WeightWatchers files for bankruptcy as Americans embrace weight loss drugs
WeightWatchers files for bankruptcy as Americans embrace weight loss drugs
WeightWatchers, founded in 1963, has struggled to shed debt and cope with the emergence of weight loss drugs.
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"Weight Watchers files for bankruptcy as old weight loss scams are supplanted by new weight loss scams"
Fixed the headline for them.
Wegovy/Saxenda whatever others are (GLP-1) inhibitors aren't a scam, they work.
They are absurdly expensive for the benefit they bring. Of course, fat lot of good it does if you don't use it to the full extent so you can actually get off of it.
Or get caught up in the crossfire where Metformin makes you shit your pants and a new drug for managing your A1C comes out (ozempic) which doesn’t make you shit your pants. Only for a few years later get denied insurance coverage for it because you obviously are using it to lose weight.
In theory once you stay at a dosage of metformin for long enough the unfortunate side effects go away. In practice it's been a year and I still can't trust a fart.
You guys trust your farts? I always presume each oncoming fart is a world ending disaster.
I got denied coverage because I don’t have type 2 diabetes. My main doctor confirmed I’m pre-pre-diabetic.
Or I was.
I pay for the medication myself and the diet they have me on is literally called the Insulin Resistance Diet.
Not only have I lost just over 30 pounds in 90 days but I’m also clearly healthier just because of this diet. (At my height and weight 30 pounds isn’t shit, but I’m only just getting started.)
Proud of you random internet stranger! Keep up the good work! It’s going to be super duper worth it!
fat lot of good
Pun intended...??
😂
The pricing is absurd. In Denmark it's like $80 for four weeks. in USA it starts at $1000. But medicine in USA is a whole other can of worms.
In Germany it starts at $300 (2.5mg/week) and goes up to $540 (15mg/week). But then if you get a 15mg/week prescription and happen to only need 5mg/week (possibly supported by taking it more often than once a week), and also make use of the 1.3 (my guesstimate) extra doses that are in the syringe (but a bit difficult to extract) you pay like $120/month. This is what a proper gym costs in my area. And honestly, you safe on food, too. And on your weight watchers subscription!
I dunno anything about these drugs but I remember the diet drug fad in the '90s and the disastrous consequences and side effects that came from it. I'm sure these aren't going to give heart attacks to a bunch of people, but I have a hard time believing there isn't some sort of cost to pay for a magic pill that makes you skinny. I'm willing to admit that my view is tainted by the past and will once again state that I know nothing about these pills specifically so I could be completely off base here.
I'll just say that my wife works in medicine and you have to stop Oz3mpic 24 hours before surgery because of the added risk of aspiration due to the stomach retaining food contents for longer. Seems to possibly put strain on the pancreas (pancreatitis a side effect).
That doesn't sit well with me. Neither does it fix the core problem of what caused the vast majority of weight gain cases: poor dietary habits. Then again, our society has short-circuited evolutionary dopamine-driven behavior so it may necessitate intervention to re-wire it back.
Ozempic is typically taken once a week. The half-life of Ozempic is about a week. Stopping Ozempic "24 hours before surgery" does not make any sense.
I might have that wrong and it may be a full week. I'll ask them when I get a chance and update.
Edit: Yeah my mistake; it's a week.
could you be referring to this drug, Fenfluramine/phentermine.
Good ol’ fen-phen.
but I have a hard time believing there isn’t some sort of cost to pay for a magic pill that makes you skinny
There is a cost. It is called money, it is incredibly expensive, and they need to take it for life.
They also banned the knock off versions a little while ago since the name brands were no longer in shortage. WW had HEAVILY pivoted into trying to sell subscriptions to those and lost big.
There are other, cheaper options as well but they require consistent diet/exercise on top of the Rx, so I think they are less popular for that.
Yeah fuck off.
I’ve been overweight my entire life, over five decades now, and these drugs are nothing short of a miracle.
In addition to changing how my body processes sugar, it kills any desire I have for any particular food as well as hunger.
They like to say that it “silences food noise in your brain” and that works as a description but it doesn’t convey just how truly profound that is.
You can tell that it works, BTW, by how much they charge for it.
I’m down a little more than 30 pounds in 90 days. Given enough time I will be slim/normal for the first time since the 1970s, and I don’t appreciate chucklefucks calling them a scam.
You know what’s a scam? HFCS. Sugar in everything.
