elites that are trying to lose weight it's like no that's literally like

00:25:38.120 the majority of the population at any given time believes that it is healthier to be thin right

00:25:43.820 like you are not saying something that's going against the elite consensus you're literally just

00:25:48.220 repackaging the elite consensus totally none of this is new yeah and also you're not new yes

00:25:54.480 right like this is what you've been doing since time immemorial if you believed in wellness for 0.96

00:26:00.740 all not just the few yeah then like make your whole fucking program free i don't know man 0.62

00:26:05.040 so this is also where we get into some of the shortcomings of this quote-unquote support group 0.84

00:26:11.680 model growing up it seemed like one of the parts about weight watchers that was sort of beyond

00:26:15.600 reproach right and actually the data on these kinds of quote-unquote support group spaces is

00:26:21.180 super not good oh yeah it's bad enough that there is a term for it um psychologists call it normative

00:26:28.180 discontent oh does that mean like a bunch of people just like wallowing in their sadness 0.94

00:26:33.580 together specifically around their negative body image it's like fucking incels that's totally what 0.96

00:26:42.060 it is totally it's the ways in which people and again particularly women bond over disliking their 0.98

00:26:50.860 bodies. So like, oh my God, my thighs are so fat. Nobody wants to see my thighs. And then someone 0.96

00:26:56.180 else will go, your thighs look great. You look amazing. I look like shit. Look at this double

00:27:00.700 chin. Like those are the conversations, right? Researchers call it fat talk, which is like not

00:27:06.540 my favorite because that's not totally what's happening there, but okay. As of 2011, 93% of

00:27:13.400 women reported engaging in social quote unquote fat talk, which they sort of define as this

00:27:19.500 practice of like expressing dissatisfaction with their own size or talking about like quote-unquote

00:27:23.540 feeling fat right people who engage regularly in those conversations have lower body satisfaction

00:27:30.480 rates they're at more risk for disordered eating for fat people who are part of those conversations

00:27:37.180 and sort of on the receiving end from thinner women it often registers as an insult right 0.97

00:27:43.240 because they're like you're listening to a thinner person talk about how disgusting and fat they are 1.00

00:27:47.820 and you're like, what the fuck? I'm right here. What do you think of me then? Right. And that's 1.00

00:27:51.480 also borne out in the research. There's quite a bit of research that's just like, if you think

00:27:55.300 you're fat, then what do you think of me? Yikes. Right. Oh, my God. Can I scratch like a decade

00:27:59.320 long itch right now? Yes. Do you remember when Britney Spears was on what was it the VMAs or

00:28:04.620 something? And she had a snake around her neck. Remember? And she gave like a really lackluster 0.66

00:28:09.420 performance. And a lot of the sort of discussion of why her performance is lackluster was that she

00:28:16.020 was fat yeah and she had like a bear midriff or whatever and they're like how far britney has

00:28:20.500 fallen and i remember looking at the footage and being like she is smaller than like two-thirds of

00:28:25.660 american women like she's still extremely small yeah and it just felt like reading people talk

00:28:32.280 about somebody with a body like that as like irredeemably fat just felt like it would be so 0.83

00:28:38.280 fucking damaging to the population they're like you're looking at the photo and then you're 0.94

00:28:42.060 looking at the rhetoric about the photo and you're like oh this is how most women look and we're 0.99

00:28:47.080 being really mean to her totally totally so the research bears out also exactly what you're saying

00:28:53.620 about that right there's a some research into college students of all genders they found that

00:29:00.660 positive body image and positive body talk were linked to greater optimism higher self-esteem

00:29:06.760 stronger relationships and like higher sexual satisfaction stronger relationships right like 0.82

00:29:12.520 all of that kind of stuff sort of comes together just orgasms constantly having orgasms nice jacket

00:29:18.840 yes satisfied happy depression is gone i love it also like if you have looked at any of the data 0.95

00:29:26.860 about like how often are straight women having orgasms it's real fucking bleak so i'm like 0.92

00:29:31.320 anything that helps them oh my god it's so bad dude digression take me on this digression what 0.99

00:29:36.880 does the data say i haven't done the deep dive into the research but like every few years there's 0.73

