WeightWatchers files bankruptcy

Not mismanagement if you made a lot of shareholder value with the buybacks.

> Stock buybacks are substantially equivalent to dividends

There's a whole theory on this:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dividendirrelevance.asp

The easy way to see it is if all shareholders reinvest dividends, it's the same as a share buyback, only with the broker buying shares on your behalf rather than the company, and your ownership of the company includes a bonus fractional share.

Dividends are also a bit of an accounting game. You can pay yourself a "dividend" whenever you want buy selling shares. This is only 95% true, but if your share in a company just entitled you to 65 cents, the share is probably worth about 65 cents less since the money came from somewhere.

Buybacks also protect you from hostile takeovers, or from a competitor buying shares until they are entitled to a seat on the board.

The latter was the the end of several large German companies.

A company can also decide to do stock buybacks if the leadership thinks its stock is undervalued.

It's like a tax free dividend. Dividends are taxable but if a company uses the cash they would have spent on a dividend on a buy back there's no taxable event for the investors. Those investors who want the cash can sell and pay the tax and the rest enjoy the higher share price

Yes.

If you have more money than you're able to make good use of improving the company (r&d, acquisitions, new locations, whatever), you can give it back to investors. Which can be either a dividend or a buyback, and in theory (ie, ignoring pesky details like taxes) those are supposed to be equivalent.

It can also be that the company leadership thinks the stock is undervalued.

  > We have more cash than we know how to spend reasonably?

- pay your workers a good bonus?

- invest the money in the market?

- lower prices?

  > What's the argument for stock buyback programs generally?

* https://www.forbes.com/sites/aalsin/2017/02/28/shareholders-...

This is a dumb take. WW was dead no matter what they did. They got beat by the worlds greatest ever mousetrap - GLP-1s.

Have to say I basically take the opposite on everything you say here. I know quite a few people who aren't super active (myself included) who took it and went off and kept the weight off.

And they actually do induce lifestyle changes, which is the fascinating part. Not for everyone, but the impulse control changes are dramatic. I had a friend credit him going to therapy for the first time in his life and reading for the first time since high school to it which was crazy, but makes sense because it also helped him quit smoking weed so he had a lot more time.

The new program does, but hell man, a toddler who doesn't sleep through the night (ever... No family help, either) and who demands 100% attention when he's not at daycare is a massive, massive hit to your free time/motivation/energy/stress. He's wonderful but I'm absolutely fucking miserable right now.

I took Semaglutide for 6 months. Before Semaglutide I'd want to have a beer just about every day, but I'd only drink a few times a week. Once I started Semaglutide I completely lost the desire to drink alcohol.

The same was true for food. I thought about food all the time. But once Semaglutide started I just didn't think of food. I had to remember to eat.

Semaglutide in my experience really helps to eliminate addictive behavior in general, I believe. At least oral addictions (I'm not sure if it would help with e.g. gambling addiction).

I never understood why skinny people believed that fat people have no impulse control until I took the medication. Once I had that impulse control it was so much easier to make long-term decisions.

glp-1 inhibitors turn out to be better for alcohol and smoking cessation than any other drug we have. Truly a miracle drug.

I've never had any problems with my weight until the last year or so; guess I'm getting old? Currently ~106kg at about 2m, which puts my BMI just in the "overweight" category (imperfect measure, but still). Basically, I have what you'd call a "beer belly", which is very new for me. I don't like it.

Reading between the lines, I have the impression that you were fairly strongly overweight ("obese") and struggled with more serous weight issues throughout your life?

I share the concern of the previous poster not so much for people like you, where "lose weight to a manageable level ASAP" is generally a good thing, but for people like me who are "a bit fatter than they'd like" but not necessarily "obese". If you'd meet me, you wouldn't necessarily call me "fat".

Previously I would just eat whatever (not super unhealthy, but also not really healthy) and not really exercise beyond my stubborn insistence on walking or cycling everywhere.

I don't see weight loss rugs as a net positive for me. I made some positive changes to fix this, and if I were to take Ozempic I'd just revert back to my lazy git self, and not get all the benefits that a better diet and exercise give me.

See my potential warning here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43919011

Great to hear!

I see your point but not really true. people in good shape vs. people who lost weight is pretty visible

Obesity is literally the major cause of ill health. Cancer, dementia, heart disease, diabetes, and strokes are all extremely unpleasant and are all credibly linked to excess weight.

The food industry is a lot like the tobacco industry. Everyone is aware of marketing around health and fitness. But the marketing and social programming that keeps people eating - ad campaigns, portion sizes, food consumption traditions that are billed as "family" events, even things like giant popcorn buckets in cinemas, or the idea that sweet things are "naughty" but also rewarding - gets a pass because it flies under the radar.

It's literally a double bind. Everyone gets two contradictory messages about food, starting from early childhood. And they cannot be reconciled.

