New York housewife Jean Nidetch was out browsing the shops one day in the Autumn of 1961 when something happened that would change her life — and subsequently the lives of millions of women worldwide.
She was spotted by a neighbour who came over to gushingly compliment her on her ‘marvellous’ appearance.
‘When are you due?’ she asked.
But there was no baby: at 5ft 7in and weighing a hefty 15st, 38-year-old Jean was simply vastly overweight.
Founder and director of Weight Watchers Jean Nidetch poses for a before (left, when she weighed 15 stone) and after shot (right, chic in a Jackie Kennedy style shift dress)
Mortified, that intervention was the wake-up call she needed, and after a look in the mirror of her small apartment, Jean signed up to a weight-loss programme at a local clinic.
Within a year Jean had lost five stone, in the process becoming a household name in her neighbourhood, where she started hosting first drop-in sessions, then weekly salons, offering weight-loss tips and motivational pick-me-ups.
It was the start of a journey that would take charismatic Jean from unknown housewife to one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. For within two years of starting her weight loss journey, Nidetch had launched her own company.
Its name? Weight Watchers International — the final word something Jean had insisted on, so confident was she of global success.
It was an instinct ratified by history: today, nearly six decades on, Weight Watchers is a vast international empire, spanning everything from magazines and frozen food to cookbooks and cruises, with an annual revenue in 2018 of £1.2 billion.
Latterly rebranded as WW, in the UK its programme is NHS-approved and, since the first meeting here just outside Windsor in 1967, there have been thousands of weekly meetings nationwide, with the brand given the royal seal of approval in 1997 when Sarah Ferguson — then labouring under the unflattering soubriquet ‘The Duchess of Pork’ — was appointed its spokeswoman.
Now the story of what many see as the founding business of the slimming industry is told in a book called This Is Big, by Marisa Meltzer.
Part diet memoir, part social history, it is the first outsider’s chronicle of how one woman would make calorie counting and weekly weigh-ins part of everyday life for millions all over the world.
Or, how, as Jean was fond of saying: ‘I took the “L” out of flab.’
Until the horrifying moment when she was mistaken for a mother-to-be, she had never thought of herself as fat. After that there was no disputing it.
Nidetch of Weight Watchers International holding a cup of ice cream and standing in front of her company’s various products. Within a year Jean lost five stone
Spurred into action, Jean signed up for a free obesity clinic run by the New York City Department of Health where, at her first weigh-in, she was told her target weight was ten stone.
She later summarised the diet suggested by the clinic as ‘Drop the damn fork’, and its principles were certainly simple: low fat, no sugar, watch the carbs, weigh everything and don’t go hungry.
And it worked: Jean grew more svelte by the week, and soon her friends wanted to know her secret — something she was happy to share. Naturally attention-loving, she started inviting girlfriends to her apartment every Thursday.
They called it Jean’s Group and it grew quickly, going from six women to ten to 40 within two months. ‘People would call and ask: “Can I bring my cousin?” “Can I bring my sister?” The answer was always: “Sure, why not?”’ Jean recalled. When chairs ran out people brought their own.
Soon the group outgrew her living room and spilled into her foyer, and from there into her apartment complex’s basement
In those early days though, Jean had little idea this would be the beginning of a multi-million-dollar business: at first, she was just delighted to have reached her goal weight, which she did in October 1962, around a year after she’d started at the obesity clinic.
The front cover of the new book This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World – and Me
Now the equivalent of a UK size 10, she celebrated with a makeover, buying a Jackie Kennedy-inspired wardrobe of shift dresses and chic monochrome suits. She never put on the weight again.
When she wasn’t holding meetings meanwhile, she was driving to attend gatherings of dieters who lived outside New York, among them one at the home of her friends Felice and Al Lippert.
A marketeer, Al saw the potential in Jean’s programme and suggested turning her weight-loss salons into a proper business by franchising the idea and charging people a weekly fee to attend. He suggested Jean meet his lawyer brother Harry to make it official — the first step being to come up with a name.
