Bye, Jenny.

Bye, Felicia. 

Jenny Craig is closing its doors. Cue the confetti!

While I feel for employees who will lose their jobs, I'm thrilled to see a "weight loss" company bite the dust.

Jenny Craig and her husband, Sidney Craig, have been making millions, in fact hundreds of millions of dollars since 1983. Their business revolved around purchasing their pre-packaged foods for hundreds of dollars a month. For four decades they enjoyed huge monetary success while only a tiny fraction of their customers showed "success" at the two year mark (no more than 15 pounds lost). Their studies conveniently ended at the two year mark which doesn't capture the very large percentage of all dieters who regain any weight lost between two and five years. 

If it's not Jenny Craig, it's Noom, or WW or the latest guru or coach promoting their lifestyle/cleanse/wellness routine. None of them have evidence demonstrating sustained weight loss at the five year mark for a significant number of people. All of them depend on the shame and guilt you feel when your body fights hard to get back to its natural weight set point range so you become a repeat customer. It's never the company's fault, but your fault. It's a broken system and you are not to blame. 

Even Jenny Craig spokesperson, Valerie Bertinelli has come full circle. In a Washington Post Live interview in 2020 she's quoted as saying: “Looking back now, I was part of a diet culture that didn’t celebrate women no matter what size. It was about getting down to the smallest size you could possibly get to, and if you’re not there, then you’re a failure. And I don’t believe that to be true any longer.” Fun fact, Valerie is cooking recipes with allllll the ingredients on her cooking show on the Food Network!

I can only hope this first domino to fall is one that will strike down diet culture companies and that women everywhere will understand they were never a failure. Only the diet company's have failed you. I invite you to close another diet culture door this weekend. Put down your no carb menus and pick up a piece of bread, make a sandwich, and enjoy a bowl of pasta. 

Valerie would want you to take things one day at a time.....