These new drugs though - not a scam. At all.
Hey good for you! Keep it up dude.
What was your experience in getting those prescribed? Was it a matter of just being overweight? Did they go over lifestyle changes as well? There was a guy at work that was going to get them prescribed. He was very overweight, but he ate horrible food, a lot of candy, and drank three monsters a day. I'll admit I got a little judgemental when he mentioned the medication. He was a good guy and I cared about him, but hard to help him see his lifestyle was probably the cause of a lot of his issues. I ultimately didn't care how he got healthy, if its a pill so be it. But hopefully the lifestyle changes are tried as well. I also think we really need to focus on the mental health aspect of it. He was really hard on himself and I found myself regularly trying to steer him away from that.
I haven't read into any of it, but I thought weight watchers was just a calorie counting thing? I'm assuming the new drugs just curb your appetite to allow your stomach to shrink and then you have to still learn to be a healthier eater to maintain/lose weight. I have no impulse control when it comes to food sometimes so I'd fuck that up real quick. If I am in the mindset of eat healthy I can do that for a while, but soon as I have that one day I'll sit down and eat a whole pizza and not give a fuck which I assume would stretch my stomach or tear any stitches and I'd be back to where I was (or in the hospital)
weight watchers was just a calorie counting thing?
And counseling, according to Wikipedia.
It does. It basically slows your entire digestive system way down to the point where you physically can't eat more than you should. Which also kills your appetite.
Interestingly, I've discovered whatever nuerotransmitters are affected by it is completely counteracted by lunesta.
How is it slowing down the digestive system? Didn't we learn recently that our digestion system / gut bacteria actually plays a strong role in lifespan of a person? Would modifying such processes not potentially impact the lifespan of a person... Guess we'll find out in time
It already has. Ozempic, once weekly injection, can reverse the need of insulin in Type 2 diabetics. My dad still has the symptoms he accumulated, but hasn't had any worsening of symptoms and improvement of a lot.
My blood work is perfect. My heart rate and blood pressure (aside of POTS) is perfect. I can mow the yard without passing out.
My sugar consumption has dropped a lot. And I'm eating way better.
But to me? It's not about the lifespan. It's the quality of life. I can chase my kid around again. I feel more attractive. I can do things that normally I hide from. One day I might even try to get laid. If I get cancer in 20 years directly tied to it, so what? Ain't no "Cats in the Cradle" here.
Chase your kid around, one day might even try to get laid. Are my order of operations wrong or is there some parentsethies missing from this equation? And yes, that was a bad joke, I'm sticking with it
the slowing down doesnt exactly depend on your digestive system. its complex also involves neurological compenent, and certain hormones like ghrelin.
once had the flu(2018 flu) so bad i lost appetite, it was the strangest feeling besides the wierd balance issues, also cause all sorts of other issues.
That's exactly what they help with, they turn off the impulse to eat. You feel full and content.. and if you do try force yourself to eat too much you feel sick.
Without the impulse to eat, all you have is the logical part of you deciding an appropriate time to eat and giving you the headspace to make a good decision about making that meal healthy.
The modern them actually has an app that lets you build out recipes and/or scan barcodes to track what you eat, they use a distilled version of nutrition called "points" and you're allocated Y points a day to try stay in your food budget.
I think their older system was also points based just not software.
The app has training content and some kind of social community (that people say is quite terrible apparently because of the other users).
It isn't a bad concept, and helps one understand that a slice of pizza is insanely unhealthy if one didn't already know that.
Where it falls apart is their skeezy subscription model. Best time to sign up is around New Years, if you do bulk pricing you get a discount for the year, if you sign up partly through the year, that discount only lasts 10, 8, 7 months, however many are left. If you want to get a better rate, even their customer service says to just cancel and then sign back up after you're canceled. If they had honest flat-rate pricing and curated their social space/education material better, they'd likely have had something to offer...Instead, like most health tracking/exercise/apps that cost money, it's difficult to manage, expensive, and abrasive to cancel.
Like so many businesses that went "app" - they didn't embrace a usable and sustainable model that fit on a digital platform, and instead basically phoned it in.
While I've not taken them, though I've thought about it, I've met people who have. It's shocking how well those drugs work. Both of them were super happy with the results and could probably be sales reps, to be honest. One was even proud to share her before photo, because she wanted to drive home just how well it worked. No one believed her until she showed the photos.