The diet industry's dirty little secret revealed
The Battle of the Bulge is like any war. While some will pay for it with their lives, others will make a killing. So it is with the diet industry and the perpetual war on weight.
Let me tell you the diet industry’s dirty little secret.
It doesn’t really want you to lose weight.
It doesn’t want you to win this war.
It’s like any war. While some will pay for it with their lives, others – bankers, arms manufacturers – will make a killing. So it is with the multi-billion dollar diet industry and the war on weight.
All industries, indeed all businesses, thrive on repeat custom. There is money to be made helping you lose weight, of course there is. Lots of money. But there is even more money to be made if you don’t maintain that weight loss. Yo-yo dieters, people who experience repeated weight loss followed by repeated weight gain, are the bread and butter of the diet industry.
In 2007, the British Journal of Nutrition published details of a study of weight-loss maintenance in 699 individuals who had successfully completed the Weight Watchers’ weight-loss programme. Each one was a Weight Watchers success story having reached their target weight and maintained it by weighing no more than two pounds over that goal for six weeks, thereby qualifying as Lifetime members.
But after a year, only 26.5% of them remained below their target weight. After two years, that figure had fallen to 20.5%, and after five years, to 16.2%.
That means that 84% of Weight Watchers’ “success stories” end up putting the weight back on – and, of course, there will be plenty more participants who start the programme, but fail to ever reach their target weight.
That’s not to say Weight Watchers are directly responsible for these failures. I’m a great believer in individual responsibility and all that comes with it, and 50% of its Lifetime members did maintain at least a 5% weight loss after five years. But again that’s 50% of its most successful participants, not all Weight Watchers participants.
But let's think about those who don't lose weight or who lose weight and put it back on. Richard Samber, a former finance director at Weight Watchers, was quoted in The Guardian saying that if a person cannot maintain weight loss, then he or she will keep returning to the company, boosting its profits. “It’s successful because the other 84% have to come back and do it again. That’s where your business comes from.”
84% of dieters have to come back and do it again. Kerching!
Like I said, the diet industry doesn’t really want you to lose weight.
If a small minority do, no problem. You can wheel them out as “slimmer of the year” and “biggest loser of the month” to attract more paying customers.
The diet industry is happy to take your money to help you lose weight, and it’s just as happy to take it again when you put it back on again and need to start over. That's its dirty little secret.
This is a merry-go-round you want to get off and stay off. Belly will help you do just that.
REFERENCES
- Weight-loss maintenance 1, 2 and 5 years after successful completion of a weight-loss programme (British Journal of Nutrition))
Article last updated: 29th January 2021
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