WeightWatchers files for bankruptcy as Americans embrace weight loss drugs

Maybe we've just embraced being fat.
- I only wish.

people will do anything to avoid eating a healthy diet and exercising. I lost 120lbs in just over 2 years from walking and eating low carb real food.
- And people will do anything to avoid addressing the simple fact that human bodies aren’t designed to lose weight. Decent folks don’t give a fuck about superfluous anomalous nonsense like this.
- Once again, carbs are not the problem. Italian and French people eat tons of carbs and are way healthier than Americans
  
  The easiest way to boil down weight loss is calories in calories out. If you are in a surplus, you will in most cases gain weight (with some deviance based on genetics and other bodily factors). Lots of carbs is fine if you have a lot of calories out. European people usually have walkable cities, and the infrastructure there promotes lots of calories out on a day to day basis. America is a lot more car centric. The average american has less calories out because walking/cycling is uncommon in most of the US. Coupled with the standard caloric dense american food, it's easy to see how we are struggling with an obesity problem.
  Low carb is just one way to cut down on how many calories you intake. Nothing wrong with it, and there are obviously many other ways to go about it.
  
  Yes, but there is a difference between grains and refined sugar and high glucose corn syrup.
- If those things reduced people's weight in a reasonable time frame then they would do that.
  Don't expect slaves to have the time, money, and energy to spend hundreds of hours to be an attractive weight.
  
  lol
- Congrats! It’s not easy! I dropped 60 lbs the same way. It’s the only thing that works long term since you have to retrain your body and mind, learn new habits, and build interest in maintaining it.
  
  I lost 40 without making any new habits other than weighing in daily with an app that estimates my caloric balance over the last two weeks. Turns out that I didn't need big changes to diet and exercise to get into a persistent decline, though I've lost another 15 since starting hormone therapy

"Weight Watchers files for bankruptcy as old weight loss scams are supplanted by new weight loss scams"
Fixed the headline for them.
- Yeah fuck off.
  I’ve been overweight my entire life, over five decades now, and these drugs are nothing short of a miracle.
  In addition to changing how my body processes sugar, it kills any desire I have for any particular food as well as hunger.
  They like to say that it “silences food noise in your brain” and that works as a description but it doesn’t convey just how truly profound that is.
  You can tell that it works, BTW, by how much they charge for it.
  I’m down a little more than 30 pounds in 90 days. Given enough time I will be slim/normal for the first time since the 1970s, and I don’t appreciate chucklefucks calling them a scam.
  You know what’s a scam? HFCS. Sugar in everything.
  These new drugs though - not a scam. At all.
  
  Hey good for you! Keep it up dude.
  
  I used to work in public health, and even among educated people there was a lot of prejudice against the idea that addiction was beyond the individuals control.
  
  What was your experience in getting those prescribed? Was it a matter of just being overweight? Did they go over lifestyle changes as well? There was a guy at work that was going to get them prescribed. He was very overweight, but he ate horrible food, a lot of candy, and drank three monsters a day. I'll admit I got a little judgemental when he mentioned the medication. He was a good guy and I cared about him, but hard to help him see his lifestyle was probably the cause of a lot of his issues. I ultimately didn't care how he got healthy, if its a pill so be it. But hopefully the lifestyle changes are tried as well. I also think we really need to focus on the mental health aspect of it. He was really hard on himself and I found myself regularly trying to steer him away from that.
- Weight Watchers is basically eating in moderation, its most definitely not a scam.
  
  One could argue that paying a subscription to not over-eat is a scam similar to the way gyms prey on people and get them to sign up while expecting that they'll only come once or twice.
- Wegovy/Saxenda whatever others are (GLP-1) inhibitors aren't a scam, they work.
  They are absurdly expensive for the benefit they bring. Of course, fat lot of good it does if you don't use it to the full extent so you can actually get off of it.
  
