The Slimming Watchers and This Weighty World: Which Magic Bullet Must We Dodge?

Any weight loss company knows your fears: feeling hungry, having to give up your not so secret addictions, getting bigger if you don’t diet and then even bigger if you do.  Why, then, are they skilled enablers of Big Food addiction?

When it comes to ‘weight loss solutions’ the Diet Superbowl fixture is invariably the same:  The Slimming Watchers and This Weighty World!  Most of us have climbed into bed with them at some point, ‘done’ them, climbed out of the bed, got into the other bed, believing that, somehow, please, this one has a magic bullet where the other failed.  Some of us might still cheerlead for them, in which case, pass this blog along to your sisters!  Some rarified specimens amongst us have even worn their sashes with the dubious title, Slimmer of the Year.  But, are those pawns, sorry, queens, or indeed, are any of us runners up shuffling home with our consolation badges and keyrings, any slimmer, livelier, happier?  Possibly, but certainly not for long. 

And yet, many of us have been and keep being complicit with diet companies, agreeing to hide the skeletons in the cupboard and place a lampshade on top of the elephant in the room in a vain attempt to disguise it.  All the while, there’ll be a subtext suggesting that you are the elephant.  In exchange, we are granted the dubious pleasure of paying to be tortured into a body type that we can’t maintain, even with the ‘education’ and ‘support’ we were provided with.  We’ll even have offered full compliance and bought and eaten their dice-sized, sugar-filled chocolate bars and their 4x6 inch ultra-processed meals.  Meanwhile, as we’ve been looking the other way and woofing up the wrong ‘health’ tree, our hormones have gone rogue and,  studies like the one here show, our autoimmune systems aren’t taking any prisoners and are actively engaging in friendly fire.  

Slimness is just as transient as happiness for the majority of body types and liveliness doesn’t really rely on what our body looks like but on how our body is able to metabolise available energy.  Even then, with the best will in the world, our engines could be purring but our brains are saying, I can’t adult today.  Even then, you’ll still be picking yourself apart in the mirror, scrutinising your body for perceived micro flaws because that’s what you’ve been taught to do by society from birth and Weighty World Watchers aren’t trying to disrupt that because they are profiting from it.  Even when you’ve reached ‘goal’ weight (good grief!), we all know what happens once a goal is scored: it’s back to the centre line and it’s kick-off again.  Worse still, you’re likely to still be inflamed, your pancreas will still continue to pump insulin around the clock like it’s some sort of magic porridge pot and hunger will still be the monster you have yet to slay. 

The Slimming Watchers and This Weighty World, despite protestations that their main focus is now wellness, still seem to revel in the media idea of standard measure of a woman.  Of course, you guessed it, but might still be inadvertently buying into it, this means their standard measure must be a bit of a shapeshifter according to whims of fashions over health.  You see, sometimes she’s slim, if that is what the current fashion calls for, sometimes she is allowed a bigger ‘Brazilian’ bottom and thighs, if that is what the media demands, but the waist has got to be tiny if that is what is de rigueur this decade.  Those last two attributes, they tell Standard Measure Woman, are totally compatible, if only she has the rigid discipline to diet and target problem areas.  If she doesn’t, there’s always a company ready to step in and encourage her to wear the torture instrument of a waist trainer to keep her brain-body system perpetually stressed.  She greets this news with a perpetual smile on her face, beneath which she is boiling with rage.  It’s odd because, a while back, she has a vague recollection of having to have a flat chest to slip into a flapper dress.  After that, wasn’t she expected to be as strong as Rivet Rosie until the day her thighs shouldn’t meet as minidresses swung through the 60s? 

God forbid that this woman should feel just right for herself, be able to devote her brain space to something other than where her next costly calorie is coming from and get on with her day actually doing something she’d like to do.   What she really wants to feel is the zing of living.   But, alongside her sisters, she’s the poster girl for the woman who became slimmer but curvy in all the right places forever through the lie of low fat, moderate carbs, calories in, calories out living and she still gets to eat exactly what she wants.  Apparently, sugar and ultra processed foods and all.   She is the woman every other woman has to measure up to: The Impossible Standard Woman.  She is The Greatest Lie.   She is the ultimate assassin used by Weighty Watcher World to wreck your health and esteem and derail any other better life purpose that might actually benefit you and humanity.  

Around here, we like the idea of you choosing your very own What Three Words to begin shaping your life differently.   It is not an exaggeration to say that diet culture has all but obliterated the idea that women might just want to get on with other stuff to the point where they can’t even imagine what other stuff might be a good choice for them; for your body, brain, mind, joyful habits, playful indulgences, jobs, careers, relationships, nourishing pastimes, whatever the hell else, anything but a laser-like focus on trying to be that woman who is The Greatest Lie.  

In reality, we don’t limit you to three words, but it’s nice to have a simple beginning that sets you on the path.  We don’t mind if your wellness path meanders and you choose little side roads to experiment with, either.  Hell, we don’t even mind if it’s not a path but an intrepid voyage dictated by the wind across a vast, unknown ocean - have your own adventure.  You know yourself best.  You are best placed to live as, well, you!  At WillPowders, we do the hard work of researching for you so you don’t have to become obsessed with sifting through the rumour and bullshit to find the rubies in the rocks.  Choose any triple you like - there is absolutely no standard stick around here because we took the bloody thing apart.   

You’re not the one who broke your self-belief and self-image or body in any way.  Let Weighty Watcher World take responsibility for what they wanted to create from you.  It’s not your shit to account for.  Plenty of women come to us with bodies, brains and minds utterly depleted by diet lifestyles, having paid handsomely to be flagellated to this point since their early teens.  Not being transparently told by diet culture that you were inviting in the very things you were inadvertently running from ain’t your fault, sister!  In our harbour, we might suggest some words to set you on the path to real, rather than bandwagon-worthy wellness.   

We utterly understand that more demand is the very last thing you need.  If you are returning bruised from warring with endless diets, so let’s keep it really simple while you get your breath back.  May we suggest when playing this new to you, What three words? game that you choose Hydrated, Nourished, Energised as a simple starting point?   

Ok, so right now, we are not going to apologise for bringing you links a-go-go.  We want to keep it really simple so that you don’t have to navigate a million things at this point when you just want to feel better quickly and recoup for a hot minute.  If you are coming out of diet culture and ranging around for help, it’s not really much different from being in a trauma crisis.  No exaggeration.  Something in you knows this already which is why you’re reading this, right?  Get started on your WillPowders Way very simply.  Just a little more reading and you’re there.

For autoimmune risks in women try Voskuhl R. Sex differences in autoimmune diseases. Biol Sex Differ. 2011 Jan 4;2(1):1. doi: 10.1186/2042-6410-2-1. PMID: 21208397; PMCID: PMC3022636.