Speaker 1: So I really don't like the word diet. That word,
Speaker 1: to me is just so negative and it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: the thoughts that come with that word are like deprivation, starving,
Speaker 1: and just not getting to have anything. That was the
Speaker 1: voice of a YouTuber named Stephanie Rose. Stephanie posts this
Speaker 1: video almost four years ago about how she lost fifty
Speaker 1: pounds in five months, and pretty early on in the
Speaker 1: video she has basically a disclaimer about her weight lost story.
Speaker 1: Stephanie goes on to say that even though she lost weight,
Speaker 1: she didn't really diet. I like to use the word
Speaker 1: journey because for me, this wasn't really a diet. I
Speaker 1: didn't really diet. This was more of a lifestyle change
Speaker 1: and a journey to become healthy overall, just saying, you know,
Speaker 1: I like the word journey. The word diet is very little,
Speaker 1: very don't like dieting. Stephanie sa is that to lose weight,
Speaker 1: she started eating healthier, but she still didn't want to
Speaker 1: call that a diet. Even though eating healthier is part
Speaker 1: of dieting. Still, dieting sounded bad to her. Negative. It
Speaker 1: reminded her of suffering, and she didn't want to deprive
Speaker 1: herself or starve herself. She just wanted to lose weight
Speaker 1: and feel confident again. And Stephanie is not the only
Speaker 1: person fed up with diets. It's this funny trend I
Speaker 1: noticed recently. People aren't really using the word diet anymore,
Speaker 1: even when what they're talking about is definitely dieting. Like
Speaker 1: this British personal trainer named James Smith. He writes this
Speaker 1: whole book called Not a Diet Book. It was alish
Speaker 1: in early on his website. Jam Smith calls himself a
Speaker 1: disruptor of the billion dollar diet industry, but he also
Speaker 1: says that among the things the book will help people
Speaker 1: do is change bad habits and lose fat. It's called
Speaker 1: not diet books. It's not. It's more of an empowering book,
Speaker 1: an education book, a liberation book to you fully understand
Speaker 1: the things that you need to so the rather you
Speaker 1: work in with your diet, your diet works for you.
Speaker 1: What I'm hearing here is the not a diet book
Speaker 1: is actually a diet book. One more example. There's another
Speaker 1: personal trainer. This one is a woman named Lucy Bergen.
Speaker 1: She gained some weight during the pandemic, like a lot
Speaker 1: of us did. Then she starts working out intensely for
Speaker 1: a competition, and as part of that, she takes a
Speaker 1: photo of herself every single day. Lucy ends up putting
Speaker 1: all the photos together in a video. She's wearing the
Speaker 1: same outfit in each photo. It's sort of a rust
Speaker 1: colored bikini, and there's a calendar in the background with
Speaker 1: exces over the dates. In the video, you can see
Speaker 1: the ex's stack up on the calendar as time passes.
Speaker 1: Six months of weight loss fly by in about thirty seconds,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, as that happens, you can also see
Speaker 1: Lucy's body changing over time. She drops about thirty pounds.
Speaker 1: In the beginning of the video, Lucy looks unhappy, she's
Speaker 1: grabbing her stomach and shooting the camera a thumbs down.
Speaker 1: By the end, she looks thinner. She's also dyed her
Speaker 1: hair at some point from brown to blonde. It makes
Speaker 1: her look almost like a different person. The whole video
Speaker 1: is kind of like a live action before and after photo,
Speaker 1: and people love before and after photos, so maybe you
Speaker 1: can guess what happened when Lucy posted the video on
Speaker 1: the internet this morning on Take It Off Today, an
Speaker 1: incredible transformation On TikTok her weight loss video went viral
Speaker 1: with twelve million views. The Today Show has Lucy on
Speaker 1: as a guest. They asked her what were you thinking
Speaker 1: when you took these photos each day? And she says,
Speaker 1: I just get to find myself. That it was a
Speaker 1: short term goal. It wasn't a diet. It was a
Speaker 1: lifestyle change and that's what's so important. And I loved
Speaker 1: you hear that it wasn't a diet. Lucy last weight
Speaker 1: by working out and changing what she ate, but not
Speaker 1: a diet, a lifestyle change. I reached out to Stephanie
Speaker 1: James and Lucy about all this, but they didn't provide
Speaker 1: any comment for this episode. There's a reason everyone is
Speaker 1: shying away from using the word diet lately. After hundreds
Speaker 1: of years of dieting, people have suddenly grown tired of it.
