The Weight Watchers CEO Is Out – Is the Diet Industry Dead?

The abrupt and immediate departure of Sima Sistani as CEO of Weight Watchers prompts us to ask: Is the diet industry dead? Weight Watchers grew from its origins in the early 1960s to become the iconic brand that dominated this field.

For decades now, the popular impulse to reject diet culture has been growing. In line with this, public interest in “dieting” has been waning. Healthy lifestyles and healthy eating became the preferred buzzwords. At the beginning of this year, we observed that 2024 might be the end of diet season.

So it’s hardly a surprise that the most iconic brand in the diet industry – Weight Watchers – seems to be fading into oblivion. The company cited no cause for Sistani’s departure. But it surely doesn’t help that the stock, having dropped in value by 90% this year, is now trading as a penny stock.

Weight or Health?

A key dynamic in this chain of events is that weight loss for its own sake is losing traction in popular culture. It’s not that people have no interest in overcoming obesity. The astounding interest in Ozempic and legitimate obesity medicines like Wegovy and Zepbound disproves that.

But these are medicines – medicines proven to help with objective measures of metabolic and cardiovascular health. In the case of Wegovy, it’s proven to prevent heart attacks, strokes, and premature deaths. So the interest in GLP-1s is about more than just an obsessive focus on weight loss. Health gain is an important part of the motivation.

Consumer marketers at WeightWatchers knew this when they tried to drop weight from their branding six years ago – to become more of a lifestyle and health brand. When Sistani joined the company in 2022, she decided the name change wasn’t working. So she returned the company to using the Weight Watchers name while also admitting that the company’s historical focus on dietary discipline alone was problematic. She apologized outright:

“I want to be the first to say I’m sorry. We know better now, we will do better now. For many who are living with obesity, it’s a chronic condition. And therefore, it is not a choice.”

Thus the company jumped into the fray to compete in telehealth and obesity medicines. But with the benefit of perfect hindsight, it seems that the diet industry heritage of Weight Watchers is too strong to shed.

Are Diets Dead?

We would be slow to say that diets are dead. But it is clear that the era of believing that diets could or should cure obesity may be gone. Diet books are no longer such reliable money makers as they once were. The Economist reports that U.S. sales of “health and fitness” books have fallen by 15% since Wegovy entered the market in 2021. This is notably worse than sales trends for print books generally, which were down 4% in the same period.

But we doubt that the pursuit of healthy diets will fade away. Nor should they. We only hope that expectations will become more realistic. A healthy diet is helpful for coping with obesity, just as it is for many other diseases. But it is seldom able to cure any of them all by itself.

Click here, here, and here for more on the departure of Sistani. For perspective on intuitive eating, diet culture, and health, click here.

Gravestones in St. Anne’s Chapel, Malbork Castle, Poland; photograph by Diego Delso, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

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September 30, 2024