The final chapter in the Oprah and Weight Watchers Story:

Oprah Winfrey to leave board of Weight Watchers https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68432710

She is dumping the hot potato of owning shares in WW by "donating" them.

They want to destroy the concept that changing our diets will change our health. Even if they sway only a small percentage, that will ruin their lives as a result, and delay and obstruct medical research, which will mess with everyone, they will do it.

Unless they are stopped. Because they won't stop. They will just make it legal.

Just a few points I'd like to make. I've never bought in to the points system from WW. That lady's apron ("Saving my points for wine") sums it all up. People I knew who were on WW would starve all day in order to indulge in some carby treat later. It's the perfect example of CICO. It doesn't matter what you eat as long as you don't go over your daily points. I had a doc once recommend WW to me because she said it really teaches you about food. Uh, nope.

I have a friend who knows nothing about nutrition or how the body processes fat, protein, and carbs. All she knows is what WW taught her. So, she accepts the way I eat (carnivore), but I know deep in her heart she thinks I have it all wrong.

Second, even if they say there's a significant loss of muscle (in one study, 7 out of every 12 pounds lost were from muscle), nobody cares! "I'm skinny for the first time in my life! Who cares if it's muscle? The weight is still gone and I can fit into a size 4 dress!"

Someone above mentioned that carbs are far easier to digest than fats and proteins. And that's a good thing, at lease when you reverse the equation and say that fats and protein are slower to digest. When I was eating low-fat in the early 90s, dry toast and celery sticks would fill me up ... for about 30 minutes, and then my appetite would go through the roof! But, prioritizing protein and having a moderate amount of fat can keep me full all day because it digests at a slower rate.

The notion that obesity is a primary cause of death is in my opinion misguided. You don't die from being fat, you die from whatever issues within your body MADE you fat. I'm not explaining this well, but Dr. Eades, Gary Taubes, and others say that obesity is secondary. Which comes first? Metabolic syndrome or obesity? Metabolic syndrome. I've actually read that women, especially, do well in old age by being about 20 pounds overweight because if they go into the hospital for an extended stay -- where they will inevitably lose weight -- they have some to spare and so don't die as quickly. It's the smaller frail women who are more at risk.

Oprah Winfrey says she's stepping down from WeightWatchers. Its shares are cratering.



https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oprah-...tchers-ozempic/

This is where BMI is useful on a population basis, seeing that "J Curve" and the results of all-cause mortality studies indicate the increased risk over 80 is from sarcopenia and fraility…just the results the newer weight loss drugs are now creating!
BMI should not be used for an individuals medical assessment but population statistics show where the hazards increase. Women have a slightly higher risk of dying if underweight, but heart disease, the #1 killer of women, still takes a sharp rise based on obesity.

You can even see the relationship between fraility and Accidents - Falls, not transport related. "But it’s also important to note that being too lean or frail (i.e., anorexic) is not ideal. The chart in the far right shows frail people with a BMI of less than 28 are much more prone to accidents that can end their life."

"When the study authors broke the data down by age, they saw that for people under 50, the optimal BMI is around 23. As we age, the optimal BMI increases to around 25 once you’re over 80."

https://optimisingnutrition.com/what-is-a-healthy-bmi/

100% correct

Good Health is plenty of big strong muscles and a good layer of fat, for women. Pinch an inch!!

My personal experience of sitting in a hospital bed for two weeks was great weight loss. Some fat, some muscle. Took two years to rebuild the muscle.

Muscle is precious. Easy to lose, hard to regain.

Isn’t that the equivalent to donating shares of Monsanto, the manufacturer of glyphosate-based Roundup? Although, the Monsanto shares are far more valuable . . .

She's lost a pile of money on her original $43.2 million investment.

I'd say she's just trying to avoid losing any more money on her shares in WW. She can donate them and at least get a tax donation write-off.

(So if she's donating the actual shares instead of selling the shares first, then donating the money, that means the National Museum of African American History and Culture/Smithsonian will need to sell those shares pronto to minimize how much money they lose from the donation, since the value of the stock keeps dropping. And selling off those shares will drive the value of WW down even further)

And it will be. So long as people are only willing to change if they don't really change. They will spend the money and make the effort if they are promised magic.

When the real magic is how our body works when we actually work with it.

I really do understand that the drugs give them hope against what feels like a food addiction. Been there, still wearing a lot of the evidence - and it really is a food addiction, an addiction to the wrong kinds of foods.

The problem is that so few doctors and weight loss programs will suggest anything other than cutting calories by avoiding fats, eating only minimal amounts of protein, and filling up on carbs. Even if the carbs they encourage (fruits, veggies, whole grains) supposedly have a glow of health, anyone whose metabolism has already been messed up by the addictive nature of carbs (resulting in over-consumption of carbs) can still easily kick off addictive eating patterns again while sticking to the "legal" carby foods: whole grains, fruits and veggies (especially starchy veggies and high sugar fruits).

Low carb diets of all kinds have been continually denounced as ineffective, dangerously unhealthy (especially long term), too restrictive, and simply far too difficult to stick to. It's not just the WW point system - all major diets are based on the same premise of calories in, calories out. None of them take into consideration the addictive aspect of a diet based mostly on carbs.

The weight loss drugs are the first thing on the market that takes on the food addiction problem, even though they're not calling it that. And unfortunately those drugs are also not doing anything at all to reverse the addiction - all they do is make it impossible for the patient to consume much food at all while on the drug, and often create such an aversion to meat and fats of any kind that all they can eat is the same carbs that they've been addicted to for decades, just in smaller amounts so that they end up losing weight. The addiction is still there - and will still be there when they go off the drugs.



Unfortunately most people don't have a clue how their body really works, and what their body really needs to work well. And a lot of them don't care - they just want to lose weight the easiest way possible.

That situation is getting worse. It doesn't much matter if WW sells weight loss drugs in conjunction with their points system, or just sticks to their points system, because with or without the weight loss drugs, it's all still based on calories in/calories out, and it doesn't matter if you "save your points for wine", or if you're eating pretzels and crackers on the drugs because you can't stomach anything else - it's still a low fat, high carb diet, and it's only a temporary weight "fix".

They have made food into something which is addicting.

When will we learn that all addictive behavior is the same? It's the behavior, not the drug! When we demonize the drug, we simply switch the addict to new behaviors which can be also problematic.

Like all the caffeine, cookies, and tobacco at AA meetings. The people who get bariatric surgery and switch from food to alcohol. Anybody quitting smoking who gains weight.

We should need the things we need. That's how we keep this carbon-based life form going. The only foods I have to restrict with my cats are the grain-based things we dispense in small amounts.

Because they are addicting and not that good for them.

And I do feel for Oprah, 70 years old and never told she was suffering from carb addiction. Or at least, never been successfully treated.

While she is a sterling example of someone whose weight never held back her career, certainly, the problems still bite deep for all of us. Who had no idea of the odds we were facing while we ate, mostly unknowingly, cheap poison.

I knew I shouldn't make a meal of cake. I ate a pizza instead. I was tormented by hunger either way, though.

Does it matter when our breads have the same macros as our cake? When a portion of meat is battered and deep fried or grilled with butter and counted as the same? When only the meat in the hamburgers are dangerous?

Is this why they don't think it matters WHAT people eat, only how much?

To fix a duplicate, let me add that when I look at the food a hundred years ago, and then a hundred more, it's incredible how much it has changed.