Speaker 1: Diets are a drag and they don't work so well,
Speaker 1: so we're questioning them more than ever. Dieting has become
Speaker 1: kind of a bad word, the d word. But somehow,
Speaker 1: no matter how hard we try to ban it from
Speaker 1: our collective vocabularies, we still can't seem to get away
Speaker 1: from dieting. We're still trying to lose weight and show
Speaker 1: off our before and after photos and tell people our
Speaker 1: secrets to success. We're just following a non diet to
Speaker 1: do it and refusing to fuss up that it is
Speaker 1: actually a diet. Company is are getting in on the
Speaker 1: action too. One of the most prominent examples is now,
Speaker 1: a popular new weight loss app that's been called weight
Speaker 1: Watchers for millennials. Newon says it uses psychology to help
Speaker 1: people build new, healthier habits. But that's not why we're
Speaker 1: talking about Noon right now. We're talking about Noon because
Speaker 1: new actually describes itself in its ads as you guessed,
Speaker 1: it not a diet. It's different. It's something that I
Speaker 1: can actually live with if I wouldn't even call it
Speaker 1: a diet. In this episode, I'm going to get into
Speaker 1: why people are so done with diets, or at least
Speaker 1: done with calling them diets anyway. The diet backlash starts
Speaker 1: with one simple fact diets aren't fun. But there's more
Speaker 1: going on here too. I'm also going to look at
Speaker 1: how companies in the huge and very profitable diet industry
Speaker 1: are responding, like new which is selling dieting without actually
Speaker 1: calling it dieting. Are they just tricking us? I'm Bloomberg
Speaker 1: News Health reporter em A Court and from the Prognosis podcast,
Speaker 1: this is losing. So the word diet has gotten a
Speaker 1: bad reputation. Twenty years ago, the South Beach Diet became
Speaker 1: a multi platform, multimillion dollar phenomenon with a book that
Speaker 1: had the word diet on it in huge block letters. Today,
Speaker 1: fewer people are buying diet books, and fewer diet books
Speaker 1: are making bestseller lists, according to data from NPD E
Speaker 1: Book Scan and USA Today company is selling weight loss meanwhile,
Speaker 1: are working over time to assure people that they are
Speaker 1: anything but a diet. If you're counting calories, or cutting carbs,
Speaker 1: or generally changing how you eat to lose weight, that's
Speaker 1: a diet. And there are lots of reasons to take
Speaker 1: issue with dieting, especially the fact that most people really
Speaker 1: can't maintain weight loss long term. But the word diet,
Speaker 1: that's not exactly the issue. So I don't people want
Speaker 1: to diet anymore? I put the question to Darren Cipher,
Speaker 1: who is a food and beverage industry analysts for the
Speaker 1: Market Research Company and p D Group. Well, simply put,
Speaker 1: dieting is not fun and eating is Darren's right. Dieting
Speaker 1: is not fun. And in many cases it could drive
Speaker 1: you crazy and not literally, but yeah, I could do
Speaker 1: some interesting things with your moods. People think of dieting
Speaker 1: now and they think of punishment, like our YouTuber Stephanie
Speaker 1: Rose said earlier, But dieting used to be well, maybe
Speaker 1: not fun, but trendy. People used to all go on
Speaker 1: the same diets and complain about them at parties. It
Speaker 1: was like a group activity. Somewhere along the line, though,
Speaker 1: things shifted. NPD group has found that interest in dieting
Speaker 1: has been declining of American adults say they're on a
Speaker 1: diet today compared with and at one point about a
Speaker 1: decade ago, as few as twenty of people were dieting,
Speaker 1: and Darren says people aren't just interested in how their
Speaker 1: bodies look anymore, they're also interested in how they feel.
Speaker 1: This notion of just feeling like your well is becoming
Speaker 1: much stronger and much more important with consumers because it's
Speaker 1: not just about the physical anymore. It's also about the mental. Wealthy,
Speaker 1: and it's not just the dieting isn't fun. Ideas about
Speaker 1: what people's bodies should look like are becoming a bit
Speaker 1: more inclusive, especially for women. I've always been battling this
Speaker 1: idea that if I was skinnier, if I looked exactly
Speaker 1: the way I wanted to look, then so many of
Speaker 1: my problems would go away and I would just be happier.
Speaker 1: When the ideal body is portrayed as skinny, people try
Speaker 1: to lose weight. But the bodies we see are changing
Speaker 1: at least a little. People in bigger bodies are getting
Speaker 1: featured on the covers of magazines, in TV shows, on
Speaker 1: social media, and even on some high fashion runways where
Speaker 1: ultra thin models have long been the norm. The early
Speaker 1: Internet played a big role here, helping activists in the
Speaker 1: fat acceptance movement get the word out about their cause
Speaker 1: and use tools like blogging to build communities of like
Speaker 1: minded people. It's called the body positive movement. Body except
Speaker 1: in stemmed out of that, and it kind of widens
Speaker 1: the scope to um people of all racist gender expressions
Speaker 1: sizes wildly. Eventually, culture started to catch up. In two
Speaker 1: thousand four, for example, the soap brand Dove made huge
Speaker 1: waves with its campaign for Real Beauty. One of its
Speaker 1: most well known ads featured an artist drawing women, first
Speaker 1: based only on how they described themselves, and then based
Speaker 1: on another person's description. When the sketches were displayed side
Speaker 1: by side, it showed that the women didn't see themselves
Speaker 1: very accurately. Do you think you're more beautiful than you? Say? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Companies began realizing they might actually sell more products to people,
Speaker 1: especially women, by casting models and bigger bodies and expanding
Speaker 1: the sizes they carry, and media has been changing too.
