Your loss is its gain

PROFILE:WEIGHTWATCHERS Started nearly 50 years ago by a carb-loving mum in Queens, New York, WeightWatchers has grown into a lucrative international franchise whose dietary advice is now endorsed by UK scientists , writes KATE HOLMQUIST

IF WEIGHTWATCHERS were a person, she'd be a glamorous American middle-class working mother of a certain age, with a pale-blond 1960s bouffant, a diet she can't wait to tell you about, great teeth, a tan and clothes that show off her new slim figure.

As her muffin-topped friends would want to know how she did it, she would proselytise ad nauseam, complete with illustrative charts. She'd be sympathetic to her fat friends, but she'd practise tough love and tolerate no nonsense when they fell off the programme, or the scales.

No fool, over the past 50 years of dieting success she'd have been charging for her kitchen-table advice, parlaying this into a personal fortune, though she would have had her own ups and downs. Sometimes her obese friends abandoned her for fad diets and miraculous short-term solutions - weight-loss pills, gastric banding, cabbage soup, Atkins, the Zone - but she would have stayed true to her philosophy, with her own well-maintained figure the best testament to her favourite phrase: "If you're lonely, food is not going to be your company."

This week, after a lifetime of standing up to fad diets, she would be feeling vindicated and possibly getting her first honorary PhD in nutrition, because the Medical Research Council in the UK has given her the ultimate endorsement: her weight-loss programme has been proven scientifically to work in the UK, Australia and Germany. In the UK the NHS even subsidises WeightWatchers fees.

Not bad for a commercial franchise started in Queens, New York, in 1963 by a compulsive eater who didn't have a full-length mirror, because she hated the view. Jean Nidetch, née Slutsky, was in 1961 a cookie-obsessed working mother fed up with yo-yo dieting and appetite suppressants on prescription. It was only when she took her 214lb, 5ft 7in (97kg, 1.7m) figure to a New York city public health clinic that she lost 72 pounds at a rate of two pounds a week.

Such was her bulbous-to-babe transformation that family and friends gathered around her kitchen table to hear how she did it. The message the public health doctors had taught her was basic: eat less and exercise more. With a Dale Carnegie enthusiasm typical of the period, she patented it, she told her friends, she put her family on the programme. She told anyone who would listen that food wasn't the answer to life's challenges and to stop eating for comfort, love and excitement.

Word spread, and before long she had a club of women gathering in a room above a pizza restaurant.

Then Nidetch had her eureka. She branded her kitchen-table wisdom WeightWatchers. Just like McDonald's, she franchised across the US. Within a decade, franchises in 48 US states were pumping back money. In 1978 she got out and sold high to Heinz for $71.2 million - a phenomenal amount even now. Nidetch became a rare role model to other women in an age when aggressive selling was seen as unfeminine.

WeightWatchers held on to her as a spokeswoman for a while, then replaced her with Lynn Redgrave, Sarah Ferguson and, currently, the African-American actor Jennifer Hudson - a considered choice, as WeightWatchers members are traditionally middle class, female and white.

IRELAND HAS one of WeightWatchers International's most successful franchises. Started 31 years ago by 13 people, nine of whom are still involved, Ireland's franchise is a profitable registered company, though it won't say what its profits are. (WeightWatchers food products are a separate enterprise.) You can do the sums, though, as Nidetch surely did at her kitchen table. Every week 40,000 Irish people attend meetings run by 150 self-employed instructors, including four men who run 31 men-only groups. Most of these 40,000 pay a one-off registration fee of €20, followed by a weekly fee of €10 per meeting (compared to as little as $1 in the US or £2.99 in the UK.) That's a gross income of up to €20 million a year across the Irish franchise for what amounts to a support group.

Out of that gross - an average of €133,000 an instructor - you have to subtract overheads: a percentage to the main franchise, discounts for students and older people, lower rates for people who pay for a six- or 12-week programme in advance, free membership for the one or two "gold" members in every group who have kept the weight off, rents, teaching materials, travel, tax and so on. Even if you cut the €133,000 per instructor in half, it's still a good average income. Some instructors conduct two meetings a week, others do eight, so, as with all sales schemes, the harder you work, the more money you can make.

Selling weight loss seems to be what makes WeightWatchers work. People wouldn't keep attending if it was free, says Margaret Burke, a spokeswoman. In her experience people drop out after a session or two when the State pays the fee. So, although the NHS funds membership for obese patients at risk in the UK, Burke wouldn't recommend that approach for the HSE. Paying the fees is psychologically important because it represents commitment to the programme, she says.

Being the well-preserved older lady of inspirational dieting, WeightWatchers is like your sensible grandmother, advocating fresh, home-made "filling foods" - lots of vegetables, pulses, grains, potatoes and fruit and sparse sugar and fat. The difference is that the WeightWatchers grandmother is out walking rather than baking tarts.

Keeping up with technology, WeightWatchers gives every member a swipe card that contains their personal information - payment, weight and the "points" they are allowed to eat. The simplified points system replaces the painstaking task of counting calories and weighing portions. Save a few points during the week and you can have a couple of pints, a bottle of wine or a dessert at the weekend. Sticking with the programme should produce an average weight loss of one or two pounds a week, but keeping the weight off requires a lifetime of changed habits.

A MEETING BEGINSwith 30 minutes of weigh-in time, where the weekly fee is also collected. The weigh-in is private, with members volunteering news of their progress or lack of it with other members only if they choose to. There are tales, perhaps apocryphal, of women wearing as little as possible to achieve the golden target. Once you reach your target weight and stay within five pounds of it, your WeightWatchers membership is free.

After the weigh-in, next on the menu is a 30-minute motivational talk with tips on how to work the points system. Cue sharing time, tears and laughter as initiates share their triumphs and failures. The group dynamic is what makes WeightWatchers work, though the company has had to adjust to the online age.

WeightWatchers at Home is a new service in Ireland where individuals join online and get a weekly personal phone talk with an instructor. It lacks the group dynamic, but needs must.

Not everyone who joins WeightWatchers is what we tend to think of as obese. Some members have lost 21 stone, while others are happy to lose a stone over 12 weeks. Would 12 weeks really take the L out of your flab? The Medical Research Council found that the 58 per cent of people who stick with the 12-week programme lose 5.2kg (11.4lb) on average, with committed members losing 5 per cent of their weight.

It's slow, it's effective and it can be lucrative. Nidetch, an author of several inspirational tomes since she left WeightWatchers, remains the organisation's patron saint. At the age of 97 and sporting a huge helmet of candyfloss hair, she looks younger than she did 50 years ago and continues to dispense sage advice: "Thin people release the fork."

CV Weightwatchers

Age 47

in the US, 31 in Ireland.

Why is it in the news?It's the only diet that really works, says the UK's Medical Research Council.

Friends40,000 attending meetings weekly in Ireland.

Least likely to sayGo on, the chocolate will cheer you up.

Most likely to sayEat your veggies and hold the sauce.