I basically agree with all the What the? going on but I must report that WW is not blameless. I get mail for a past tenant here regularly that practically begs her to return to WW with money saving coupons attached. They can’t have a lot of faith in their own programmes if they expect customers to need them again and sell returning so hard.
I do not open her mail by the way, the WW stuff comes in a clear plastic bag with all the goodies on show.
We cannot forget though that most (not all) people who lose weight by any mechanism end up putting at least some of it back on. I find WW one of the least offensive programmes out there which is the puzzling thing about this potential suit, there are other target companies who cost much more and teach much less by selling all the food ready for nuking and/expensive tests and suppliments. I would love to see some of them go down and never get back up.
Jodi, actually it wasn’t his wife-it was his FRIEND’S wife who had her pinky cut off. It was the friend who reccomended the program.
And rent Cat’s Eye-it’s a kickass movie with James Wood and Drew Barrymore and a really cute grey tabby named General. He looked like my beloved Fluffy.
Oh, and I see the Weight Watcher foods in the stores. I bought a couple of them while working long shifts at a grocery store. The manicotti was pretty good and the cookie dough sundae…YUM!!!
[hijack] ENugent, was “Fat Farm” about a guy who’s going in for some radical weight loss treatment for the nth time, but has no memory of what the actual treatment was? It turned out they made a thin clone of the customer, which was then sent out with the customer’s identity and memories to resume his debauchery, while the customer was packed up and shipped to a slave-labor camp.
I remember reading this short story in a SF anthology on fat, but I never knew who wrote it.
[/hijack]
Actually some 14 year old girl who is like 100 pounds overweight is sueing mcdonalds for not telling them the food was bad for them.
I think mcdonalds should be sued though, they should provide the nutrition facts on all of thier nasty ass burgers and should tell people what they actually put in those mcnuggets
First, congratulations on your weight loss, Zev! I’m impressed!
Second, this is so monumentally stupid and illogical it boggles the mind.
Third, they’ll probably win their case, unfortunately. The inmates are running the asylum when it comes to legal actions.
Three other points I’d like to make:
I lost quite a few pounds a number of years ago. I did this by only eating at mealtime, and then not having a second helping. It took me about eight months, but I lost about 30 pounds or so. Problem is, in the intervening years, I’ve fallen back into bad eating habits and gained it back. Who do I sue?!
Would these people cancel the fire insurance on their homes if, heaven forbid, they actually had a fire? Following their logic, they’ve already had their fire, they don’t need insurance anymore.
I hope the WW attorneys bring common sense to the proceedings and merely point out that weight loss maintenance is a matter of personal responsibility.
I think you’re confusing basic marketing and customer retention techniques with a lack of faith in their own techniques. Whenever any business that requires membership loses a member, they try to win that member back; that’s a given.
I work in the termite and pest control field. We’ve had people call us because of a carpenter ant infestation, then cancel when we got rid of the ants. We’ve been fired for actually doing our job!
Not only that, but there’s some maintenance involved in both situations. The ant infestation may recur – the client may revert back to poor eating habits and gain the weight back.
But the bottom line is, any business wants to retain its customers/members. Nothing wrong with that, as far as I can see.
Yes, genetics play a big part. My family has a propension to diabetes and being overweight. I packed up about 60 extra pounds over the course of 4 years. With a change of habits I made it back to 115 (Notice I am 5’2", I am NOT skinny). I’ve been practically the same weight for about 1 1/2 yrs now. I cannot let the guard down, I have a crappy metabolism, so I have to watch that I don’t overeat and that I excercise regularly (however moderately). It will be a battle for life, I think of myself as a recovering alcoholic, hopefully I will not develop diabetes. My mom has had her weight controlled for 5 years now, she’s been off her medication for that long.
It is a LIFELONG battle. AA doesn’t tell alcoholics that they can start drinking just because they haven’t drank for a long time. It never stops. If you can’t make that kind of commitment more power to you, but do not make excuses.
Much like the people suing McDonalds and KFC for making them fat. This is, IMO, a symptom of the ills of our society. We make incredibly stupid decisions, then blame somebody else. Worse, try to others pay for our bad decisions in court.
Like Q.N. Jones, I lost about 60 lbs and have gained about 20 back. And it is no ones fault but my own. I stopped doing the things that took the weight off, and restarted doing the things that put the weight on. It’s pretty simple, if you think about it.
They have. There’s a list of the nutritional values of all their products posted on the walls. They will give you a copy if you ask.
The court case sounds like a really stupid idea, and I hope it gets thrown out of court.
Anecdotal evidence to support the healthy lifestyle arguments:
Years ago, I had no car and walked every where. I once counted it all up and found that I spent an average of two hours a day walking. Not slow poking around, either. Real “get where you’re going fast” walking. I weighed 135 pounds at 5 feet and 10 inches. I ate a half pound bag of gummi bears for breakfast with a can of coke. I ate a whole pizza for lunch (or sometimes fried cheese with french fires.) I usually ate three hamburgers, a box of six McNiggets and a strawberry shake for supper. I drank coke by the liter during the day. EVERY DAY was like this. You see my wieght above. I also had completely normal blood pressure and the lowest cholesterol values my doctor had ever seen. All because of adequate exercise.
