She’s endorsed multiple on her show selling junk science and grifts. She perpetuates myths about losing weight and health to promote her products. She basically did the same thing on Maui that everyone gets angry at Zuckerberg for doing Kauai, which was buy a fuck ton of land and then kick everyone off of it. She presents like a black girl that made it, but is infact just another billionaire member of the American aristocracy. Is she better than most? Sure, but it’s not hard to be better than people like Trump and Koch.
Such as letting a comedian best-known for making fart jokes while wearing a bikini come on to her show as if she were a medical expert (she admitted on the show that she went to the “University of Google” and Oprah didn’t challenge that) to lie about how vaccines cause autism. And it wasn’t even the first time Oprah spread that lie.
Yeah, well my mate Paul met this Italian couple whilst he was backpacking and they invited him back to their room for a threesome and they gave him some LSD. When they got there the bloke one pulled a screwdriver on him and made him shit in his own shoe and eat it.
“We’ve got a big surprise for you all today! Everyone look under your seats”
Audience members find a leaflet and begin reading
“We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate…”
Am I missing something? When WW itself has added medications to its offerings, why would this result in Oprah leaving the board? Or are those two things unrelated?
For a long time, Weight Watchers has said that if you just follow their points system, the weight will melt off and you won’t need supplements or anything else. When most people think of Weight Watchers, they’re probably not thinking about the weight loss drugs they now support; they’re thinking of the years of points gimmick that make you feel like you can’t lose weight unless you pay $10+/month to see if you can eat that food or not (rather than teaching anyone about calorie intake vs. output).
Weight Watchers relies on a subscription based model to “save” people from their fatness, and Oprah was the biggest WW pusher. She had tons of money and resources, was even on the board of WW, and still needed medications to manage her weight. I don’t give a fuck, but people who bought into her ads and promos probably feel a little pissed off.
Wegovy is fairly new as a weight-loss drug (it’s a rebranded diabetes treatment), but it’s taking the weight-loss world by storm because it actually works.
In its clinical trial for weight-loss treatment in 2021, they tested it against a placebo and told both groups to combine the meds with lifestyle changes, and over the 68-week trial those on placebos lost an average of under 3% body weight while those on Wegovy lost almost 15%.
Yes and no. It actually causes weight loss, sometimes a large amount of weight loss. But it’s being sold as ‘this will make you thin’ and, in general, that isn’t true. You are not going to go from obese to thin if you just take Wegovy and wait for the pounds to drop off.
Also, it does nothing to help people develop a healthy lifestyle.
Only after they themselves admitted that nobody in this country has the self-control to eat a balanced diet, which used to be their main product, as odd as that sounds.
Diet programs that you pay for are designed to cause you to fail on your own.
It’s not that no one can eat a balanced diet, it’s that there’s a huge financial incentive to them to keep you from learning to fend for yourself.
Weight loss isn’t easy. You can shoot off the mechanics of just eating less and sure, anyone who eats less than they normally do will lose weight. If it were actually that simple no one would ever struggle. There are underlying emotional issues, motivation issues, cravings, fear, habits, social pressures, and any number of unnamed complications that keep people fat. A super restrictive prescribed diet is probably what’s in order but you can’t just pull the trigger on that and expect it to stick. Whatever program that happens to be. All of this leads to cycles of trying and failing to lose weight. Sometimes you take a few pounds of, sometimes you take a lot of pounds off, then you stop and gain it all back.
Weight watchers, and programs like it, prey on that cycle of failure. The weight loss drugs are only another symptom of that
Weight Watchers really wasn’t. It was an all in and group related program that existed since, like, the 50s. It was an invested program that was really honestly designed for you to succeed.
Things had probably changed since the late 90s and early odds, however. But the entire program was really designed to get people on a program of eating low calorie meals and to get people into the habit of eating low calorie meals on the long-term. It was probably the one, stand out program, that honestly worked Well for the people who actually stuck to the program.
That was the point of Weight Watchers. It was designed to train people to do the one thing that actually worked to lose weight: counter calories, and eat, reasonably sized and reasonably portioned meals. Even after you stopped buying the Weight Watchers branded meals, you would know to counter calories, and only eat as much as you should eat for each meal. As many calories, and as reasonably sized portions. It trained people to eat as much as they should eat. That’s why it was so successful for over half a century.
