As at January 2011, Weight Watchers is 48 years old and still going strong. Originally modeled after a cardiac-health diet, the recommendations and plans associated with Weight Watchers have changed over the past four decades to reflect changing nutritional research and recommendations. Despite intense competition from other diet plans such as Atkins and The Zone, Weight Watchers continues to be a successful and profitable company, with its diet plans followed by millions worldwide.
Inception
Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch launched the diet plan in 1961 based on dietary recommendations from Dr. Norman Jolliffe of the New York City Department of Health's Bureau of Nutrition. Jolliffe's so-called Prudent Diet was designed for cardiac health; Weight Watchers took this diet as the basis for its Food Plan. Weight Watchers International became incorporated in 1963. Between 1963 and 1970, Weight Watchers honed its Food Plan, adding new foods with an emphasis on healthy eating rather than restrictive dieting.
1970s
By 1970, Weight Watchers introduced options for tailoring its Food Plan, including a specific food plan designed to combat weight-loss plateaus and a plan designed for weight maintenance. Weight Watchers' first Medical Director -- Dr. Henry Sebrell, a former director at the National Institutes of Health -- was appointed in 1971. During the 1970s, Weight Watchers plans were changed in accordance with new research in the field of nutrition, adding polyunsaturated fatty acids, increasing recommended carbohydrate consumption and lowering recommended protein amounts in an attempt to reduce the saturated fat consumption of plan followers.
1980s
In 1984, representatives of the Weight Watchers company were actively involved in a conference held by the National Institutes of Health to address obesity-related health implications in the United States. The following year, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services published the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, though the Weight Watchers plan of the 1980s was already in accordance with these guidelines. Also in the mid-1980s, Weight Watchers introduced a program enabling employers to institute Weight Watchers meetings in the workplace.
1990s and Beyond
In 1997, Weight Watchers International launched a new program specifically intended for weight loss. This "1-2-3 Success Plan" introduced the concept of Weight Watchers Points for the first time, with foods being assigned a points value and dieters encouraged to limit daily points consumption. The points value of an individual food are based on its calorie, fat and dietary fiber values. Weight Watchers suffered economically in the mid-1990s, but became increasingly profitable in the early twenty-first century -- as of June 2003, the company was operating at a 37 percent profit margin. As of January 2011, Jennifer Hudson is the celebrity spokesperson for the Weight Watchers plan. Introduced in 2011, Weight Watchers' PointsPlus factors in natural foods as preferable to processed foods, and emphasizes high-bulk, low-calorie foods which make a dieter feel full on less.
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