00:29:40.680 a big story that's like we know more about the orgasm gap and it's basically like lesbians and 0.94

00:29:45.640 bi women are having great sex women who exclusively have sex with men are having shitty sex and many 0.94

00:29:50.560 of them are like never experiencing an orgasm that's really rough it's so rough so it's basically 1.00

00:29:55.740 like all men are having good sex gay and bisexual women are having great sex straight women are 0.99

00:30:02.760 fucked and like not in a way that they like sometimes you hear these findings from research 0.99

00:30:07.540 and you're like why aren't we talking about this all the time every day it's it seems like a huge 0.99

00:30:14.580 deal just like women are not having great sex like as a population there's also like a bunch

00:30:20.940 of data that's just like a bunch of women who are in long-term relationships or who are consistently 0.62

00:30:26.440 like dating and sleeping with people or whatever report never having experienced an orgasm oh my

00:30:31.540 god of course like asexual people exist people who like are not driven by sex exist like all of this

00:30:37.920 sort of stuff is true and also there is a group of people who are desiring of orgasms and not 0.89

00:30:43.560 getting them and like this feels like such a weird shitty window into like how straight people talk 0.71

00:30:49.720 or don't talk about sex like how much isn't negotiated or even spoken right and so what

00:30:55.040 you're saying is like this wallowing effect is in some way a contributing factor in that the more

00:31:00.940 self-conscious you are about your body the less sort of likely you are to have orgasms they don't

00:31:06.560 necessarily talk about orgasms in the research what they talk about is sexual satisfaction like

00:31:10.420 how would you rate your satisfaction with your sex life right so that actually like makes some

00:31:14.660 more room right there are people who are like i don't have sex and i'm satisfied with that 10

00:31:18.640 Look, Aubrey, some of us are extremely mediocre at sex and very fine about it. 0.99

00:31:23.140 Some of us are lazy, selfish lovers, you know? 0.89

00:31:28.260 So basically, like, people who engage in this kind of fat talk have, like, significantly weaker romantic relationships and friendships.

00:31:38.000 So, like, relationships of all stripes are weakened by this.

00:31:41.540 It really does seem to have this weird, pervasive impact on folks' lives.

00:31:47.840 Right.

00:31:48.180 And Weight Watchers is a place that has sort of systematized and participated in the popularization of this phenomenon, right?

00:31:56.740 If you have rooms full of people who are at these Weight Watchers meetings talking about all the ways they want their bodies to be different, talking about all the ways in which their lives will just sort of fall into place when they lose weight, they are reaching millions of subscribers over the years.

00:32:12.000 it's hard to imagine that that hasn't somehow increased this sort of social expectation and

00:32:19.340 ritual. But so help me understand how these meetings actually work. Because like, what is

00:32:23.980 the content of one of these meetings? Like, what does it actually look like? My recollection from

00:32:28.520 being there as a kid was that people would sort of have space to share where they were at. You

00:32:34.440 would talk about shared strategies for hard situations. So like, if Thanksgiving was coming

00:32:40.880 up you would talk about like what do you do on thanksgiving right but a lot of it was also just

00:32:45.680 space for people to grieve their bodies not being what they wanted them to be and a lot of space for

00:32:53.780 people to indulge in this total magical thinking that was like when i lose weight my marriage will

00:33:03.800 sort of heal itself when i lose weight i will get this promotion for my job right that it becomes

00:33:10.020 this sort of peg that people hang all of their hopes on right and it fortifies their commitment

00:33:17.300 to weight loss but also the like it deepens the despair i think that people feel when they don't

00:33:23.920 lose weight that's what it did for me again like speaking only for myself right right i mean that's

00:33:28.340 where we get all this data that's like i don't have the numbers in front of me but it's something

00:33:31.680 like 30 of american women say that they would rather become an alcoholic or walk away from 1.00

00:33:37.880 their relationships than get fat i mean it depends on the relationships but yes because these women 1.00

00:33:43.580 are not having orgasms aubrey keep keep in mind totally yeah this is yet another reason why 0.99

00:33:48.200 fucking 11 year olds 13 year olds should not be in these groups is because you're also the meta 0.99

00:33:52.520 message that you're getting is that your weight is central to who you are yeah if you're like 0.99