  The pricing is absurd. In Denmark it's like $80 for four weeks. in USA it starts at $1000. But medicine in USA is a whole other can of worms.
  In Germany it starts at $300 (2.5mg/week) and goes up to $540 (15mg/week). But then if you get a 15mg/week prescription and happen to only need 5mg/week (possibly supported by taking it more often than once a week), and also make use of the 1.3 (my guesstimate) extra doses that are in the syringe (but a bit difficult to extract) you pay like $120/month. This is what a proper gym costs in my area. And honestly, you safe on food, too. And on your weight watchers subscription!
  
  The work in the sense that they cause weight loss. They do nothing to keep the weight off once it's lost. And they have side-effects, some quite nasty.
  
  Or get caught up in the crossfire where Metformin makes you shit your pants and a new drug for managing your A1C comes out (ozempic) which doesn’t make you shit your pants. Only for a few years later get denied insurance coverage for it because you obviously are using it to lose weight.
  
  fat lot of good
  Pun intended...??
  😂
  
  I dunno anything about these drugs but I remember the diet drug fad in the '90s and the disastrous consequences and side effects that came from it. I'm sure these aren't going to give heart attacks to a bunch of people, but I have a hard time believing there isn't some sort of cost to pay for a magic pill that makes you skinny. I'm willing to admit that my view is tainted by the past and will once again state that I know nothing about these pills specifically so I could be completely off base here.
  
  They work!*
  *aslongasyoudontstop
  
  They also banned the knock off versions a little while ago since the name brands were no longer in shortage. WW had HEAVILY pivoted into trying to sell subscriptions to those and lost big.
  
  There are other, cheaper options as well but they require consistent diet/exercise on top of the Rx, so I think they are less popular for that.
- The modern them actually has an app that lets you build out recipes and/or scan barcodes to track what you eat, they use a distilled version of nutrition called "points" and you're allocated Y points a day to try stay in your food budget.
  I think their older system was also points based just not software.
  The app has training content and some kind of social community (that people say is quite terrible apparently because of the other users).
  It isn't a bad concept, and helps one understand that a slice of pizza is insanely unhealthy if one didn't already know that.
  Where it falls apart is their skeezy subscription model. Best time to sign up is around New Years, if you do bulk pricing you get a discount for the year, if you sign up partly through the year, that discount only lasts 10, 8, 7 months, however many are left. If you want to get a better rate, even their customer service says to just cancel and then sign back up after you're canceled. If they had honest flat-rate pricing and curated their social space/education material better, they'd likely have had something to offer...Instead, like most health tracking/exercise/apps that cost money, it's difficult to manage, expensive, and abrasive to cancel.
  Like so many businesses that went "app" - they didn't embrace a usable and sustainable model that fit on a digital platform, and instead basically phoned it in.
- I haven't read into any of it, but I thought weight watchers was just a calorie counting thing? I'm assuming the new drugs just curb your appetite to allow your stomach to shrink and then you have to still learn to be a healthier eater to maintain/lose weight. I have no impulse control when it comes to food sometimes so I'd fuck that up real quick. If I am in the mindset of eat healthy I can do that for a while, but soon as I have that one day I'll sit down and eat a whole pizza and not give a fuck which I assume would stretch my stomach or tear any stitches and I'd be back to where I was (or in the hospital)
  
  weight watchers was just a calorie counting thing?
  And counseling, according to Wikipedia.
  
  Pretty much. Weight watchers worked great if you adhered to it. Pretty easy to lose weight when you eat fewer calories than you burn. Problem is people's willpower to feel hungry and not eat more calories.
  
  That's exactly what they help with, they turn off the impulse to eat. You feel full and content.. and if you do try force yourself to eat too much you feel sick.
  Without the impulse to eat, all you have is the logical part of you deciding an appropriate time to eat and giving you the headspace to make a good decision about making that meal healthy.
  