It’s too bad that, nowadays, it’s a bunch of bullshit like anything else. But, for over 60 years, it actually was a real thing that worked for a great many people.
I don’t know why they didn’t branch out into exercise equipment and videos. Those were very popular in the 80s and 90s. They really should have.
Honestly if you want to lose weight you need to “change your lifestyle”. Not in a weird kooky cult way, just buy some jogging shoes (with insoles) and an outfit that looks good. Like spend $250 on your exercise outfit. You will want to wear it and eventually go for a walk.
I can’t overemphasize the insoles. Skinny people never tell you to get them, probably because the regular shoe insoles work fine for them. Fat people need special sports foam insoles. Your knees and ankles will feel amazing.
As someone else pointed out — Weight Watchers shifted its focus to weight loss drugs. Not sure what the scandal is here. Oprah is a weight watchers spokesperson, weight watchers hooks you up with weight loss drugs, Oprah loses weight on said drugs proving it works. ???
‘I’ve got to do this on my own,’" she said last September. “Because if I take the drug, that’s the easy way out.”
Apparently there’s a perception that it matters… You’ll see it with smoking cessation too. Gotta do shit the absolute hardest way possible or you’re somehow “cheating”…
Wouldn’t want people to have taken the easy way to not fucking dying :/
1954: Oprah Winfrey is born in Kosciusko, MS, weighing 6 pounds, 11 ounces. Throughout her infancy, she steadily gains weight, a habit that persists throughout her life.
“As I lose, I gain,” Angelou said. “I wing home to a place long forgotten. I swell as I recede, taking in all that has come before me. I molt. I shed. I diminish. But I feel no loss for I am free. My song slips its long confinement and joins the celestial roar. I was made of water, now I am air. I lose as I gain, but again I lose. I lose. I lose.”
Nah, nah, nah. Easy choice. I’d go with the lethal injection because I think that there’s a much greater chance Phil would fuck up killing someone (easy, all things considered), rather than the three of them succeeding in something difficult. Simply because none of them are qualified to do anything but blather idiocy into a camera
Iirc Dr. Oz used to be quite the renowned heart surgeon. Makes it even more tragic that he chose this life as a charlatan giving harmful advice, instead of using his talent for good.
They’ve been out of the medical field for so long though. I wouldn’t trust them to know the current State of the Art in their fields. A lot has changed since they last practiced.
No. The State of Hawaii is the largest landowner on Maui, followed by the real estate company Alexander and Baldwin. Do not spread misinformation please.
Yeah, I was going to say… especially when a lot of poor Americans are obese due to food deserts where they can’t eat healthily or even start to develop healthy eating habits.
But I’m sure glad Mathbabe and Oprah have insurance that would cover such a thing. When are they going to start for calling for all the poor people to have that too?
Uh, she definitely worked hard. She’s an actual “self made” billionaire. She did it through constantly working in media over decades. Do you think anyone said “let’s just give this young black woman a billion dollars?” She was literally the first black woman to have a billion dollars, so no.
Her weight has always been an issue, so this is only news to her most rabid fans.
No, she wasn’t. Unless you are double counting her husband’s money. She was married to the founder of BET. If you think they each did equal work for that, the money would be divided evenly.
When they divorced they had less than a billion each. And their collective wealth only passed $1 billion a few years before Oprah did it on her own. Saying “they were both billionaires” seems wrong.
If you and your spouse have $1000 total, how much money do you have? The answer is: you have $300 and your spouse has $700 because there’s something amazing that you have to get for the house.
It’s not self made if she worked her way up. First she had to get a job. Then she had to have someone see something in her to move her up. Then someone had to talk good about her to someone else. Then through the power of networking, she made it to where she is. A lot of success in the entertainment industry is either landing the role that will get you set for life(think Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter), or getting to know people who know people. And for a lot of people, that means other people are helping lift you up.
I know this might not sound positive but people with eating disorders should try to speak to a therapist about it because eating disorders can end up being horrible for your health
Although it is true what you say and I do agree, I also read between your lines that maybe you don’t know how difficult and (life)long that process is.
An eating disorder is a disease/issue that honestly isn’t solvable, you carry that weak point for the rest of your life and will have to battle it. Which with eating is extra difficult, since you have to eat. You can’t stay sober from food.
