The Rhetoric of Weight Watchers

For over 40 years, Weight Watchers has helped millions of people around the world lose weight.  Ever since it’s conception in the early ‘60s, the program has become a rock in the weight loss industry.  While other fad diets have come and go over the decades, Weight Watchers has remained as a significant, reliable approach to losing weight.  The program began in 1961 when Jean Nidetch began inviting friends to her home each week to offer one another support during their struggle with weight loss.  Over the years, Weight Watchers has evolved to incorporate not only weight loss, but nutrition, physical activity and making good life decisions into their program.




The Weight Watchers program, like most healthy diets, is based on balancing food intake with exercise.  The program guides healthy weight loss by encouraging members to keep track of what they eat and make healthy decisions about food and exercise. However, Weight Watchers’ key to success is their mission to treat weight loss as a “lifestyle change” rather than just another diet.  By attending meetings each week or becoming Internet members, participants are encouraged to share their experiences, support each other and take advantage of the wealth of tools and information available to them through Weight Watchers.




The difference between Weight Watchers and most other diet programs is that Weight Watchers offers members the ability to communicate and support each other through their weight loss experience, all the while encouraging members to make decisions that are right for them as individuals.  Also, Weight Watchers has recently supplemented its program with online eTools and expanded to incorporate more flexible eating plans, such as the new TurnAround® plan that enables members to choose either the Flex PlanPOINTS® option or the new Core Plan, which involves no POINTS counting at all.