Speaker 1: She's already the first curving model to land the cover
Speaker 1: of the Sports Illustrated Swim Student issue, and now it
Speaker 1: seems she's ready for world domination she being the model
Speaker 1: Ashley Graham. This happened in TV shows like Girls recast
Speaker 1: the archetype of a female lead, with Lena Dunham sporting
Speaker 1: crop tops alongside what she herself has described as belly rolls.
Speaker 1: Platforms with no gatekeepers like TikTok and YouTube have throw
Speaker 1: us even more types of bodies into the spotlight. Today,
Speaker 1: celebrities look a little less like the celebrities many of
Speaker 1: us grew up seeing, and some of them, like the
Speaker 1: actress Jamila Jamil, are even making names for themselves by
Speaker 1: calling out diet culture for being toxic. The diet industry
Speaker 1: can just off, I'm going off to the diet and
Speaker 1: details industry, and it doesn't exist anymore. Despite all this change,
Speaker 1: much of popular culture still looks the same in lots
Speaker 1: of ways. The thin ideal remains incredibly prevalent. But we
Speaker 1: are seeing bigger butts and underwear ads and even stretch
Speaker 1: marks and plus size models on the covers of magazines.
Speaker 1: We're all perfectly imperfect. Body positivity always and forever. The
Speaker 1: authentic and real us focus on how you feel. Forget
Speaker 1: what other people say. You are enough, exactly as you are.
Speaker 1: You don't need to change. And this may sound like
Speaker 1: some kind of motivational speech, but it's actually an ad
Speaker 1: part of the underwear company aries body positivity campaign. Underwear
Speaker 1: companies used to be practically the CEO of wanting us
Speaker 1: to change our bodies, but these days they've got a
Speaker 1: new line, except yourself the way you are. Maybe some
Speaker 1: of this is an increasing recognition that dieting doesn't work
Speaker 1: so well, especially among younger people, people like me who
Speaker 1: saw their parents diet and diet and diet some more
Speaker 1: without ever really getting anywhere. We're also a lot more
Speaker 1: aware of the dangers of diets these days, dangers like
Speaker 1: eating disorders. Today we're talking about body image. According to
Speaker 1: the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five women
Speaker 1: struggle with an eating disorder or disordered. Eating. Restricting how
Speaker 1: much food you eat is actually a very common risk
Speaker 1: factor for developing and eating disorder. People are talking much
Speaker 1: more about these things than they used to, so there's
Speaker 1: a lot at play here. We've finally realized that dieting
Speaker 1: isn't fun. People want to feel good instead and be healthy,
Speaker 1: which is more than a number on a scale. Body
Speaker 1: ideals are changing, becoming a bit more inclusive, and there's
Speaker 1: way more awareness about eating disorders, which are a risk
Speaker 1: of dieting. All this stuff sounds good, right, positive, We're
Speaker 1: turning away from diets and more towards feeling good and
Speaker 1: being healthy. But the diet industry had an answer for that,
Speaker 1: and it was wellness. Diets are out and wellness is in.
Speaker 1: In the same way that people used to all go
Speaker 1: on the South Beach diet together, Now they're meditating and
Speaker 1: taking over priced vitamins, sporting apple watches, browsing Goop's website,
Speaker 1: maybe even drinking those weird wellness shops they sell by
Speaker 1: the checkout at Whole Foods. Dieting is restrictive by its
Speaker 1: very nature, but wellness. Wellness means pursuing good health, and
Speaker 1: that's pretty vague. Wellness can be anything, anything you want
Speaker 1: it to mean, or more realistically, anything marketers want it
Speaker 1: to mean. Wellness can even mean dieting. Tried now and
Speaker 1: I lost ten pounds, which to me was huge. Remember now,
Speaker 1: the weight loss app I mentioned earlier now very much
Speaker 1: fits into this trend. Here's how it works. New maps
Speaker 1: out how many weeks or months it will take to
Speaker 1: reach your goal weight, and then new tries to use
Speaker 1: psychology and wellness concepts like mindfulness to help you eat
Speaker 1: differently and also change the way you approach eating. When
Speaker 1: I went to the doctors, it was just a very
Speaker 1: cut and dry move more eat less, that's it. Noon
Speaker 1: taught me. It was more about why I was eating.
