Page 52 - BTC Debunking the diet

Chapter 8: Weight Watchers

Sadly, Weight Watchers has gone belly up in SA (pardon the BELLY pun,
LOL!). In the US, Oprah bought a 10% stake in the company and has used it to
promulgate her personal brand even more.

We are including it here, just in case you were on the programme, and you
still follow its principles.

The programme was started by an American woman called Jean Nidetch in
the 1960s, and has since spread all around the world. It is particularly popular
in Australia, and the South African programme followed some of the
elements of the Australian one.

Jean Nieditch noticed her runaway eating patterns and was alarmed by the
lack of professional help she could receive for the psychology behind her
consumption. She began chatting to friends about how she was feeling,
starting an AA-esque meeting group with individuals in a similar predicament,
to get those emotions off her chest. As they say, a problem shared is a
problem halved.

The group was an instant success, and she knew she was onto something, so
she expanded the programme and franchised it. Voila! Here’s some free
business advice for you: creating a ‘franchisable’ service and product offering
is still one of the best ways to build wealth.

The programme works as follows: each person who joins is allocated a set of
points for each day, which must be adhered to. So for example, a woman will
usually get 18 points if she is a certain weight; a man might get 25 depending
on his weight. The number of points allocated for you to spend each day is
dependent on your gender and current weight. Then, each food or food

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This booklet © 2019, Rob Rodell, all rights reserved.