Jean suggested ‘Lose Pounds’ and ‘Watch Your Weight’ — both vetoed by Harry as awful. ‘All right, what about Weight Watchers International?’ said Jean — already thinking big despite the fact her business didn’t have official premises.
Harry told her that was ridiculous too — but drew up the papers and in May 1963 Weight Watchers International was incorporated.
Its revenue model was simple: franchise holders — all of whom were Weight Watchers graduates and many of whom were women with an investment in the company that was not just financial but emotional — paid around $2,000 and were contractually obligated to pay Weight Watchers 10 per cent of their gross revenue.
For her first official meeting Jean rented a £59-a-month loft space above a local cinema. She charged £1.50 for a meeting — the same as a cinema ticket — and set out 50 chairs. It wasn’t nearly enough: in the event 400 people came, with Jean forced to organise a rota system to see them all.
Weight Watchers International was on its way. By 1969, the company had 102 franchises in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Great Britain and Israel, and about 1.5 million members.
Nidetch with a food scale at her Manhattan office in 1988. By 1966 the company had produced its own Cook Book, followed two years later by the first issue of Weight Watchers magazine
Nidetch pictured in the 1960s. By 1969, the company had 102 franchises in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Great Britain and Israel, and about 1.5 million members
Its success in the UK — where that first meeting was held in 1967 — was no doubt helped by securing the approval of no less than Jessica Mitford, one of the glamorous, aristocratic Mitford clan, who that year was living in San Francisco when a friend put a ‘before and after’ picture of Jean Nidetch on her fridge to inspire her overweight teen daughters.
Mitford was suspicious of the photo and the whole Weight Watchers operation, wondering if, as she put it, it was ‘just another device to separate the fool from his (or more likely her) money’.
But after researching a piece about the organisation for the New York Post, she found her cynicism quashed: ‘I came to scoff, but I stayed to applaud.’
By 1966 the company had already produced its own Cook Book, followed two years later by the first issue of Weight Watchers magazine. Sales of own brand meals, sweeteners and stock cubes helped its burgeoning growth.
Weight Watchers went public, in 1968 reporting a gross revenue of $5.5 million. Jean — now thin and famous — was also rich, wealthy enough to buy her entire apartment block and fund a life of fur coats and first-class flights.
One person, though, was less impressed by this transformation in the marital fortunes, her husband Frank. In 1971, after 24 years of marriage, the Nidetches divorced, with Jean fond of proclaiming Frank ‘liked me better when I was fat’. Weight Watchers continued to flourish: by 1973 it had an annual turnover of around £12 million and celebrated its tenth anniversary with a huge party at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Jean would later call that party one of the highlights of her life, but months later, aged just 49, she stepped down from the company, proclaiming herself tired of the constant travel and demands of promotional appearances.
She remained the public face of the firm, although she played no role when, in 1978, Heinz made a takeover approach to Weight Watchers. After negotiations between Heinz’s president Tony O’Reilly and Al Lippert it was agreed H. J. Heinz Company would acquire Weight Watchers International for about £56 million.
With no seat on the board, Jean retained the perfunctory title of consultant, albeit a wealthy one: she received about £5.5 million in the sale, a huge sum at the time. Not bad for the daughter of a cab driver and a manicurist from Brooklyn, New York. But by 1990 she had apparently swapped one compulsion, eating, for another, gambling.
After moving to Las Vegas she frittered away so much of her fortune that by her 80s she was no longer a millionaire.
Meanwhile, Weight Watchers scored one of its biggest coups in 1997 when Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, was announced as a spokeswoman for the firm. ‘I am a regular woman with regular problems, hence why I am here today,’ she said. A year later she published her Weight Watchers–approved cookbook, Dining With The Duchess.
It was one of many glamorous celebrity associations for the organisation, which today counts Oprah Winfrey and actress Kate Hudson as ambassadors.
Its founder, meanwhile, saw out her years feeling she had become something of a footnote. She died on April 29, 2015, aged 91 — her legacy, for all her latter-day anonymity, an organisation started from her living room which today remains a global behemoth.
This Is Big: How The Founder Of Weight Watchers Changed The World (And Me) by Marisa Meltzer is out now published by Hachette USA.