Speaker 1: That helped me take the first few steps and find
Speaker 1: that new path. You log your meals on the app,
Speaker 1: and it teaches you to recognize and eat less caloric foods.
Speaker 1: But Noon is not a diet, or at least that's
Speaker 1: what it says. Here's how NEWM advertises itself online. These
Speaker 1: are all direct quotes, by the way, But now stop
Speaker 1: the yoyo dining. Now stop dining get lifelong results. I'm
Speaker 1: focusing on Noon here because it's a high profile window
Speaker 1: into this trend. Noon and other companies understand that the
Speaker 1: culture has changed. Surviving as a weight loss company in
Speaker 1: a world that at least wants to be done with
Speaker 1: diets means taking a new approach. To understand how Noom
Speaker 1: got here, we have to start at the very beginning.
Speaker 1: For now, that's two thousand eight, Ardem Pakov and S. J. Jong,
Speaker 1: who are now the company's president and CEO. We're very
Speaker 1: interested in helping people get healthier. The first product they built,
Speaker 1: in fact, wasn't a weight loss program, but technology for
Speaker 1: an exercise bike. Get Ready one week, Put the bike
Speaker 1: and other early approaches looked promising at first, but then
Speaker 1: Artem and say you realized most people don't really exercise consistently,
Speaker 1: so how many people could their bike really help anyway?
Speaker 1: And it seemed like a broader issue that people don't
Speaker 1: really make the kinds of changes that would improve their health.
Speaker 1: One thing seemed like the exceptions that rule. Though. That's right,
Speaker 1: weight loss people just don't act if you say, hey,
Speaker 1: let's get you healthier, but they do. However, when the
Speaker 1: question is how do I lose this weight. You can
Speaker 1: practically see the gears and Artem and Sager's minds turning
Speaker 1: weight loss. Weight loss is their way in, it's their
Speaker 1: business opportunity, and that gets you then to start caring
Speaker 1: about what you're eating, what you're exercising. You know how
Speaker 1: you're exercising, whether you're sleeping right, stressing right. Many of
Speaker 1: the things that help people lose weight are also good
Speaker 1: for them in other words, of course, that isn't always true,
Speaker 1: and before you know it, that sort of becomes to
Speaker 1: all consuming thing that really helps people get healthier Holistically,
Speaker 1: Artem likes to call weight loss trojan horse, if you will,
Speaker 1: to people's health. What he means is that weight loss
Speaker 1: can get people to care about their health. Weight Loss,
Speaker 1: in his mind, isn't the goal. It's a means to
Speaker 1: an end. In the end is being healthier overall, not
Speaker 1: just thinner. Of course, we also know from research that
Speaker 1: people can improve their health without getting thinner, but this
Speaker 1: is how Artem thinks about it. It's worth pointing out
Speaker 1: too that his background is actually in software engineering. He's
Speaker 1: not a doctor or anything. In fact, newm is kind
Speaker 1: of a classic Silicon Valley story these days. Of tech
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs trying to disrupt the health care space. But remember
Speaker 1: there are tons of weight loss programs out there. Newm
Speaker 1: saw an opportunity to set itself apart with psychology, the
Speaker 1: why and how of losing weight. Most diets are lacking
Speaker 1: what what they really lack are the actual mechanism, the how.
Speaker 1: They're telling you what to do, but they're not telling
Speaker 1: you how to do it. And that's just like having
Speaker 1: a car without wheels, where it won't go anywhere. Because
Speaker 1: the hard part is the how Noon launched their weight
Speaker 1: loss app in and what Artom just described. It's an
Speaker 1: approach that has really worked for now the app has
Speaker 1: become really popular. How popular well, Noon told us that
Speaker 1: it has millions of users, but they wouldn't be any
Speaker 1: more specific. A little tidbit about that name. It's actually
Speaker 1: moon spelled backwards. Artem says. It's because the moon is
Speaker 1: there at night, shining like a guiding light when your
Speaker 1: willpower is running low. And it sounded very calm and
Speaker 1: peaceful and sort of psychologically oriented, so we wanted to
Speaker 1: people to come in and sort of have this more
Speaker 1: calming effects, sort of like an ulm, right, or the
Speaker 1: moon indeed, maybe you're wondering how new works in practice.
Speaker 1: Each time you open up the app, Noon gives you
Speaker 1: little articles to read and quizzes to do. That's supposed
Speaker 1: to be how you learn and change your habits. I
Speaker 1: actually tried new Mount for this episode. So as an
Speaker 1: example today, the app had me set a shorter term
Speaker 1: weight loss goal that would actually be achievable. Here's a
Speaker 1: little snippet of that lesson. So your short term smart
Speaker 1: goal could be to limit yourself to a dessert every
Speaker 1: other day. There was another lesson about making your calorie
Speaker 1: budget last. It's simple planning. The easiest way to stay
Speaker 1: within your calorie budget without going hungry is to plan ahead.
