The Business of Thin is everywhere. Its strategy is to keep us fearful and confused. The “Queen” of commercialized thin is Weight Watchers, the “mother” of all weight loss services. If we succumb to her siren call, we will buy and eat highly processed food that makes us fat, and scramble for weight loss services to make us –only temporarily- thin. Processed foods, limited exercise, and mindless eating keeps us enslaved.
Is there something better in life than losing and gaining the same forty pounds twenty times? There is! Lifelong weight maintenance is possible through adopting a personal practice of weekly weighing, gentle calorie counting, and a whole foods based diet with self-monitoring guided by mindfulness.

The “collateral damage” related to the business of thin has resulted in food and body preoccupation, self-hatred, eating disorders, discrimination and poor health. Few of us are at peace with our bodies. We’re no closer to solving the obesity crisis in this country since it has multi-factorial causes and conditions. If we focus on “going on a diet”, we shortcut the dialog needed to permanently change our disordered eating culture.
Learning the truth about food marketing helps us understand that Weight Watchers – formerly a food company subsidiary of HJ Heinz – is only interested in our money, not our well-being. Weight Watchers knows that few Americans can resist the seduction of fat, salt, and sugar –the key ingredients in their food products. Food marketers can only survive by getting us to eat more food; how can a commercial weight loss organization that acts like a food company help us? Here’s the truth about the business of thin: