WeightWatchers to focus on menopause after fat jabs cripple business
The New York-headquartered company said it will support women through mid-life hormonal changes with a programme of tailored nutritional help and advice on lifestyle changes.
The strategic shift comes after WeightWatchers filed for bankruptcy in May, allowing it to write off $1.15bn (£810m) in debt from its balance sheet.
WeightWatchers said its expansion into women's health would 'address a broader gap in healthcare' adding it had been 'long underserved and overlooked by scientific and medical communities'. Tara Comonte, chief executive of WeightWatchers, labelled the transformation a 'pivotal moment' for the company.
Dieting businesses like WeightWatchers are scrambling to adapt to the rapidly growing market for weight-loss drugs. Morgan Stanley has predicted that the market could hit $105bn (£81.3bn) by 2030.
WeightWatchers suffered a blow in 2023 when long-time brand ambassador and board member Oprah Winfrey announced that she was using an unspecified weight loss medication in 2023. Ms Winfrey then left the company's board the following year.
Last week, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, told LBC Radio that weight-loss drugs were the ' talk of the House of Commons tea rooms ' and claimed half of his colleagues were using them.
Mr Streeting pledged to widen public access to weight-loss drugs, stating that they should be 'based on need and not the ability to pay'.
Weight-loss jabs make users feel fuller for longer by slowing the speed at which their stomachs empty. This is a significant challenger for WeightWatchers, which markets a willpower-based alternative to shedding pounds.
In a move to adapt, WeightWatchers announced in May that its UK subsidiary had partnered with CheqUp, a provider of weight-loss jabs. The company also redesigned its app to target people on weight-loss injections, offering food recommendations to minimise the side-effects of the jabs, such as nausea.
WeightWatchers said its new women's health programme would support people through perimenopause, menopause and postmenopause. It added that it would provide nutritional guidance and specialised coaching for women at this stage in their life.
Founded in 1963 by the American businesswoman Jean Nidetch, the company helps users monitor their diets by attributing scores to different foods. WeightWatchers also sells its own range of ready meals and low-calorie wines.
It is not the only company facing challenges as a result of weight loss jabs. Glanbia, the owner of meal replacement company SlimFast, recently announced it would sell the business in February following a decline in sales.
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BBC News
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Gugu used to collect her anti-retroviral from a USAID-funded clinic in downtown when President Trump's cuts to aid funding were announced earlier this year, her and thousands of other HIV-positive patients across South Africa suddenly faced an uncertain was lucky, the clinic where she got the medication that helps suppress her symptoms contacted her before it closed down."I was one of the people who was able to get their medication in bulk. I usually collect a three-month prescription. But before my clinic closed, they gave me nine months' worth of medication."She will run out of ARVs in September, and then plans on going to her local public hospital for more.A former sex worker, the 54-year-old found out she was HIV-positive after she'd quit the years ago she got a chesty cough, and initially thought it was tuberculosis. She went to a doctor who told her she had a chest infection and treated her for when the treatment failed, she went to a clinic to get an HIV test."By then I already assumed that I was HIV-positive, and I told the nurse this."She was right, and she has been on antiretrovirals (ARVs) ever since. We're not using her real name at her currently works as a project coordinator for an NGO."We help pregnant sex workers get their ARVs, to ensure their children are born HIV-negative. We also do home visits to make sure that the mothers take their medication on time, and to look after their babies when they go for their monthly check-ups."Many HIV-positive sex workers in South Africa relied on private clinics funded by the US government's now-defunct aid agency, USAID, to get their prescriptions and most of the facilities closed after US President Donald Trump cut most foreign aid earlier this a report due to be released on Thursday, the UN body in charge of fighting HIV/Aids does not single out the US, but says that drastic cuts from a number of donors have sent shockwaves around the world, and the "phenomenal progress" in tackling the illness risks being reversed."New HIV infections have been reduced by 40% since 2010, and 4.4 million children have been protected from acquiring HIV since 2000. 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She told us there was nothing special about sex workers."She thinks this could lead to many sex workers defaulting on their medication, "especially because their hospital files contain a lot of personal information, and the concern is that sometimes the nurses at these local clinics aren't always the most sensitive in dealing with this kind of information."According to the UN, the US cuts to HIV funding could reverse some of the gains made by what has been called one of the most successful public health interventions in in the UK-based Lancet medical journal last month estimated that USAID funding directly reduced Aids deaths by 65%, or 25.5 million, over the past two decades. 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Even with new viruses that might appear, we're not going to have the surveillance infrastructure that we once had."South Africa has been one of the global leaders in HIV research. Many of the medications that help prevent the virus, and which have benefitted people around the world, were trialled in South includes Prep (pre-exposure prophylaxis), a medication which stops HIV-negative people from catching the breakthrough preventive drug released this year, Lenacapavir, an injection taken twice a year and that offers total protection from HIV, was also tried in South Africa. In a lab at Wits University's Health Sciences campus, a small group of scientists are still working on a vaccine for HIV. 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Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
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