Speaker 1: Shall we design you a plan to tap below to
Speaker 1: get started planning, like thinking about whether you prefer large
Speaker 1: meals or snacking that kind of thing, and then break
Speaker 1: down your calories on a per meal and per snack basis.
Speaker 1: Then I took another lesson about how to prioritize your
Speaker 1: goals based on what's actually realistic. The final one was
Speaker 1: about how to buy yourself more calories to eat in
Speaker 1: a day. Did you know you can increase your calorie
Speaker 1: budget every single day? It's not magic. It's exercise, but
Speaker 1: do please let us know if you have found a
Speaker 1: magical way to burn calories. Remember how Artem said earlier
Speaker 1: that diets tell you to eat differently, but they don't
Speaker 1: tell you how, and so without that, it's like a
Speaker 1: car without wheels. There's a car, but you cannot drive
Speaker 1: it anywhere without it having wheels. These lessons plus things
Speaker 1: like tracking food weigh ins and working with new coaches,
Speaker 1: these are the how part the car wheels that are
Speaker 1: supposed to help get you moving. You might have noticed
Speaker 1: when we were going through the lessons before that the
Speaker 1: tone of new is friendly, virgin on goofy person. Really,
Speaker 1: I found the tone a bit condescending. It came off
Speaker 1: like pop psychology. Like one of the questions at the
Speaker 1: beginning asked what do you need to succeed in weight loss?
Speaker 1: It was a multiple choice format and I chose exercise
Speaker 1: for thirty minutes a day. Nope, the right answer. Simply
Speaker 1: believe I was selling some friends about it over dinner
Speaker 1: one day. Pizza Noom's app would call it a red
Speaker 1: food and salad a green food. My friends I am
Speaker 1: called it the goop of weight loss. It kind of
Speaker 1: is down to the made up sounding name Goop, which
Speaker 1: is the actress Gwyneth Paltrow's wellness company is known for
Speaker 1: making questionable claims about their products having health benefits. Back
Speaker 1: to Noon. Behind all the psychology, nom is kind of
Speaker 1: your typical weight loss app. New has a food log
Speaker 1: with a calorie budget. NEWM breaks food down into red, yellow,
Speaker 1: and green categories. Yes, like traffic light colors. And you
Speaker 1: can use the app to track things like exercise and
Speaker 1: your weight. But somehow though it's not a diet. I
Speaker 1: put that question directly to artem Pedacough. There's a big
Speaker 1: difference between a typical diet and a weight loss program.
Speaker 1: I'm listening a lot of the diets that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: and then people have experience with our things that are
Speaker 1: short term that are fads, you know, something like raspberry
Speaker 1: keytones or cabbage soup or and our prescriptive eat this,
Speaker 1: not that, And NEWM doesn't believe in any of those things.
Speaker 1: So when they say new isn't a diet, what they
Speaker 1: really mean is NEWM isn't a fad diet. But that's
Speaker 1: not what the marketing copy says. It says not a
Speaker 1: diet period. Everyone who goes on NOUM goes on it
Speaker 1: to lose weight, that's what it's for. This is Tracy Mann,
Speaker 1: a psychologist who runs a health and eating lab at
Speaker 1: the University of Minnesota. I think people who go on it,
Speaker 1: I believe that it's using different, sort of more scientific methods,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that you'll lose the weight and
Speaker 1: keep it off. When I asked NOM about evidence of
Speaker 1: its long term weight loss results, a spokeswoman pointed me
Speaker 1: to studies showing people can lose about five of their
Speaker 1: body weight or more, a medically significant amount. Those were
Speaker 1: only a year long, though. NEUM is also working on
Speaker 1: a two year study that should finish next year, and
Speaker 1: it says that its methods have been studied and it's
Speaker 1: always trying to find the best way to help people
Speaker 1: back to the non die a trend. Tracy says that
Speaker 1: this is the biggest change she's seen in the almost
Speaker 1: thirty years she's been working in this area. She believes
Speaker 1: that people are finally waking up to the problems with dieting.
Speaker 1: Something has sort of seeped into people's minds about diets
Speaker 1: not working. But again, people are not exactly giving up
Speaker 1: on weight loss here and so The change isn't to
Speaker 1: not diet changes that people change how they talk about
Speaker 1: dieting and don't use that word. This isn't exactly the
Speaker 1: kind of change Tracy wants to see happen. She actually
Speaker 1: finds it really frustrating to completely superficial rebranding. It's almost
Speaker 1: a trick that brings me to another point about what
Speaker 1: NEWM is trying to do here. Artam told me that
Speaker 1: NEWMS started off in wheat loss because they believe that's
Speaker 1: how you get people to play an active role in
Speaker 1: their health. But if health is really the goal of
Speaker 1: new why track calories at all? Why put food into
Speaker 1: categories like red, which everyone knows means stop. Here's what
Speaker 1: Andreas Michaelidis Nemes chief of psychology, had to say about that.
