When WeightWatchers ended in-person meetings, they held on

On a warm Saturday morning last September, 11 members of the Brooklyn Wellness Crew gathered at the Windsor Terrace Library for their regular meeting. There were two topics on the agenda: the first was, as always, food. The other was even more charged.

These women, all devoted to WeightWatchers, were furious with the company, which had halted its in-person meetings in Brooklyn in March 2023. One member said she felt like she was “fired.”

“I felt deeply betrayed,” says Naomi Nemtzow, a 74-year-old artist who has been a member of WeightWatchers on and off since the early 1990s. In 2015, she lost 55 pounds; she said in-person meetings—workshops, in WeightWatchers parlance—helped her stay on track.

So did Dianne Stillman, 76, who felt “a bit like a woman without a country.” In her ideal universe, she would have been at her WeightWatchers workshop at the Fairfield Inn on Third Avenue, near downtown Brooklyn. It was one of the few official workshops in the congregation, where members stepped on a scale to voice their opinions and hear lectures from a trained facilitator.

But WW International, as the company is now known, had stopped holding that meeting, along with all the others in Brooklyn. In-person attendance had dropped significantly since the start of the pandemic, especially among the general population premium members, who paid $44.95 per month for unlimited access to virtual meetings and other digital tools.

According to WW, there were 3,300 in-person workshops in the United States before the pandemic. That number had dropped to 825 by March 2023. As of January 2024, WeightWatchers' website contains 1,040 national workshops, of which at least 59 are held online.

For Brooklyn dieters, the lack of in-person meetings in the borough meant they now had to trudge to Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx or Staten Island to get their fellowship fix. This was out of the question for Ms. Stillman, who recently underwent knee surgery.

The shutdown in Brooklyn was even more infuriating “lifelong” memberswho are rewarded with free access to premium benefits if they stay within two pounds of their target weight – but who must weigh themselves at least once a month at an official workshop.

“WW believes it is completely reasonable for people to travel seven to 10 kilometers to the next meeting,” Ms Nemtzow said. “If I lived in Iowa, I might agree. It used to take me five minutes to get to my meeting in Brooklyn. It is 40 minutes to Manhattan.”

A WeightWatchers representative said in an email that it was the company's “normal practice to work with members who have achieved Lifetime status and do not have a physical workplace nearby.”

Virtual gatherings did not appeal to many Brooklynites. The Zoom calls felt impersonal and there were cultural differences. “You align yourself with someone who is a leader in another part of the country,” Ms. Nemtzow said, “and they are not on the same page.”

So she and a group of traveling WWI disciples founded the Brooklyn Wellness Crew. At least two other DIY groups also popped up in Brooklyn, with gatherings in Sheepshead Bay and Bay Ridge.

It was a far cry from the formal gatherings the women were used to. There was no scale whose judgment would determine their mood for the days to come, no reading prepared by a trained leader. Instead, the women – at least in these unofficial meetings, almost all of them are women – took turns facilitating in a freewheeling manner.

“I miss the structure,” said Ms. Stillman, a retired lawyer and high school English teacher who has used WeightWatchers about seven times in her life. Since she first joined in the 1970s, she had lost, regained, and lost 50 pounds again, most of which she has kept back since 2012.

“This was stressful and stress is not good for compulsive eaters,” Ms Stillman added. She recently “rediscovered” sugar after a decade away, she said, and couldn't stop “fixating” on the next cookie or cake. “Imagine if all Alcoholics Anonymous sites closed at once.”

Alcoholics Anonymous is, of course, a nonprofit organization run by volunteers. WeightWatchers reports this estimated revenues of at least $890 million for fiscal year 2023.

With no other choice, the women of the Brooklyn Wellness Crew took action. Some collected names and email addresses. Another has set up a Google group. A third called to reserve the library space. It wasn't perfect, but at least they weren't alone.

That sense of community was one of the main reasons why Jean Nidetch, a Queens housewife and self-described compulsive eater, started a diet group in 1963. Mrs Nidetch had tried to lose weight but found it isolating. Longing for camaraderie, she invited six friends to her basement to commiserate. It was a social group, a support system, and for some, a refuge.

Within five years, Mrs. Nidetch's basement group had become Weight Watchers International, with five million subscribers. It was sold to HJ Heinz in 1978 for $71 million.

But in recent decades, weight loss and diet culture have become more complicated, with body positivity and the Health at Every Size movement becoming increasingly popular. Recognizing this, WeightWatchers transitioned from a weight-loss organization to a wellness destination in 2018. It changed its name to WW International and added a new slogan: “Wellness That Works.” The word “diet” was missing from all marketing materials.

For Ms. Stillman and other longtime members who still wanted to lose weight — and needed the support of allies who understood what it meant to be chased by a piece of red velvet cake — the shift felt like a betrayal. “I could tell they were ashamed of being who we were,” she said.

The new direction was also not a hit with the other members. If Sima Sistani', said the CEO of WW International CNN last November the service did not work because it was seen as a marketing campaign. “It wasn't a product, and we didn't change enough in how we presented ourselves as a true wellness company,” Ms. Sistani said.

Last April, WeightWatchers purchased Sequence, a subscription telehealth platform that provides users with access to prescription weight loss medications such as Ozempic $106 million. (Users pay $99 per month, not including prescription fees.) “Jean Nidetch would turn in her grave if she heard this,” Ms. Stillman said.

At the end of December, the Brooklyn Wellness Crew had to leave the Windsor Terrace library. Ms. Stillman began looking for other gathering places, including synagogues and churches. In early January, Ms. Nemtzow and a few other Brooklynites attended an official WW meeting in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood. It was a long journey, but as much as Ms. Nemtzow appreciated the collaboration of the Brooklyn Wellness Crew, she was happy to be back in a focused environment where she could do her part.

Then, about two weeks ago, an email came from WeightWatchers: a new Brooklyn workshop opened the week of February 4 in a hall of the Knights of Columbus in Brooklyn. A spokesperson said WeightWatchers had reassessed its footprint.

Neither Ms. Nemtzow nor Ms. Stillman has decided whether she will attend. The new location is in Gravesend, almost as far away as Chelsea for them.

Ms. Stillman said she wasn't sure she could “get over the betrayal,” but as someone who spent years at WeightWatchers, she tried to be rational. At least to some extent.

“If it's an Ozempic commercial,” she said, “I'm not interested.”