WeightWatchers, a brand synonymous with '90s diet culture, wants to apologize.
WeightWatchers made its name on calorie restriction via a "points" system and weekly in-person "weigh-ins." The Oprah-endorsed program won plenty of fans. But like all diets, point-counting didn't work for everyone, particularly people with obesity, which is now understood to be a chronic medical condition and not simply a lack of willpower.
"We know better now, we will do better now," said Sima Sistani, WeightWatchers' CEO. "We got it wrong in the past."
The mea culpa comes as the rise of Ozempic has put the entire $76 billion diet industry in crisis.
The number of Americans taking semaglutide medications (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, et al) has increased 40-fold over the past five years.
Sistani, who became CEO of WeightWatchers last year, sees the tectonic shift happening. She knows she can't beat Wegovy, so she's joining forces with it, my colleague Nicole Goodkind writes.
Under Sistani, the company has made a radical shift to focus on connecting customers with buzzy new weight-loss drugs — the kind of risk CEOs rarely take unless they see an existential threat around the corner.
"What we do best is help people with weight management. That is the anchor," she said. "I think we have to be true and authentic to that and who we are."
When Sistani took over in February 2022, WeightWatchers was in crisis following a largely unsuccessful rebranding that tried to glom onto the body positivity movement. Among other changes, Sistani landed a $100 million deal to buy Sequence, a telehealth business that connects customers to medical professionals who can prescribe weight loss drugs.
The Sequence deal is keeping WeightWatchers alive. Goldman Sachs analysts project that 15 million adults in the US will be on these medications by 2031, or about 13% of all adults in the country, not including people with diabetes for whom the medications were originally created.
They believe that these changes could generate $455 million in new revenue for WeightWatchers by 2025.
Of course, not everyone is loving the changes at WeightWatchers, and it's not clear whether Sistani's big bet will pay off. Read Nicole's full profile for CNN's Risk Takers here.
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