Speaker 1: Andreas is a psychologist. Things like our our calorie trackers,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know those are meant to Those are
Speaker 1: meant to just increase your awareness of your daily habits,
Speaker 1: increase your awareness of of what you're eating. It's you
Speaker 1: don't have to log every single meal to be in
Speaker 1: the program. It's not a mandatory log or you know,
Speaker 1: that's it. It's not about the food that you love
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to say, because that screams to
Speaker 1: me just like diet. Okay, But Newmes app does encourage
Speaker 1: you to log your food, Like when I pull it
Speaker 1: up right now, it's telling me you haven't logged any
Speaker 1: meals today. And isn't the whole point of logging your
Speaker 1: meals to become more aware of the food you eat
Speaker 1: so you make healthier choices or at least less caloric ones.
Speaker 1: Newm has also been criticized for putting people on a
Speaker 1: twelve hundred calorie diet, which is really on the low
Speaker 1: end in terms of how many calories a person should
Speaker 1: be eating. Noum says it used to put some women
Speaker 1: on a twelve hundred calorie diet. It was the minimum
Speaker 1: amount of daily calories a person using the app could get,
Speaker 1: but last year it increased that amount by about ten
Speaker 1: Newm says that although that number is safe and effective,
Speaker 1: they changed it after feedback from customers. Then there's the
Speaker 1: traffic light system for foods Andrews says they use it
Speaker 1: because it's simple and people like simple. Newmes. Whole thing
Speaker 1: is psychology, remember, and a traffic light system is easy
Speaker 1: to keep in mind when people go to the grocery
Speaker 1: store or make themselves lunch at home. As for red
Speaker 1: means top, this is what Andreas says about that maybe
Speaker 1: some people do we have that association, but it's very
Speaker 1: clear that it's not a do not eat this. In fact,
Speaker 1: Andreas says red means eat less of this if you
Speaker 1: want to lose weight, and to be fair, Noon does
Speaker 1: make that clear in the app that red doesn't mean
Speaker 1: cut chocolate cake out of your life forever, which is
Speaker 1: good because chocolate cake is delicious. But it's worth pointing
Speaker 1: out that this system doesn't exist in a vacuum. We
Speaker 1: lived our whole lives getting cues about food from all
Speaker 1: over the place. When I log a red food on Noon,
Speaker 1: I feel like a bad person, like I screwed up.
Speaker 1: And maybe I might have felt that way anyway neum
Speaker 1: or not, But NOWM isn't exactly changing the narrative, And
Speaker 1: I think most people are gonna try to avoid those
Speaker 1: red foods and maybe twitch a little when they see
Speaker 1: a red food in the office pantry. Again, that's a
Speaker 1: diet thing. Everyone knows. Red means stop. We do talk about,
Speaker 1: by the way, you know, I always like transparency. We
Speaker 1: do talk about. Is the red color the optimal one.
Speaker 1: We've so far stuck because it's a traffic light. The
Speaker 1: simplicity of it has so far been overriding it. Those
Speaker 1: are exactly the kinds of things that we sort of
Speaker 1: spend hours discussing internally. What's the perfect color for it?
Speaker 1: And is there another? Is there something else we can do?
Speaker 1: And you might see us change that in the future
Speaker 1: to lower that confusion. What other color are you thinking
Speaker 1: about replacing it with? No, that's a that's a that's
Speaker 1: a I think it trade secret. Noon told me in
Speaker 1: July that it is in the process of changing the
Speaker 1: system from red to orange. Look. Noon is, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, a company. It was started by
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs who brought technology to the world of weight loss,
Speaker 1: putting the whole psychology thing aside. What makes this app
Speaker 1: a good business is the technology here. You can put
Speaker 1: a lot of people through a standardized program relatively little expense.