00:33:57.060 whatever you're larger than you'd like to be or something that doesn't actually have to be seen

00:34:02.040 as a central failing like you can focus on like getting into a super dope college reading 50 books

00:34:07.620 a year or like there's all kinds of other things that you can be focusing on and that you can make

00:34:12.280 central to your life but you're just reinforcing this message that like your weight is who you are 0.91

00:34:17.520 yeah totally this is also like a strain of sort of thought in like feminist circles right is sort 0.87

00:34:22.620 of like being sort of constantly engaged in dieting and weight loss is like part of how 1.00

00:34:29.020 women disengage from like fighting for their own rights and like expecting better of the world 0.94

00:34:35.900 around them, right? That it's sort of like placates women and distracts us is sort of the 0.99

00:34:39.700 thinking. When what they should be mad about is the lack of orgasms. There should be people with 0.74

00:34:45.120 picket signs outside of men's houses at all times. So around the same time that Weight Watchers

00:34:51.200 introduces this free membership for teens business, they also announce, interestingly,

00:34:56.900 they're going to stop using before and after photos in their ads, which is legitimately big

00:35:01.320 deal. Yeah. Their CEO, Mindy Grossman goes into the press and is like talking to them about this

00:35:08.020 sort of shift away from before and after pictures. So what she says is this quote,

00:35:14.180 what I find is that people want to know about the journey. They want to know what people are

00:35:19.120 experiencing. They want to know how it relates to their own life. When I talk to people who have had

00:35:23.600 an incredible experience with Weight Watchers, whether they have lost 10 pounds or 200 pounds,

00:35:27.680 the consistent thing they are saying is how it made them feel versus how it made them look

00:35:32.740 so they're saying we're not going to use these photos but also it's not about how you look it's

00:35:37.880 just about how you feel and you feel better when you look better right where you're like okay fine

00:35:42.620 so i'm i'm i have their website in front of me it's just all a bunch of people who are thin yeah

00:35:49.580 and like playing with their kids and exercising and doing happy stuff but there's not a lot of

00:35:54.380 representation of actual fat people so the project is not like to humanize fat people necessarily

00:36:00.220 it's like let's get you thin right it's not like look at all these fat people do like eating

00:36:05.700 healthy foods and doing whatever and whatever size they end up at it's fine right they're still

00:36:11.060 very clear that they are weight watchers right yeah interestingly this is the same time 2018

00:36:16.800 is the same time that they changed their name to ww right their tagline at the time was wellness

00:36:23.040 that works. They launch an incentive program called wellness wins. And it feels like this

00:36:30.400 microcosm of a larger trend that you and I have talked about, which is this kind of search and

00:36:35.840 replace that searches for weight loss and replaces it with wellness, but everything else is exactly

00:36:41.840 the same. It's now just coded language for weight loss, right? Like when we talk about quote unquote

00:36:47.360 But wellness, what we're still talking about on some level is weight loss, but it feels more aspirational than just weight loss.

00:36:55.500 So it feels more neutral or empowering or something to people when it is truly just like diets just change their clothes.

00:37:03.740 I mean, I guess the idea is you're skipping the middleman because the whole the rhetoric around weight loss is you must lose weight to be healthy.

00:37:10.440 And so now instead of saying you must lose weight, you're saying you must be healthy.

00:37:14.000 And the way to be healthy is to lose weight.

00:37:15.860 So the same message is embedded in there.

00:37:18.820 That's exactly right.

00:37:19.700 So the next year, just after this rebrand, after the free membership for teens, Weight Watchers makes another big wild swing.

00:37:28.220 They acquire an app, like a smartphone app, called Curbo.

00:37:33.920 Did you hear anything about Curbo?

00:37:35.760 Curbo? No, never heard of it.

