>WeightWatchers files for bankruptcy as fat-loss jabs boom
>WeightWatchers has filed for bankruptcy in the US as it struggles with debt and fierce competition from fat-loss jabs like Ozempic and Mounjaro. WeightWatchers began as weekly weight-loss support group meeting with 400 attendees, and eventually gained millions of members across the globe. But demand for its programmes has dropped while the popularity of weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound has risen - although the brand does sell weight medications as part of its programmes.
>The brand reported a net loss of $346m (£260m) last year, while its subscription revenues fell 5.6% compared with the year before. On Tuesday, it reported that subscription revenues in the first three months of 2025 were down 9.3% - although its clinical business, which includes weight-loss medication, saw revenues up more than 57%.
>The brand's total liabilities of $1.88bn are greater than the value of its assets. It said it "expects [the] reorganisation plan to be confirmed in approximately 40 days and to emerge as a publicly traded company." WeightWatchers renamed itself "WW" in 2018 as it shifted to focus on promoting health beyond weight-loss.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyvqv247gd7o
I know a few people on or thinking about Mounjaro. Talking to them, the going concensus among the community is that "you'll be on it your entire life". I pryed a little into the idea and it turns out that some people experience extreme withdrawals from the drug to the point of ravenous appetite and 'hunger', and hearing what're called food voices, which is presumably the extreme of appetite. The latter would no doubt be terribly distressing to a person who's eating to fill a psychological hole, as my two friends do.
It seems suspicious that such a addictive drug with terrible withdrawal effects is bought and prescribed by the NHS.
I can't imagine this any other way that a devils bargain.
What's next, greater trade ties with the US so they can feed into the obeasity crisis?
>>10094 My wife has always had food voices, eating constantly not for physical need but for psychological need. At her heaviest she was close to 500lbs. She had a gastric sleeve a few years ago, and even though that made it physically harder to binge due to a smaller stomach, it didn't fix the psychological need. She lost some weight, but not as much as she should.
Since starting Mounjaro, she says the food noise has gone. And I can attest to that, groceries are lasting a lot longer. She's managing to lose weight and keep it off easier than when she just had the gastric sleeve.
I am concerned about the long term effects - as she's going up in doses every month or so, I worry what happens when the dose is maxed out and can't be increased further. And if for some reason she was unable to use it due to shortage or other health issue, it's very likely the food noises would come back.
So it's that trade off - does she stay on Mounjaro indefinitely, having the ability to lose weight and keep it off at the expense of being dependent on the drug; or go for a "healthier" method like diet and exercise which has never worked for her? To some people, having that chemical dependency but getting good results overrides doing it naturally and getting nowhere.
>>10095 Also I will I say I find the "food voices/food noises" thing incredibly lame for some reason, but it seems to have really taken off online in the last year or so. It seems like a cope concept.
Much to my chagrin, we've cured obesity. We've become very suspicious and pessimistic about medicine these days (for good reason), but GLP-1 receptor agonists are the biggest advance in medicine in decades. This is a miracle on par with the discovery of penicillin or the halogenated anaesthetics.
GLP-1 agonists were originally developed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes; the discovery that they're also incredibly effective at treating obesity was entirely incidental. We've since discovered that they're also the best available treatment for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and extremely effective as a treatment for polycystic ovary syndrome. They have a substantial antidepressant effect even in non-obese patients and reduce the risk of most kinds of cancer. There is preliminary but very promising evidence to suggest that they could be a highly effective treatment for drug addiction, alcoholism, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
GLP-1 agonists are currently expensive and inconvenient, but that's about to change rapidly. The first GLP-1 RAs had such a short half-life that they had to be taken twice a day; semaglutide became a blockbuster because it extended the half-life to a week. Now that we're nailing the pharmacokinetics, we're moving on from injectables and we're seeing oral formulations hit the market. Before long, I think GLP-1 RA pills will be as ubiquitous as statins.
I'm not a shill for big pharma, I think that a large proportion of pharmaceuticals really aren't worth taking, I think that most people are far too eager to take pills for things that would be better addressed by lifestyle changes, but I just cannot deny the weight of evidence. GLP-1 RAs are the real deal.
I'm not even ten stone and have no need to lose weight, but I think it's highly plausible that I'll be taking a GLP-1 RA within a few years - not to lose weight, but simply because they have so many beneficial effects beyond weight loss. I celebrate an epoch-defining advance in medicine, even as I mourn the slow demise of the BBW. A big thank you to the Gila monster for extending my healthy life expectancy, and a fuck you for taking away dump truck asses and third tits.
>>10095 I think the reason I feel passionately about it is because there's a photograph in my friends house showing the exact moment in time they started gorging food. It was taken when they were torn between parents, over-eating probably at the behest of one and digust of the other.
I wonder what happens psychiatrically and suddenly fall into a pit of childhood despair whenever she misses an injection.
>>10094 >It seems suspicious that such a addictive drug with terrible withdrawal effects is bought and prescribed by the NHS.
I imagine it probably is a grand bargain but based on what we already know of the problems of obesity. The drawback as otherlad points out is that it doesn't really address the problem that causes someone to be fat and that can sometimes be deep trauma, from what I recall of pic it's an issue that fatties end up having trauma resurface even as they lose weight which forces them to confront big problems while being cut off from their one way of mitigating stress. You can't have your cake and eat it.
Actually, this is a bit mental in another way. We don't really know what caused humanity to balloon in weight for definite and the problem stretches across the planet and even to wildlife. We should do something about that instead of addressing the symptoms.
>Actually, this is a bit mental in another way. We don't really know what caused humanity to balloon in weight for definite
Overwhelmingly, the answer is that food became dramatically cheaper and tastier. The idea of obesity being a disease of poverty would have been completely unthinkable for most of human history. Until really quite recently, most of the population were visibly malnourished; the average First World War uniform is shockingly tiny by modern standards and would barely fit most 12-year-olds today. In the 1950s, the average household spent more than a third of their income on food. Until the 1970s, most people simply couldn't afford to get fat even if they wanted to.
We can see it playing out internationally. As soon as a country becomes rich enough to eliminate starvation, their obesity rates start to soar. There are a few outliers - east Asians seem somewhat immune to obesity, Pacific Islanders are weirdly prone to it - but the overall trend clearly shows that the people most at risk of obesity are poor people in rich countries.
I think the real mystery lies in why some people don't get fat - in the developed world, they're now the exception.
Dull tangent: there are strict rules on the names given to generic drugs, to minimise the risk that any two drugs could be confused when their names are handwritten, typed or spoken aloud in any common language. That's largely why we end up with these weird names that look like a random assortment of syllables - you aren't allowed to choose anything short and catchy.
>>10102 Dull bonus: There are some components in some standard names that can be confused, and in North America they recommend writing part of the name in bold caps. For example, you probably don't want to mix up traMADOL and traZODONE.
