(2023-05-30) Its The Age Of Ozempic Do We Need Weight Watchers Anymore

It’s the Age of Ozempic. Do We Need Weight Watchers Anymore? ...the night I first met Sima Sistani. This was a decade ago, before she became the chief executive of Weight Watchers. Sistani was working at Yahoo. Sistani’s career has been a winding one. After jobs at Goldman Sachs, Creative Artists Agency, and a short-lived tech startup, she became the head of media for Yahoo-owned Tumblr. Then the VP of media for Meerkat, a buzzy livestreaming video startup. Sistani and a Meerkat founder decided to stealthily launch a second live-video app, called Houseparty. In 2019, Epic Games acquired that venture for a reported $35 million. Sistani didn’t need to work again, but in 2020 she contacted Weight Watchers and expressed interest in advising the company on its digital strategy—planting a seed that would eventually result in the chief executive role.

In 2018, Weight Watchers attempted a rebrand, changing its name to “WW” and focusing on general well-being instead of dieting

When Sistani took the helm in March of 2022, Weight Watchers was set to record an over $250 million loss that year. The pandemic had nearly killed its in-person retail business, but its digital business, which charges for access to science-backed nutrition plans and a “members only” social network, was also in decline.

It didn’t go well.

Of course, the company's renewed mission is now colliding head-on with the body positivity movement, which encourages acceptance instead of weight change, and competing with digital apps (like Noom and MyFitnessPal) and drugs (like Ozempic) that promise to make dropping pounds oh so easy.

despite its millions of still satisfied subscribers, has hoards of critics calling its points-based system the epitome of unhealthy diet culture.

the onus is on us again because now we’re having this conversation about these GLP-1 [diabetes] medications.

the communities that need it most do not have access

How do you transform Weight Watchers?

the whole move to calling the company WW in 2018 was a glossy way of trying to be like, “We’re wellness, we’re wellness.” But I decided, “No, let’s have the hard conversation.” What we’re trying to say is that living overweight and with obesity is a health detractor. If we want to be the best at helping people manage their weight, the conversation is about weight and health. That’s why you come to us. Not for meditation or sleep advice or fitness.

Now we are having the hard conversation about what that means in a world of body acceptance

We’ve jumped the shark a bit in saying, “Well, that means we need to also be OK with sick bodies.” For me the positive part of the conversation is, “We all come in different shapes and sizes and everything, but we also need weight health.”

Q: Within the conversation about who should get Ozempic or any of these appetite-inhibitor medicines, there’s still a broader assumption that being overweight does equal unhealthy. And for some people, being a larger body, having a larger frame, carrying extra weight—who actually makes that judgment that that is unhealthy?
A: Scientists. There’s a body of science that says that if you are living overweight and/or with obesity, even if you are healthy at this moment, you are more likely to develop cancer or heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes. To me, this is like the anti-vaxxer conversation

BMI, I totally agree, is in some respects a problematic metric. But over time the science—the community of medical doctors and scientists who have used it—has come to say, “Well, it is still the best metric that we have.” There are also all of these beyond-the-scale metrics that people take into account. I think that’s important until we come up with a better measurement than BMI.

If somebody chooses that they want to lose weight because they want to live a healthier life, the fact is there’s now this backlash.

I also had developed a thyroid condition through the pregnancy, so for me, there was a clinical intervention as well. Synthroid was a part of my therapy to get back to a place where I felt healthy again

You’ve just overseen the multimillion-dollar acquisition of Sequence, a telehealth company that facilitates appointments with weight-loss clinicians.

what they’re doing is providing access to a clinician who can say whether or not it’s medically appropriate to be on medications. And then if it is, now you are creating an easier adherence to our traditional Weight Watchers behavior-change, nutrition-science program.

For 60 years, everything we’ve done has been evidence-based. When everybody was all about, say, Atkins, Weight Watchers never got on that bandwagon. We’re always: Everything in moderation. Everything’s on the table.

We have a significant lapsed membership base, some of whom are lapsed because they had success on the program and moved on, but others who lapsed because our program alone couldn’t help them. And so here’s this opportunity to help people.”

And then at the scientific advisory board meeting, my first month here, they did a readout on all the clinical trials that were happening with these medications. The FDA had approved Wegovy. We dug into it. We even met with Novo Nordisk, really trying to understand what is happening. And I just thought, “We’ve unlocked this amazing thing. How can we embrace it?

We’re now able to address the hungry gut through the medications, but still the part that is missing is the hungry brain. It’s about understanding foods with high nutrient density, ways for me to ensure that I’m protecting my lean muscle mass. Those are all going to be important to the medications working well long term.

Behavior change therapy addresses cognitive patterns—the hungry brain—but there is only so much that you can adhere to with behavioral modification if your biological factors are working against you—the hungry gut.