Much as been written about Oprah Winfrey buying Weight Watchers‘ stock for $40 million dollars and, in just a few days, tripling that investment, when stocks rose.

On the surface, like most media blitzes, the numbers look impressive.

And comics and cartoonists had fun with the idea that Oprah would make MORE money to add to her billions:

But beyond the media blitz and the jokes, there is something much more insidious and disappointing about this shoddy deal.

It’s the very serious impact it may have on women, the target audience of Weight Watchers‘ useless money-grubbing business. Like all business ventures in Diet World, it works (or worked, for a few decades) on the fact that diets DON’T work. When weight is regained, and almost all weight lost on a diet is regained (see how and why), people don’t blame Weight Watchers or Dr. Atkins or Nutrisystem, and they are certainly not going to blame Oprah. They blame themselves.

And, often, they return for more diminishment, failure and self-recrimination.

The revolving door of Diet World is where the profits are. Among the thousands of clients and students who have come to me for help, very few attempted Weight Watchers once. The majority paid for the services six or seven times, all without long-term results.

The all-time winner was a woman I’ll call Deb, who tried the food restriction approach touted by Weight Watchers 20 times! Each time, she vowed to “do it better” and get results she could keep. But, alas, we can’t keep the results of a food plan forced from outside of us.

But, the internet has made us wiser to this kind of misrepresentation and manipulation.

 

Oprah’s Message to Women

Most of the negative feedback has centered on Oprah’s statement in her poorly acted TV commercial for Weight Watchers:  “Inside every woman, there’s a woman she knows she can be.”

• As if you are different person if you weigh 140 or 240!

• As if her financial success, her media reach and her untold good deeds would be different if she was thin? What? Would they somehow be better?

• As if our focus should be to become a different person. WTF??

 

The Sadder Message About Herself

Oprah still doesn’t get it! Once more, she’s bullying her body and trying to change it without the inner change that allows a body to gently release what it does not need.

Yep, weight loss (the permanent kind) is an inside-out job.

WHO you are BEING in the world is the important factor. That’s what creates your body. When I was playing victim (and I had some pretty horrible things happen to me as a child – and I want to acknowledge Oprah has suffered in the past as well), I created my 242 pounds with my negativity, depression, fear and anxiety about the world.

THAT’s what had to change before I could release (for good) 92 pounds.

Oprah is still operating under Diet Mentality, which says you are “on” or “off” a diet, being “good” or “bad,” and worthy of nourishment or not.

Like many of us, Oprah has lived in Diet world for a long time. And it often aligns with making big money.

Her biggest weight turnaround was in 1988, when she wore size 10 jeans on her TV show. She didn’t admit, until later, she accomplished that weight loss with a liquid fasting diet for four months. Liquid diets and fasting result in regain 100% of the time. Later, she said she began regaining weight immediately after the show.

Fast forward four years and she shot another TV show, complete with her humiliating on-air confession she “fell off the wagon.” That show was another top-rated episode as she embarked on the 1992 weight loss endeavor with personal trainer Bob Greene, with whom she partnered in a series of money-making projects. (In the self-help biz, this is called a “joint venture.” Someone with the audience hooks up with someone with expertise and they share profits.)

That weight loss didn’t last either, but the money was already in the Prada bag. And there’s lots of money in the designer purse. It hardly makes sense that’s her motivation now.

 

If It’s Not About Money, Is It Challenge She Wants?

Weight Watchers is struggling. Most financial analysts doubt even Oprah’s involvement will save them from their debt of $2.2 billion. Maybe she wants the challenge.

But a bigger question is:  why they are struggling? Beyond the silly points game, apparently designed to distract customers from the lack of nutrition which occurs by counting the damned points, the program doesn’t get long-term results. They stopped doing research a long time ago, according to The New York Times, because of lack of favorable data.

Everyone who loses weight, and regains it, is harmed, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Nobody perpetuates GAINING fat more than Weight Watchers and other diet plans relying on the revolving door. After a while, people resent that crap. Judging from the popularity of comediennes like Amy Schumer and Rebel Wilson, I think we’ve hit the RESENTMENT level on the crapmeter.

We don’t need this shit anymore!

Research has outed Weight Watchers and other diet programs in Diet World. Today’s smart consumer is too savvy and too sassy. Anyone who’s done a little research (and I’ve done A LOT of research) knows diets don’t work. They set up hunger and binge cycles that can spin into some dangerous dysfunctional food behaviors. With the internet, it’s pretty easy to get educated, if you want to get the facts. Of course, you can also download a bunch of dangerous Diet World quick fixes and fads.

I think women have grown too independent and powerful in the years since Weight Watchers showed up in the 1950s. Do we feel like being reduced to a regulated amount or calories, or points, or anything that can be counted, when true hunger exists, and needs attention?

No. We don’t need this shit anymore!

Now, I know it’s easy to attack celebrities. I’ve waited a few days to write this post because I wanted to think seriously about my response.

But, ultimately, I just kept coming back to this opinion:  This is deplorable behavior from a woman who claims to want to empower women. Or a woman who, as she has said, wants “her soul to shine.”

It strikes at integrity. Her “authenticity” is looking opaque.

I believe women are done with the spandex silhouette of the Bond girls. Or the runway waifs. The who-knows-what-they-did-to-get-that-thin crowd.

In the future, you are going to see women of a wide range of sizes and shapes doing amazing things. Hell, I still have the nerve to truck my still-pudgy butt on stage to talk about EMPOWERING women, because that’s a conversation worth starting, even if I do wear a size that’s double digits (10 or 12).

And I didn’t need to find another woman inside me in order to do that.

I think you’ll also see the likes of Weight Watchers and their competitors fade from existence, in the wake of women too smart and powerful to fork over their money, bodies and self-worth to a corporate conglomerate, no matter who their celebrity spokesperson happens to be.

That’s my dream.

 

The 2010 blog post: Does Oprah Get It?

The 2012 blog post: How Regain Happens