So no. It is not about personal morality or shaming people for the sake of it.

Medically, economically, and personally, it really is that important.

You think exercise is "not that important in the grand scheme of things"? I urge you to do a bit of research on the topic, if you care about living a long and healthy life.

Realistically speaking it correlates extremely well with self control. Not perfect and I'm not talking about a few extra pounds. But morbid obesity? Yeah pretty much always ..

It’s not about what’s easy. This is what the OP is talking about. Anyone who is in shape over a certain age pretty much has to wake up and choose the hard thing most days. Whether it’s bunions, old (or recent) injuries, GI problems, arthritis, inflammation—movement is good for all of these things. I know this from personal experience. If I stop moving for a few weeks it is very painful to get back into the groove. I’m currently dealing with some kind of lower GI problem that is affecting my energy and causing a lot of discomfort. I have foot problems, a messed up rotator cuff, etc.

But if you just keep showing up and putting in the effort (and most of all, not comparing yourself to anyone else, even your past self), the results will come.

You can get very thin without moving a muscle and by diet alone.

Thin people sweat too.

I agree, it's moralizing. The dependence on pharma is a real concern, particularly in a country (US obv) where they've got us all by the balls, but it's no less/more a problem here than for any other ailment requiring maintenance meds. We're still learning how the American diet and other environmental factors can literally change peoples' metabolism and it makes complete sense to me to treat the symptoms if we have the means to do so.

> Here’s a fun thought exercise - replace Ozempic/weight loss with any number of drug/mental health condition pairs.

Most disesases are not self inflicted. Obesity is

[flagged]

>Just a few meals out and not tracking my calories and I fell off of maintenance quickly.

This is the big thing: it's amazing how little you can fall out of line and gain weight. A couple hundred calories a day and you're adding weight, every week. It really does take discipline.

What do you mean by "food noise"?

> ... the past two years have been a fun experiment in semi-free-market medicine. I don’t mean the patent violations - it’s no surprise that you can sell drugs cheap if you violate the patent - I mean everything else. For the past three years, ~2 million people have taken complex peptides provided direct-to-consumer by a less-regulated supply chain, with barely a fig leaf of medical oversight, and it went great. There were no more side effects than any other medication. People who wanted to lose weight lost weight. And patients had a more convenient time than if they’d had to wait for the official supply chain to meet demand, get a real doctor, spend thousands of dollars on doctors’ visits, apply for insurance coverage, and go to a pharmacy every few weeks to pick up their next prescription.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43369502

GLP-1s have been around for decades. As far as medications go, that’s plenty long for “long-term” side effects to show up. Not saying it’s not possible, but it’s also not likely at this point.

There are already known short-term side effects, that's why it's not prescribed just for aesthetic weight loss, only to people whose weight poses health problems: https://www.gov.uk/drug-safety-update/glp-1-receptor-agonist... .

I never saw so much hand-wringing and pearl clutching when we started injecting botulism toxin into our faces to make them smoother.

Why are we so dead set on making sure overweight people struggle to put off the weight? Why can't it be easy for them?

I don't mock alcoholics for not being able to control themselves around alcohol. But we are determined to mock overweight people. Despite alcoholics having an easier time dealing with their vice.

Think about it, every other vice is controllable by simply avoiding the thing. Except for food. We must eat. It is a requirement. Having an issue with food is something you must deal with. You have to deal with the underlying issue. It requires true discipline. And it requires you to maintain that discipline 24/7. We don't ask that of any other vice.

Diet and exercise methods don't[1] work for most people, for loss and especially for healthy weight maintenance.

With extreme levels of direct, personal involvement by multiple professionals (which is what rich people / celebrities have historically used, and variations of which have been studied by researchers) the efficacy level reaches "sort-of OK, but still not great". That's crazy-expensive, though, so not a realistic solution for the masses, plus the results are still pretty lackluster despite the cost.

[1] Could, hypothetically, yes "CICO", technically anyone could lose weight, but they in fact do not work when applied in the real world, statistically speaking.

True, but some people might have favorable gut flora others do not (there was evidence of this with fecal transplants, with recipients acquiring the metabolic profile of the donor). The meta issue is that the human body and its interaction with gut flora and other systems are still somewhat unknown, and we are still simple monkeys using hammers on inputs of the body.

Why do we need GLP-1s? Is it because of Western diet? Misfiring reward centers (GLP-1s also appear to quell addictive behavior around alcohol and hard drugs)? Broad antibiotic usage along with more sterile living environments causing misbalanced gut flora (not producing sufficient quantities of natural GLP-1)? The most exciting phrase in science is not "Eureka!" but "That’s funny...".

