Weight Watchers is Suing Jenny Craig
January 27, 2010 by Sal Marinello
Filed under The Healthy Skeptic
Diet giant Weight Watchers is suing competitor Jenny Craig on the grounds that Craig is running a deceptive and misleading advertising campaign, saying that people can lose more weight on Jenny Craig than they can on Weight Watchers.
Did you know that Weight Watchers is the largest weight loss program? Are you familiar with Mark Twain’s quote about quitting smoking? It goes something like this, “Quitting smoking is easy, I’ve done it a thousand times.” When I hear people talk about how great Weight Watchers is, and how it works, because they’ve done it so many times – my Mom has been using Weight Watchers on and off for at least 35 years – I think of the Twain/quitting smoking quote.
A little detour here, but if Weight Watchers – or any diet program – really worked, wouldn’t people do it once and not need to go back? It’s kind of like saying, “Yea, I got a great appendectomy 3 years ago and I’m going back for another one.”
So anyway, Jenny Craig is advertising that research shows their program can help people lose more weight than Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers says that there is no such research and that Jenny has manipulated and otherwise played fast and loose with the facts in order to make their case.
Who cares about some billion dollar companies fighting over their piece of a $35 billion a year industry. That’s $35 billion every year. Let WW and JC quibble over meaningless research. Here’s all you need to know about diets and diet plans.
They don’t work.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) says people need to look at the data regarding a program’s effectiveness and safety, and if this data doesn’t exist, or isn’t provided, the program shouldn’t be used. Here are the NIH’s recommendations for the data that should be made available.
- The percentage of people who complete the program
- The percentage of people who complete the program and achieve various degrees of weight loss
- The proportion of weight loss that is maintained at 1, 3 and 5 years after weight loss has occurred
- The type and severity of negative medical effects of dieting, and the number of participants who experienced them
The dirty little secret is that these reliable stats are not provided by any commercial diet plan; you won’t find this info on either the Jenny Craig or the Weight Watchers websites. Valid, scientific data indicates the success rate for any weight loss program is between 2% and 5%. Even the most stringently controlled, state-of-the-art obesity/behavioral modification programs get only a 5% success rate.
Don’t get distracted by the diet industries nonsense. Diets do not work.
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Weight Watchers DOES work. It’s the people using it that don’t! Weight watchers taught me portion control, how to eat healthier, and the importance of exercise. I lost 35 lbs and have kept it off for 2 years now. If, however, I ever gain it back, it won’t be WW that failed, but myself!
There’s a line from a movie that goes something like this, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing people that he didn’t exist.” Similar situation for the diet industry. They’ve bred people to believe that failure is the fault of the user – you – and not caused by the unsound and fallacious foundations upon which these diets are based. If you want to really help yourself, read the book,”When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies,” by Hirschmann and Munter and anything by Ellen Satter.
This is completely not true. Weight Watchers isn’t a diet. Its learning how not to stuff your face every chance you get. I lost 75 pounds on WW and have kept it off for 5 years. The program is about learning how to eat correctly, how not to eat until you’re so full you’re going to throw up, and compensating. If you eat ice cream for dessert during lunch, you can’t have it again with dinner. Simple… You don’t need to buy food, drink shakes… That was a totally ridiculous statement.
The definition of a diet is, “to select or limit the food one eats to improve one’s physical condition or to lose weight.” So Weight Watchers certainly is a diet. And if someone needs to learn “how not to stuff their face” at every meal, then they are on a diet and also need behavior modification. People have been sold a bill of goods by the Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig’s of the world. Anecdotal stories of weight loss do not prove efficacy.
I do believe that Weight Watchers works. What FlamingJune and Beth say is true, but there is actually more to it than that.
There is also the community. Going into one of these meetings and talking to other members (or dieters) helps you stay on track.
And, most importantly, what makes it work, is when you stick to it. People who have done it and put on weight later did so because they stopped applying the program or going to their weekly or monthly meetings.
I agree that for most people, everything that WW says is something they do know already. However, it’s like saying smoking is bad for you to a smoker. All smokers know. But still they smoke, until one day. And they never smoke again. It’s not so easy with food: you will always have to eat.
For some it is easy to controle one’s appetite and binges. For others, it’s not. That’s why groups like WW are there. It’s like people who stop drinking and go to AA meetings. Same thing.
For your knowledge, I am a lifetime member at Weight Watchers, and if when I stopped going, I slowly fell back into my bad habits. I won’t say that I hate my body when I’m bigger. I just feel less healthy, heavier, more tired… and THAT, I don’t like.