(But maybe I misunderstood your words (being written text without further context). )
This is why I’m not against drugs like Ozempic for those who need it.
I used a new medication to make me not want opiates. Used it for about two years until I had enough healthy habits in place to actually not want opiates. Been clean for 6 years and off the medication for over a year without issue.
Never would have gotten clean without it so it makes sense to me how people end up obese.
It’s not about being easy, it’s about being able to measure. I’ve been completely unable to regulate my food intake for a long time until I took it real seriously (therapeutic fasting. It’s a thing, it’s very extreme, if you can avoid it do it) and kind of reset my eating habits. Now that I’m slowly increasing my caloric intake to what someone on the weight I aim to be should consume (2m calories a day, healthy for someone with 90kg), having the pero 100g indication is extremely helpful for me since I can estimate how much stuff is taxing my daily budget, and I’m discovering some incredible cheat foods (stuff I really enjoy eating that fills me and has low calories).
What I mean to say is that having the per 100g information is very valuable for anyone that cares to control their caloric intake. Sure, you don’t have it in restaurants and stuff but with enough experience you tend to learn to estimate dishes so you can compensate beforehand or afterwards to not exceed your budget.
Its all about caloric intake, some people have it real hard to keep it under control due to eating disorders or family customs, but it really is just that.
Sure! As always, food being filling depends a lot on the person same with tastyness. Anyway, one dish I really like is guacamole, it’s usually eaten with bread, and that bad. Recently I’ve taken a liking to eatich raw spinach with some oil (a cheap refillable spray will let you throw just what you need, usually 60kcal are enough to dress it well) and about 125g guacamole which is somewhat around 250kcal from the brand I buy. The guacamole and oil give a lot of flavour to the spinach, which has a strong texture and takes awhile to eat everything. It’s less than 400kcal in total, and quite healthy.
Instead of buying fruit juices, which even natural ones have quite a lot of sugar and thus calories, I’ve taken a liking to drinking vegetable soups, which basically cost the same in the store and have a fraction of the caloric cost while having quite a lot of vatamins. Again, I personally enjoy it a lot.
Besides that it’s all about eating stuff I would not usually eat. Lentils, chickpeas and other legumes are pretty good in nutrients and fill you a lot.
Everything considered, it’s more about not eating an exaggerated amount of food, and the fasting really helped me reset my habits. Before I wouldn’t have considered eating fruit instead some bag fries, but now that it’s been a while that I haven’t eaten fries, I’m slowly getting used to eating healthy stuff since going from zero to vegetables+fruits is incredible.
To summarize, lightly dressed spinach & guacamole salad and vegetable soups are my “cheat foods”. Food I really enjoy that fills me up with a low caloric intake.
Edit: forgot about the pear cherry tomatoes, it’s a variety of cherry tomatoes that has more “meat” and is sweeter, but still has fuckall calories so buying a bunch instead of potatoes and eating them all is totally fine.
It should be interpreted: “if there’s any way that you can avoid using this technique/ therapy, then you should absolutely go out of your way to avoid having to use this torture regemin therapy.”
They do, just not in the units you’re familiar with. They do calories per serving, and very commonly servings per package (in cases where people may be likely to eat the entire thing.) When listing serving sizes, where appropriate the serving sizes is described (how many pieces) and a weight in grams is listed.
Here’s an example (haven’t gotten around to posting images - sorry for the link.)
You now gave me the idea to maybe give these calorie counters a shot. In my appstore it shows up as “Lose It!”, I asume thats the one? Also question, how privacy safe are these?
Agreed. But we should still acknowledge that losing fat is difficult for multiple reasons. Sure, ultimately it’s basic physics. If you operate on a caloric deficit over a longer period of time you will lose weight. That is true for everybody. But on a personal level it can be quite a challenge to lose fat and not gain it again. There are often life-long habits to overcome, sometimes (mental) health issues to deal with. You must find the time and energy and money to change your eating habits to something healthy. A simple drastic reduction of your caloric intake is unsustainable and unhealthy, you need to come up with a good plan. You need to find time to work out, because that’s also healthy and muscle mass is vital to losing fat. And I sad fat, not weight, because if you gain muscles you will also gain weight, as muscles are heavier than fat. But that’s healthy weight. Anyway, I’m rambling.