I thought the long term solution was gene therapy for GLP-1 consumers, but now believe it's going to be probiotics that encourage gut flora that excretes sufficient quantities of GLP-1 for the desired metabolic outcome (based on most recent evidence and findings). If feasible, this is exciting because it is much harder to gate this therapy via the medical industrial complex (primarily insurance, pharma, PBMs, etc).

Scientists May Have Found a Natural Alternative to Ozempic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43874436 - May 2025

> It just doesn't seem to work with everyone

Without a very precise definition of "work", these discussions quickly degrade to near uselessness.

There is a very large difference between "telling patients to exercise more and eat less doesn't result in long term weight loss" and "exercising more and eating less doesn't result in long term weight loss"

The former is true, and the latter is not.

I agree that from a clinical perspective the former definition is more relevant than the latter.

The way Ozempic works is basically by controlling desire so you eat less - it's the eating less (less calories consumed) that makes you lose weight. As you lose weight you will also be able to exercise more easily, which again will help to lose weight (more calories burnt).

At the end of the day it is just about diet and exercise - not eating more calories per day than you are burning via exercise.

> Plenty of people have lost weight sustainably with diet and exercising. It just doesn't seem to work with everyone.

The problem is, staying healthy is a matter of privilege.

You need to be able to afford to eat healthy (ultra-processed industrial food that's loaded with sugar is often much cheaper than quality produce), even if you have money, a decent chunk of Americans live in areas that are classified as "food deserts" [1], even if you are not in a food desert you still need to be able and have time to get to a store selling quality food, and you need someone with time available to cook healthy meals out of that. It used to be easier back in the time where one income was enough to feed a whole family and the women stayed as housewifes to actually do that, but these times are (thankfully) long gone.

Exercising suffers from similar "problems of privilege". Either you got the money and time to spare to go to a gym, or you got the money and space in your home to install your own gym... or you need actually safe roads where you can walk, jog or bike, and most of the US is so utterly car-dependent that it is outright unsafe to walk.

And on top of that you got the whole "living while Black" issue, with egregious instances like a pregnant Black woman arrested for walking her dog [2] - it's no surprise that the Black and Indigenous population has noticeably higher rates of diabetes [3] or oral health issues [4].

And on top of that, you got the whole issue with educating children about healthy foods, their parents being too poor to afford healthy foods, and that setting up these children for childhood obesity which perpetuates into adulthood. A lot of that is closely correlated with ethnicity and wealth as well.

It's a systemic issue, an insanely complex one at that, with no easy solution to be found - and certainly not a failure of any individual to stay healthy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_deserts_in_the_United_Sta...

[2] https://ca.news.yahoo.com/pregnant-black-woman-ticketed-walk...

[3] https://healthequitytracker.org/exploredata?mls=1.diabetes-3...

[4] https://doh.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/Documents/Pubs...

Self control and will power are loaded terms for chemical and electrical operations of the brain; executive function is an improvement. Regardless, it isn't magic or special, just wetware ops. Bugs in the human hardware or software? We patch the human, if we can and if they wish.

Man, my diet suppressing hormones must be in the same place as my runner's high because when I get home from a long run the thing I want to do most is have a snack.

Yeah I cut down to one meal a day and after a year I just CANNOT eat as much as I used to. The result is permanent as far as I can tell. Or at least it will take me a year of going back to old habits to make my stomach big enough again

What does the data tell us?

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult-obesity-facts/index.html

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_India

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-03/china-ind... | https://archive.today/UeI7X

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

> Rates of overweight and obesity increased at the global and regional levels, and in all nations, between 1990 and 2021. In 2021, an estimated 1·00 billion (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 0·989–1·01) adult males and 1·11 billion (1·10–1·12) adult females had overweight and obesity. China had the largest population of adults with overweight and obesity (402 million [397–407] individuals), followed by India (180 million [167–194]) and the USA (172 million [169–174]). The highest age-standardised prevalence of overweight and obesity was observed in countries in Oceania and north Africa and the Middle East, with many of these countries reporting prevalence of more than 80% in adults. Compared with 1990, the global prevalence of obesity had increased by 155·1% (149·8–160·3) in males and 104·9% (95% UI 100·9–108·8) in females. The most rapid rise in obesity prevalence was observed in the north Africa and the Middle East super-region, where age-standardised prevalence rates in males more than tripled and in females more than doubled. Assuming the continuation of historical trends, by 2050, we forecast that the total number of adults living with overweight and obesity will reach 3·80 billion (95% UI 3·39–4·04), over half of the likely global adult population at that time. While China, India, and the USA will continue to constitute a large proportion of the global population with overweight and obesity, the number in the sub-Saharan Africa super-region is forecasted to increase by 254·8% (234·4–269·5). In Nigeria specifically, the number of adults with overweight and obesity is forecasted to rise to 141 million (121–162) by 2050, making it the country with the fourth-largest population with overweight and obesity.