Late Weight Watchers founder: Food isn't 'remedy' for problems

Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch once said that to lose weight, your attitude toward food had to change.

"Food is not your remedy for problems. Food is not going to change your life. ... If you're going to lose weight, you have to do it by changing your way of thinking about food. It cannot be the highlight of your life."

The colorful housewife from Little Neck, N.Y., who started her own weight-loss company in 1963, died Wednesday in Florida, her son David said. She was 91. No cause was given.

Nidetch, who weighed more than 200 pounds and slimmed down to 142, told USA TODAY in 2010 that she couldn't have imagined that her weight-loss experience would lead to a successful international company. Known for its weekly programs and sensible healthy eating plans, Weight Watchers has helped millions around the world trim down.

Nidetch changed how people view weight loss, said Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian in Chicago.

"She took weight loss from just a private and personal struggle and turned it into a network of people banding together weekly to support one another with knowledge and inspiration.

"She helped millions ditch their crash-diet mentality and focus on realistic weight-loss skills and long-term weight maintenance strategies," Blatner said. "She empowered generations of people to lose weight by providing solid information and creating a robust community of encouragement and support."

Elizabeth Ward, a registered in Boston, agreed. "She developed the best weight-loss program ever because she understood the power of social networking. It's a balanced approach to weight control that people can live with."

Gary Foster, chief scientific officer for Weight Watchers, says, "Jean was well ahead of her time. She knew you can't diet your way to successful weight management. She realized you need to eat foods that you enjoy for weight management to be sustainable and livable, and that is the vision that Weight Watchers still embodies today."

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1923, Jean Evelyn Slutsky struggled with her weight from childhood through early adulthood. When she married her husband on April 20, 1947, she wore a long navy dress, size 18, with the bustle and sides let out.

Over the years, Nidetch tried many fad diets — the eggs and grapefruit diet, the cottage cheese and peaches diet, the bananas and milk diet, the steak diet on which she ate nothing but steak, she told USA TODAY.

She confessed that one of her calorie downfalls was Mallomars, a chocolate-covered marshmallow cookie that she called "my Frankenstein," her name for a craving that's impossible to resist. "For some crazy reason I had to have them. I didn't want my husband or children to see, so I put them in a plastic bag and put them in the hamper."

In 1962, she weighed 214 when she was finally motivated to get serious about losing weight by a chance encounter in the supermarket. "I ran into a neighbor who said, 'Oh, Jean, you look so good.' I was feeling very good about the compliment, and then she said, 'When are you due?' I didn't know how to answer her because I wasn't pregnant. I don't remember what I said, but I will never forget it."

She decided to try a diet program run by the New York City Board of Health in Manhattan. The diet included fish five times a week, two slices of bread and two glasses of skim milk a day, and fruits and vegetables. Nidetch said of that experience: "I had never bought skim milk. I never drank milk. I drank soda. I drank everything that was fattening."

She lost 20 pounds in 10 weeks. Then she decided to invite some overweight friends to her apartment to tell them about the diet. "I am a sharer," she said. "When you give of yourself, you get back. I had to share it, so I called all my overweight friends.

"I only had overweight friends."

In October of 1962, Nidetch reached her goal. She had lost 72 pounds and weighed 142 pounds at 5-foot-7.

On May 15, 1963, she officially opened a business she called Weight Watchers in a loft above a movie theater in Little Neck, N.J. She expected no more than 50 people; 400 showed up. She didn't know what to charge. "I turned around and there was a cashier's window at the Little Neck movie theater and it said $2. I said to everybody, `It's $2. Does anybody object?'"

In The Jean Nidetch Story: An Autobiography, Nidetch wrote, "At that first gathering ... I told my story, and the beautiful thing was that people really listened. And then they began talking and contributing one at a time.

"One woman stood up and said, 'I'm a schoolteacher and I've been teaching for years. I have to say this. Seven years ago, I watched one of my students throw away half a doughnut into a wastebasket. It happened at school at the end of our noon recess period, and from noon until three that afternoon, I couldn't stop thinking about that half doughnut. After I dismissed the class at three o'clock, I immediately closed the door and reached down into the wastebasket, pulled out the doughnut, and ate it. ... It's troubled me for years. ... And I've never been able to tell anyone about eating that doughnut until now.'

"At that moment, all of us in that room became her allies," Nidetch said.

Over the years at meetings and in private conversations, Nidetch said she heard millions of stories. There was the priest in Pennsylvania who finally decided to try to lose weight because he was too heavy to genuflect. He lost 300 pounds. There was the blind woman in Fort Worth who lost weight and said she got rid of one of her handicaps.

The business grew with classes held across New York. Franchises were opened, a cookbook sold millions and by 1968, the company went public with adherents across the globe. When the company celebrated its 10th birthday, 16,000 people attended a massive gathering at Madison Square Garden. Bob Hope was onstage and a snaking line of people waited for Nidetch's autograph.

In 1978, the company was sold to the H.J. Heinz Co. She continued to consult for the company for years afterward, jetting around the world, encouraging people to lose weight.

She told USA TODAY that she studied what works for weight loss. For instance, she noticed that thin people have different meal-time habits than overweight people.

"Thin people release the fork," she said, "and they chew the food with the fork on the table. They chew their food slowly. They look around at each other or the wall or a picture. They listen to the music. They sit back and take a breath. They do something other than concentrate on shoving the food into their body.

"Overweight people never let go of their fork. They hold it when they are talking. They hold it when they are chewing. I discovered that is one of the secrets. Let go of the instrument that made you fat."

The way she saw it, there are two kinds of people. There are the people who cannot eat when they have a problem. "Food to them is, well, just food," she said. "We give them the title of civilians, because they are not fighting our war."

And then there are the others: "people who have to eat to solve a problem. They're bored. They're lonely. They're angry. They're disappointed. They're joyous."

Nidetch said weight loss is often a matter of putting food into perspective. "Food is not your remedy for problems. Food is not going to change your life. If you are lonely, food is not going to be your company. If you are sad, food is not going to give you solace."

Nidetch said the attitude toward food has to change. Hers did. "I used to eat my rewards. Now, the reward is self-respect.

"If you're going to lose weight, you have to do it by changing your way of thinking about food. It cannot be the highlight of your life."

Even in her golden years at a retirement home in Parkland, Fla., she continued to offer encouragement to others. She said she told people, "If you want to lose weight, you will You can. You are capable. It takes a desire ... and sometimes it's rather uncomfortable to get it done. It costs time and money. If you really want to do it, and you know it's your desire and you're capable of it, you will. It's that simple."

Contributing: The Associated Press