Speaker 1: But calling a weight loss program anything but a diet
Speaker 1: just seems disingenuous, like gas lighting, like new is trying
Speaker 1: to trick us like a trojan horse. I asked Artem
Speaker 1: about that when we talked, Okay, I think it's a
Speaker 1: it's complicated. People have all kinds of feelings about that word,
Speaker 1: a k. A diet, and have all kinds of associations
Speaker 1: with anything and have strong feelings about them in terms
Speaker 1: of either succeeding or failing or uh, you know, are
Speaker 1: having mixed success, and so you know, it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of a contentious word. So I think we have to
Speaker 1: be very careful when we use it. UM. I think
Speaker 1: going back to UM, you know, going back to the
Speaker 1: basics and the sort of the core principles here is
Speaker 1: we think a lot of people are What I feel
Speaker 1: the worst about is a lot of people blame themselves
Speaker 1: for their lack of success and they said I was
Speaker 1: given a diet and I failed. In other words, people
Speaker 1: have had bad experiences with diets. The word brings up
Speaker 1: feelings of guilt and shame, so we're battling that perception
Speaker 1: a little bit. That makes sense as a company, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want people to have a negative association with your
Speaker 1: product right off the bat, But logging a red food
Speaker 1: in the new map brings up feelings of guilt and
Speaker 1: shame too. Without having a more in depth understanding of
Speaker 1: the actual program, it's easy to say, oh, it's a diet,
Speaker 1: because that's the category that I'm taking a picture or
Speaker 1: of and putting it into that bucket, and that, you know,
Speaker 1: that kind of feels good. But the truth is is
Speaker 1: that we don't know if the category of what we
Speaker 1: do exists out there with other kinds of things. We really, really,
Speaker 1: really believe that this is behavior change, not a diet. This,
Speaker 1: I have to admit, is where they lost me. Like, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll concede that people have a tendency to sort things
Speaker 1: into categories, but I think it's pretty clear why people
Speaker 1: are sorting this particular program into this particular category. In fact,
Speaker 1: NUMA has encouraged it. Since I started New, I've lost
Speaker 1: seventy pounds. I've lost ninety seven pounds with New I
Speaker 1: lost on New. We've all seen these kinds of ads
Speaker 1: a million times before. They're as much of a tired
Speaker 1: cliche as before and after photos or diets claiming to
Speaker 1: bring some original innovation to the table that no other
Speaker 1: diet has ever done before. NEWM is capitalizing on that,
Speaker 1: embracing it, not rejecting it, and NEWM is also capitalizing
Speaker 1: on the diet backlash at the same time. Either way,
Speaker 1: NEWM wins so If new isn't a diet, what is it?
Speaker 1: I pose the question to artem. It is a behavior
Speaker 1: change program that helps you take control all of your
Speaker 1: health through understanding what's up here. He's pointing to his head. Here.
Speaker 1: It's a holistic program. But let's you do that. Notice
Speaker 1: that he didn't say the words weight loss at all,
Speaker 1: even though that's why people come to this new program
Speaker 1: to lose weight. NEWM even has you put in a
Speaker 1: goal weight when you sign up. I'm not the only person,
Speaker 1: by the way, who takes issue with how NEWM describes itself,
Speaker 1: and specifically with the company's claim that it is not
Speaker 1: a diet. Noon came under pressure about this pretty recently
Speaker 1: and ended up responding we'll talk more about that in
Speaker 1: a moment, but first, it isn't just new Nothing is
Speaker 1: a diet anymore. Take weight Watchers, the iconic weight loss
Speaker 1: company that's been around for about sixty years. Listen to
Speaker 1: what Gary Foster, the company's chief scientific officer, had to say. Well,
Speaker 1: we started to hear around two thousand sixteen, but heard
Speaker 1: even clearly and more consistently in two thousand eighteen, was
Speaker 1: that when people were thinking about their overall wellness and
Speaker 1: particularly weight in that context that they're thinking had changed
Speaker 1: that formerly they were ready to metaphorically leave their life
Speaker 1: to lose weight. They were willing to do draconian owners
Speaker 1: things like always eat this, never eat that, eat at
Speaker 1: this time of day, but not at that time of day,
Speaker 1: eat high, this low that. Gary also calls this kind
Speaker 1: of mindset dieters prison. And that is how people think
Speaker 1: about dieting right, not just as punishment, but as something
Speaker 1: you go do and then come back and resume your
Speaker 1: real life. That's a diet myth we've talked about before.
Speaker 1: The South Beach diet that was so popular in the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's was structured like that, you finished it
Speaker 1: and went back to your life. But the company then
Speaker 1: known as Weight Watchers was hearing something different from people,
Speaker 1: and they said, I'm not willing to leave my life
Speaker 1: to lose weight, and you've got to address the whole
Speaker 1: met So no longer am I willing to eat in
Speaker 1: wacky ways. I want to come out of this program
Speaker 1: eating more healthy, not less healthy. I want to come
Speaker 1: out more active, not less active. I want to come
Speaker 1: out with a more helpful mindset. And I'm want to
Speaker 1: come out sleeping better, so they were very clear that
Speaker 1: weight loss is still an outcome they were seeking, but
Speaker 1: they wanted to do it within a wellness ecosystem. We
Speaker 1: Watchers took that to heart. The company rebranded to ww
Speaker 1: literally taking the word weight out of its name. Gary
Speaker 1: says the name change reflected something deeper, a pivot to
Speaker 1: focusing on overall health, not just weight loss. At one
Speaker 1: point when we were talking, Gary mentioned that people can
Speaker 1: feel like weight loss is punishment for something they've done wrong.