00:37:37.160 It is an app that is designed and marketed towards kids as young as eight. 1.00

00:37:42.620 fuck it's like cartoon evil it's so fucking dark dude my niece is 13 my nephew is nine 1.00

00:37:51.340 and when i think about either of them engaging in these programs it makes me want to cry barf 1.00

00:37:56.460 and punch all at once once again because there had been this almost like trial run of backlash

00:38:02.260 to the like free teen memberships you can imagine when they're like anyway now we're getting younger 0.99

00:38:07.180 right like the same group of people who like had a freaking freak out like fuck off eight-year-olds 0.93

00:38:14.340 i feel like they only did it to take away the backlash from the teenagers they're like let's 0.97

00:38:19.520 get them to not be pissed off about the 13 year olds just like throw eight-year-olds in there 0.95

00:38:23.320 and then everybody's gonna forget about the other stuff yeah be pissed off about this other garbage

00:38:27.140 so once again nita the national eating disorder association releases a specific statement on this

00:38:33.820 they asked them to pull the app there's even an organization in the uk called obesity uk 0.98

00:38:39.820 and they're like this app is irresponsible is what they say publicly and i'm like fuck man 0.96

00:38:46.280 if the like obesity epidemic quote-unquote organizations are like your app is irresponsible 0.97

00:38:51.780 like yeah she says even like the institutional fat phobia institutions are like let's slow down

00:38:58.680 Right. So, like, things sort of have turned around a little tiny bit for Weight Watchers, but then it has sort of returned to this downturn.

00:39:07.440 Basically, the single biggest boon to Weight Watchers' success today is Oprah Winfrey.

00:39:13.360 Really?

00:39:13.660 In 2015, Oprah bought a 10% stake in the company.

00:39:18.640 Oh.

00:39:19.760 So, like, after that happens, the company breaks the 1 million member mark that they've been sort of looking at.

00:39:25.660 Their profits shoot up about 20%.

00:39:28.000 so like the oprah effect is huge it's not the program right it's just oprah yeah but even with

00:39:36.180 the oprah effect like they start losing subscribers again by like the end of that year do we know why

00:39:43.460 the way that i sort of read all of this and this is just my own sort of like assumptions

00:39:48.040 is oprah brings you a big new bump of people right it brings you a ton of oprah loyalists

00:39:54.460 lovely people remembering their spirits and they still have the same functional problems with

00:40:00.120 Weight Watchers that they've always had right they got a big boost of people and then I suspect they

00:40:05.040 had attrition at like a similar rate that they normally do but because that initial boost was

00:40:10.160 so big the attrition looks huge too yeah when they get Oprah they also get the Vision 2020 tour

00:40:16.540 have you and i talked about vision 2020 vision 2020 no oh my god mike so in 2020 before we knew

00:40:26.440 that 2020 was garbage in like january and february oprah does this national tour okay and it's about

00:40:34.000 how to become your best self and how to set your goals for the year and but ultimately it is

00:40:40.980 sponsored by Weight Watchers.

00:40:43.040 Oh, God.

00:40:43.520 At one point, they have like NYPD officers

00:40:46.880 or New York Fire Department officers

00:40:49.320 who get up on stage and they're like,

00:40:51.900 we all did Weight Watchers

00:40:53.040 and here's how much weight we lost. 0.94

00:40:55.840 Julianne Hough, who's on Dancing with the Stars, 1.00

00:40:58.360 comes on and does her like weird,

00:41:00.400 like, I can't remember what it's called.

00:41:02.500 Tango.

00:41:03.360 Salsa.

00:41:04.180 No, it's not dancing.

00:41:05.680 It's like some combination of like energy work.

00:41:09.000 Like, it's like Reiki plus yoga plus cardio kind of thing.

00:41:13.420 That's less cool than salsa.

00:41:14.780 Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, The Rock.

00:41:18.160 Like, it's a very bizarre thing to have this weight loss tour and have all of these people who are famously thin.

00:41:24.460 Do not take diet and exercise advice from The Rock.

00:41:27.680 If you learn nothing from this show, do not.

00:41:30.520 Have you seen those, like, men's health articles where they walk you through what he eats in a day?

