Farewell Jean Nidetch

The death of Jean Nidetch founder of weight watchers has been announced. It's a timely reminder of just how much fat people have been in the forefront of participating and advancing the slimming cult. Rather than the more familiar delusional assertion that slim people need to introduce fat people to the idea.  Yes, if you cognitively erase the multi-billion $$$$ businesses that comprise the now worldwide slimming industry. 

Nidetch went on to found weight watchers in 1963 after intuiting that the kind of group therapy style environment, usually used to do such as support the traumatized or maintain alcoholics and addicts in a state of abstinence would be required to support something as demanding and unnatural as starving your body down to a desired size.

WW, in existence before, during and after the famous 'ob' spike/s of the 1970's despite cleaning up financially has done little to prevent, reverse the overall drift of the weight spectrum to the right of the weight graph. Some say its further aided it. The white coat mafia are well aware of its failure. And always have been.

That has been key to the advance of slimming, the fanatical cult like belief in slimming regardless of outcome. Something about it becomes rooted in the consciousness and requires quite a sustained effort of disciplined will to overcome its cognitive distortion.

In terms of business though, Jean, was a pioneer managing to effectively flog a product that's somewhat imperceptible, if indeed it exists at all, by selling around it.

Take that i-net profiteers.

That she started this tranche of the slimming cult rolling as a result of seeking to reduce her own weight via calorie restriction is a hint that epigenetics is not simply there to whine about 'obesity'. Amongst other things, our bodies are getting cleverer at seeing off these crude and stupid attempts to use energy to manage weight after its fact.

Perhaps also the desire for greater safety has helped dieting to become even more ineffectual than it already was. If Nidetch had been born 50 years later and she had used her own company, it's far more doubtful that her body would have succumbed to quite the extent that it did.

Nidetch sold WW to Heinz in 1978 for apparently 71 million smackeroos and this useless but profitable industry is still going strong with extensive support, including a couple of doughty rescue missions from its friends in the white coat mafia.

But that's all by the by now for Jean. Goodbye formerly fat warrior against obesity, your race is run.