These days, I live so far out of town that it is over an hour drive to work. I walk from the house door to the car and from the car into the office. I sit all day and then I drive home. I don’t eat any thing like I used to. My wife cooks for me, and I usually eat leftovers for lunch. Veggies and noodles and little meat. My total calory intake is way lower than it used to be, but since I’ve started driving to work a couple of years ago I’ve gained over thirty pounds (close to forty, actually) and have high blood pressure that has to be treated. I’ve got a pot belly and have to wear suspenders (American type, not the British type with the lace and frilly underwear) to keep my pants from sliding down and taking my drawers with them. All for lack of adequate exercise.
My life simply doesn’t have the time in it anymore for me to walk or some how else get the exercise I need.
If you recall. I SAID I eat too much. To me, it’s an addiction. I view junkies the same way. I’m an addict myself (pills) and the responses and the almost uncontrollable urges are the same.
I’m not confusing explanations with excuses. I don’t use my fat family as an excuse, but as part of the problem. I was always slightly (about 10 pounds) overweight as a child, then I started a decade-long affair with prednisone, due to an illness. That’s when it was out of control. I’d gain 50-60 pounds, lose 30, get sick again, go back on the medicine, gain another 40, lose 20–you get the idea. The fact that my family has a tendancy to be heavy is merely an reason for my difficulty in not losing the weight quicker or easier before I have to me on the medication again.
Oh, I totally agree that genetics makes a huge difference. It all depends on who you inherited your metabolism from. My mom’s side of the family all look like pandas. ALL of them with two exceptions.
They’ll all be hat-rack thin 90 lbs through college and then at age 30 – panda!,
My family of pandas eats modestly. Simple, traditional meals with lots of rice, beans and that are generally low fat. It amazes me that they can all be so cute and round on that diet.
On the other hand the two that do not have a panda build are still thin as rails. They also have jobs that keep them working hard and physically active.
That’s the ticket on that side of the family: At least a little bit of exercise, just a little bit. For whatever reason, we hit 30 and there is some kind of radical change in metabolism. Just a wee bit of exercise makes a huge, huge difference.
I hit thirty last year. After having a Kate Moss figure most of my life, totally unable to gain weight if I tried from a wickedly high metabolism, I’m now in the very early stages of the panda-morph. I am adjusting my diet accordingly, more importantly, I’m adjusting my lifestyle. My mom’s family is definitely, genetically predisposed to being panda-shaped after thrity. But those in the family who exercise a little bit, seem to maintain a healthier physique.
It’s ever been a huge problem. For the most part, everyone has rolly-polly but healthy – living into their 90s or even 100s. But in the last 50 years, with more porcessed foods avalable, the family has been getting bigger and heart problems are cropping up around age fifty.
So I may not be able to change my destiny to be a panda, but I can modify my lifestyle to be as healthy as possible. I’d be happy with that.
Okay, after reading all of the other responses, I want to clarify something:
I’m not playing the “blame game”. As I said in my first post, I do eat too much. How is that "playing the blame game?? Is eating too much the only acceptable reason to you? Can’t there be others?
I do have the ability to lose weight. But I just can’t keep up with the amount of times and length of time I have to be on steroids. There’s a period of time where even after the course of medication is over with, it’s still in your system, so there’s a lot of carryover and my appetite is still through the roof. Someone who started out with a quicker metabolism will have an easier time burning it off after, but I’m not that lucky. Before my knee and back problems, I was working out at least 4 times per week just to keep up with the increased appetite. Now am I still a lazy slob? I’ve just gotten to the point that I can’t even walk a quarter mile without being in pain, thus, even when I’m not on medication, I gain weight.
All I was doing was giving an answer to someone about why the obesity rate has skyrocketed and that it might not ONLY be about eating badly. You all seem to think I’m not blaming the culprit. Food made me fat. It’s the reasons for eating it that I’m talking about, NOT the reason I’m fat. I’ll speak slowly now:
I applaud the people who have lost a lot of weight and were able to keep it off. I agree with Mighty_Girl, it is a lifetime struggle. I really admire people who take care of themselves like that and struggle every day to stay healthy.
My family is sort of the same way. My dad’s side was rail thin and my mom’s side was always chubby.
My brother was fat practically out of the womb and I was a healthy weight until after college. I still exercised, but it got increasingly more difficult to keep up with it. The steroids didn’t help. I often wonder what my body would look like if I hadn’t been taking them.
Sort of like in “The World According to Garp,” when Garp decided to buy the house that the plane crashed into because the chances of two planes crashing into the same house are astronomical, so the house was pre-disastered.