00:41:35.340 listen man sometimes a guy just wants to eat 17 pounds of cod that's the thing it's like it's like

00:41:41.400 7 30 a.m dried cod and like a handful of peanuts 9 30 more cod and like a bowl of yogurt with

00:41:48.980 nothing on it and then like 10 cod like whatever you're doing in your life do not emulate the 0.82

00:41:55.500 fucking rock man i love fish i'm a major seafood person and i absolutely saw that and was like 0.91

00:42:02.460 this is upsetting it's so it's so upsetting so here's where we get into the research around the 0.98

00:42:08.480 effectiveness of weight watchers johns hopkins does some research and they found that weight

00:42:14.680 watchers participants lost three to five percent more than a control group it's a real nominal

00:42:21.900 that's like four extra pounds there's one other study that gets a ton of big splashy headlines

00:42:30.080 that are like, Weight Watchers is twice as effective. This is like a big get. Weight

00:42:35.080 Watchers loves pointing to this study, but the actual numbers in the study are like not that

00:42:40.720 impressive. So after a full year, people in standard medical care lost five pounds and people

00:42:48.260 on Weight Watchers lost 11 pounds. Dude, I am 350 pounds. 11 pounds makes me 339 pounds. I am

00:42:57.580 not no longer fat. Right. Yeah. Always beware of relative statistics. I remember a friend of mine

00:43:03.320 who worked at a small town newspaper got a press release from a church saying it was the fastest

00:43:07.180 growing church in the city that he lived in. It said that it had added 50 percent to its

00:43:12.960 congregation over the course of one year, which was like totally unprecedented. And then he looked

00:43:16.560 into it and they went from eight people to 12 people. It's like, yeah, it still fits within a

00:43:23.020 minivan totally and also weight watchers has before and after photos on their website by the

00:43:27.900 way they have what are called member stories i've got three of them the three that they feature on

00:43:32.860 their website one of them a woman loses 108 pounds another is a couple who lost a combined 91 pounds

00:43:39.160 and another is a woman who lost 89 pounds the before and after stories that they're featuring

00:43:43.740 in their marketing is not 11 pounds that's right so they're still sort of like projecting out like

00:43:49.500 this could be you you could be the 91 pounds person oh wait there's although i should say

00:43:55.500 in the headline of all of these stories there's an asterisk after pounds what it says alicia 32

00:44:02.320 has lost 89 pounds asterisk so then when you go to the page you have to click on the headline

00:44:08.040 and then the asterisk says people following the ww program can expect to lose one to two pounds a

00:44:14.160 week so that's good disclaimer and then it says alicia lost weight on a prior program and is

00:44:20.620 continuing on my weight watchers so the weight loss that they're advertising on their website

00:44:25.160 was literally from another diet i truly was like really hoping that you were going to be like

00:44:30.520 this person lost 89 pounds and then the asterisk was like british pounds sterling oh my god like

00:44:36.540 this person lost like 180 bucks on their dumb diet that didn't work that's on you for thinking

00:44:42.680 we're talking about weight we never said weight again it's like really hard to study the

00:44:47.780 effectiveness of this because of how many times its formula has changed right right these are

00:44:52.980 the years when weight watchers changes their plan you ready they changed their plan in 1963

00:44:58.380 1979 1980 1984 1988 1997 2000 2004 2008 2010 2012 2015 and 2017 so like as time goes on

00:45:14.720 the plan is changing more and more and more yeah you can really smell the desperation with those

00:45:20.560 last few totally so when people talk about like waywatchers is the one that really works it's the

00:45:25.200 one that stood the test of time.

00:45:26.660 I'm like, has it?

00:45:27.600 Right.

00:45:27.960 It seems like it has changed a lot.

00:45:29.880 Man, we're really coming up with sort of,

00:45:31.680 now that's what I call maintenance phase themes.

00:45:35.320 So much of what we talk about is just like capitalistic solutions

00:45:38.640 to public health issues are doomed.

00:45:41.820 They're disguised as solutions, but they exist to enrich shareholders.

00:45:46.600 Yes, and they're not doing things that are like,

00:45:50.140 this will help you manage your blood sugar.