  It does. It basically slows your entire digestive system way down to the point where you physically can't eat more than you should. Which also kills your appetite.
  Interestingly, I've discovered whatever nuerotransmitters are affected by it is completely counteracted by lunesta.
- My mom followed their diet plans for years and never lost any weight. But at the same time, she didn't exercise. Diet alone isn't enough unless you're doing one of those extremely calorie restrictive diets and I really don't think that it's exactly healthy to starve yourself. You'd be losing muscle as well as fat.
  
  It’s all but guaranteed that she didn’t actually follow the diet.
  
  Losing weight is almost entirely about diet. Exercise plays only a minimal role in that. It’s far easier to not eat something than to burn off those same calories through working out. That’s not to say exercise isn’t important - it is - but you do it for reasons other than weight loss.

seems like an excuse
- Honestly I thought they went belly-up after it turned out Oprah was full of shit

This is unfortunate. WW is hard because they help you lose in a healthy manner. Drugs will kill ya faster than fat, but at least ya look better faster.
We all wish there was a safe, easy button for life's challenges. At best, pick one.
- I get asked frequently what my secret is to be in such a good shape. I tell them that i don't drink or smoke, i work out, i eat healthy. They never want to hear any of that shit, what they wan to hear is that i have some magic pill that i take once a day and boom, i'm in shape.
  
  Where do you think the best place to start is? I've never been that fat, but I have been out of shape (I'm now one of the very athletic people). For me it was finding active things that I like doing and becoming a member of outdoor communities. But if you're so out of shape it's not fun to do active things, what would keep them going until they get to the fun part?
  (Tzeench is right btw)
  
  When I was in college I had school health insurance so I was on some meds that helped my mental health but made me really fat. When i graduated I lost my health insurance, went off my meds, and lost 80lbs in less than a year. People asked me all the time "whats your secret" and they really didn't like when the answer was "I'm off my meds and want to die, but at least I'm cute now". At school I was on a meal plan and ate three healthy meals a day and used the school gym 4-6 days a week. I was fat but fit. After graduating I didn't go to a gym again for about 7 years and still now don't really eat very healthy or regularly. I'm less heavy than I was in school but I'm not strong or muscle-y like I was when I was fat.
  The worst part is, imo, I have health insurance again, but I'd rather be depressed than go back to being fat, because society is so cruel to fat people. Especially on the internet where people are like "it really IS just as simple as keeping a caloric deficit". That's just not true.
  Anyway, it made sense in my head to respond to you when I started this, but now I think I've gotten lost in the weeds a little. I'm not trying to argue with you about anything, I'm just sharing my experience.
  Hope everyone can find one thing they love about their bodies today xx
- Drugs will kill ya faster than fat
  This is just plain false. The health benefits of not being overweight far outweigh any potential negative effects of the drug itself. GLP-1 receptor agonists have been used to treat type 2 diabetes for decades - we're quite familiar with their risks.
- alot of people want a quick fix when it comes to weight loss, dr now and 1000sisters, almost every just want a immediate solution while refusing to change thier eating habits. ive heard they also eat around thier weight loss surgery sometimes too.
  the extreme people in denial are the people believe fat is being good.
  
  I went to my sister the other day bus she wasn't home. An older neighbour of hers wanted to visit her too, and i tol her that she wasn't home. I don't really like ger that much so we didn't talk too long. At the end of our smalltalk she said: i just wanted to tell you something, you should eat more, being that thing can't be healthy. I didn't even know what to say. I'm 1.85m and weight 80kg. And i have to take health advice from an obese old lady? All her sons are obese too, but they think it's just being "healthy" yeah no, sorrt, i don't envy people who get out of breath when they walk up a set of stairs.
- Doesn’t ww sell frozen food? That food isn’t healthy.
  
  Frozen processed food isn't inherently unhealthy. Eating the right amount of calories from nutritious processed food is still probably a net positive over eating too much of any kind of food.
  
  I'm pretty sure it's not, but I'll eat that before rushing gastroparesis.

https://www.health.com/weight-loss-drugs-gastrointestinal-side-effects-8357374