I’m not saying this to discourage anyone, living healthier will benefit you in so many ways. But I feel it’s worth acknowledging that there’s usually more to it than just counting calories.
The funniest example I’ve seen of this recently is the whipped butter that my parents buy. It has a blurb on the front that says “50% less fat than regular butter per serving”, which is true - because even though the serving sizes are the same (1 tablespoon) the whipped butter is fucking half air.
See also the “light” version of bottled apple juice, on inspection of the ingredients it’s because they just fucking add water to it and still charge the same price.
I don’t mean this directed at you since you seem to be very helpful. This is more directed at the zero empathy crowd who likes to repeat this equation.
I always hear “calories in - calories out = deficit”. But it overlooks that “calories out” is a big mystery box. You can kind of estimate it sometimes. But it’s different for every person, and different every day. And it’s over estimated for people who work out, leading to a lot of frustration.
I like that you actually have follow ups with things that can help. It’s important to have those conversations instead of just pretending it’s simple.
I just ignore any calories from working out, none of the devices that claim to offer this are accurate, if I’m really starving after a hard workout or long walk I’ll indulge a bit and simply note it down as usual, but otherwise I stick to my calorie planning based on metabolic calorie loss only and ignore the additional ones.
Not OP but I did. It was crazy good deal, like £1.50 a month when I signed it. It helped me lose 10kgs. I don’t use it anymore but I use the lessons it’s taught me about portion size etc. I’ve lost more weight since, without exercise and I take prednisolone. Well worth the money for me.
I’ve been reading so much about how simple it is to lose weight, it’s all about caloric deficit. I’ve also been in Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism communities long enough to know that’s not always true. It’s probably true for healthy individuals, but with Hashi’s and hypothyroidism, metabolism doesn’t work as well, so you can be in caloric deficit and work out, yet still unable to shed the extra weight.
Strictly speaking that’s not really possible. Like, physically. The body’s ATP production has to come from somewhere, and that’s either stuff you ingest or stuff already in your body. Low metabolism just means even fewer calories going in for a deficit.
Water retention is also “weight gain” but only sort of. It’s certainly a medical issue but most people specifically mean body fat when talking about weight.
Oprah is a bullshit artist. She has always been a bullshit artist and she got rich peddling bullshit. Her efficiency promoting pseudoscience throughout her career makes her a blight on society, forever deserving scorn for the people she helped to hurt. We are collectively dumber because of her efforts, and she gets to live her life lavished by luxury and adulation as a result.
During the pandemic, Dr. Oz’s private cardiac clinic in the US was handing out vaccine exemption notes to anyone who paid the fee. There was no physical examination, just a questionnaire, and you didn’t need to be one of his actual patients. No referral from your family doctor was necessary either and no need to provide your medical records. It was a complete and utter scam. How do I know? Because I literally called his clinic to follow up on a bullshit exemption claim and they told me their process.
What an incredibly dumb statement to make in the comment section of an article about her literally leaving the board of a major company. “Just an entertainer” holy shit.
Why is this surprising or even controversial? Weight Watchers bought Sequence whose whole purpose was to fast track access to Wegovy. Seems a little ridiculous to point towards that as the reason for the stock falling. Most likely it was simply because she left the board.
If WW actually worked, they would be out of business.
Success happens with nutritional education and constant physical activity.
No one needs an extreme diet, or kooky rules to follow. That is called failure.
It's not hard to learn that a portion is the size of your fist.
Read the ingredients on the Back of the product.
Eat more fiber and tons of vegetables.
You don't need a portion of protein at every meal throughout the day. All foods except Oil contain protein. You will not die if you don't eat a steak at all 3 meals.
Go for a walk after dinner, or lunch, or BOTH.
Have more sex with your partner to burn those calories and up your breathing.
You lose weight by breathing.
And finally, no one needs to be rail thin to be "healthy" or "beautiful". Burn the magazines and delete Insta.
Love and Respect yourself.
A decade ago I lost weight on weight watchers. All it took was self control. The less calories I ate, the less I weighed. I’m still within 5 pounds of that weight.
My mom has had fantastic success with weight watchers. As has my wife, but with her we’re talking 5 to 10 lbs she has wanted to lose. But it still has been a great system for her which has benefitted me too.
Oprah being a fraud that pushes pseudoscience to benefit herself shouldn’t detract from this.
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