00:45:52.420 They're trying to solve the problem of like,

00:45:53.980 why are there so many fat people yes and i fundamentally don't think that is a public

00:45:57.880 health problem you know what i mean like i think that's a kind of person who exists in the world

00:46:01.600 and using that as this perfect proxy for health absolutely they're bragging about alicia who seems

00:46:06.540 nice losing 89 pounds but they're not talking about like alicia's cholesterol levels are resting

00:46:11.300 heart rate or like what's going on in her life like how like what is she able to do what does

00:46:17.100 her income allow her to do there's no broader context of the individual totally totally listen

00:46:22.820 if it were not going to be ugly as sin, I would 100% leave this podcast record and immediately

00:46:30.520 make a now that's what I call maintenance phase logo t-shirt. But I don't think anybody wants

00:46:38.200 that logo on a t-shirt. No one wants that graphic design back. It's so ugly, but I'm very delighted

00:46:44.500 by now that's what I call maintenance phase. So yeah, what are our concluding thoughts,

00:46:48.760 what do you want to leave us with look like a lot of people have a little lot of like strong

00:46:54.060 like fond or positive feelings about way watchers and sort of this sense that it is like the thing

00:47:01.120 that works the thing that has stood the test of time all of that kind of stuff honestly like i

00:47:06.380 had some of those assumptions going into this research and what i have found is that that's

00:47:10.740 just not true what i found was like this business that's really struggling with a business model

00:47:16.780 that doesn't really seem to work right with people that maybe lose a little bit more weight

00:47:23.160 but there's no evidence that they keep it off they just keep people tithing to weight watchers

00:47:29.580 right like in a funny way i have a friend who's a um in like public health world she'll talk about

00:47:36.380 her favorite viruses as being the ones that are like sophisticated enough to keep their host

00:47:41.160 alive. Right, right. Weight Watchers is kind of a sophisticated version of a diet, right?

00:47:45.680 They keep you engaged effectively in a way that other diets don't necessarily. And that's more

00:47:53.200 a testament to their ability to keep consumers engaged than it is a testament to their ability

00:48:00.020 to help people actually lose weight. So you respect Weight Watchers the way you respect

00:48:04.000 a tapeworm. You know, nature has designed you for a purpose and you fulfill that purpose.

00:48:11.160 But, like, yeah, I mean, like, they have done a good job of sort of hitting home this lifetime member thing and getting people to identify with the lifetime member thing.

00:48:20.040 It's such a missed opportunity because, like, fat people really do need support.

00:48:23.140 Maybe your spouse doesn't understand what you're going through.

00:48:25.540 Maybe your boss doesn't understand what you're going through.

00:48:27.620 You need other people that share that experience.

00:48:30.280 But instead, it became something that was just another avenue for people to feel shitty about themselves.

00:48:37.280 And so that to me is like the huge bummer is that if people were getting together in

00:48:41.020 each other's houses on Wednesday nights, like they could have passed some cool laws, like

00:48:44.940 they could have radicalized each other, like they could have done all kinds of really cool

00:48:48.600 stuff and it just didn't happen.

00:48:49.960 Right.

00:48:50.160 They could have had, they could have shared skills around like, what do you say when people, 0.99

00:48:54.920 you know, give you shit about what you're eating? 0.99

00:48:57.140 How do you push back on dickheads? 1.00

00:48:58.560 Yes. 0.54

00:48:58.780 But because they're sort of centered around this idea that your body is changeable and

00:49:03.460 it's your responsibility to change it. Not only did it not sort of go down the road that you're

00:49:09.580 talking about, it actually pushes folks, I think, further away from that road by saying,

00:49:14.420 your body can change. It's your responsibility to change it. Therefore, this is in no way a

00:49:19.140 legitimate identity. You shouldn't form relationships with other fat people because

00:49:24.120 you're not going to be fat. They're going to be sad and fat. You're going to be happy and cool 0.99

00:49:28.920 and thin. Right. Please only think of your body as a pit stop. Yeah. On the way to your ultimate

00:49:35.620 sort of like destiny of becoming a thin person. It is a big part of the fantasy of a lot of

00:49:42.260 restrictive eating disorders. Yeah. And also in all of those groups the whole time they could

00:49:46.760 have been talking about how to give each other more orgasms. Who are the men in your life? Why

00:49:53.120 aren't they delivering? Look man if they had Weight Watchers meetings that were like here's

00:49:57.440 how to have great sex as a fat person i don't want to tell you how to do your job way watchers

00:50:03.820 but like come on get in touch that is a major gap in the market 0.97

00:50:09.880 aubrey gonna be a group leader from now on

00:50:27.440 We'll be right back.

Maintenance Phase - March 16, 2021

Weight Watchers

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