Speaker 1: It's almost like I have to go and make up
Speaker 1: for my past transgressions. That's diet talk. So I had
Speaker 1: to ask the obvious question, does ww call itself a diet? No,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. We were just talking with Gary Foster, chief
Speaker 1: scientific officer at ww. WW formerly known as Weight Watchers,
Speaker 1: is arguably one of the best known weight loss programs around.
Speaker 1: But Gary told us that the program is not a diet,
Speaker 1: and remember Noon doesn't call itself a diet either. In fact,
Speaker 1: NOME says pretty clearly in its advertising that it's not
Speaker 1: a diet. People don't love this, Like I said before,
Speaker 1: it feels like gas lighting. It also raises some other issues.
Speaker 1: People who have eating disorders or a history of them
Speaker 1: might come to NOM thinking it's a safe space, like
Speaker 1: NOM itself saying it's not a diet. Reactions to NEWMS
Speaker 1: advertising finally boiled over earlier this year. The whole thing
Speaker 1: seems to have been sparked by a tweet. Every new
Speaker 1: MAD is like, We're not a diet, We're an eating disorder.
Speaker 1: That was Elena Stone, a twenty eight year old in St. Louis, Missouri,
Speaker 1: reading that aforementioned tweet. Elena wrote it and what she
Speaker 1: wrote hit a nerve. Elena's tweet racked up around a
Speaker 1: hundred thirty five thousand likes and ten thou retweets. Was
Speaker 1: just digging constantly all day noon, started trending on Twitter
Speaker 1: after that, and the company actually ended up responding. But
Speaker 1: first Elena's story. It turns out she had been hearing
Speaker 1: a lot of new mads all over the place, YouTube
Speaker 1: podcasts many times a day. It felt inescapable and actually,
Speaker 1: she says, she's never used now, but a close family
Speaker 1: member has what really uh got me upsets um. They
Speaker 1: always start with We're not a diet, but they absolutely are.
Speaker 1: Elena refers to herself as fat. She's used apps similar
Speaker 1: to Neon in the past. Like my fitness pal, but
Speaker 1: eventually she became pretty firmly anti diet. It's, you know,
Speaker 1: for me, been a lifetime of being told what to eat,
Speaker 1: and I just don't want to do that anymore. I
Speaker 1: love food, I love cooking, I love baking, um, I
Speaker 1: love cheese, I love coffee. You know, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be drinking up an eighth of a cup of
Speaker 1: black coffee and choking down iceberg lettuce. Like that's not
Speaker 1: a life to me. The weave of anti NEWM sentiment
Speaker 1: that Elena's tweet unleashed online didn't escape the attention of
Speaker 1: new The company soon published a post on its website
Speaker 1: in response, and you can probably guess what it said,
Speaker 1: which is to say that its program is more than
Speaker 1: just a diet. Now also said in the post that
Speaker 1: it takes eating disorders seriously and has several safeguards in place.
Speaker 1: People can't enter a below normal b m I as
Speaker 1: their goal weight or join if they report an active
Speaker 1: eating disorder or a history of disordered eating. NEWM also
Speaker 1: says coaches are trained to spot issues users might be having.
Speaker 1: So okay, we're over diets because they're not fun when
Speaker 1: people lose weight. Now it's a lifestyle change, not a diet,
Speaker 1: and companies like NEWM and WW are marketing us these
Speaker 1: non diets too, but they sure sound a lot like diets.
Speaker 1: All the stuff does what's really going on here? At
Speaker 1: the surface, All this can seem like positive change. At
Speaker 1: the very least, fad diets seemed to be a thing
Speaker 1: of the past. People shouldn't be going to diet ors
Speaker 1: prison black coffee and iceberg lettuce. Isn't a life like
Speaker 1: Alina said, Maybe we should be thinking about health more
Speaker 1: broadly than the scale, adding in exercise and eating our veggies,
Speaker 1: sleeping better. The problem is that we're over dieting in
Speaker 1: name only. Remember that data from the Market Research Company
Speaker 1: and p D Group that interest in dieting is declining. Well.
Speaker 1: MPP Group also found that people still want to lose
Speaker 1: weight even if they don't want to diet. What that
Speaker 1: tells us is that we're not really over diets. Maybe
Speaker 1: we want to be, but we're not. And the reasons
Speaker 1: for that they're actually old reasons. They're the same reasons
Speaker 1: diets have had a pull on us for hundreds of years.
Speaker 1: Here's Peter Stearns, a history professor at George Mason University.
Speaker 1: We spoke to him in our second episode. I think
Speaker 1: partly we're hoping that this will be easier than it
Speaker 1: actually turns out to be. We humans love a quick fix,
Speaker 1: especially for something like wait that makes us uncomfortable. And
Speaker 1: then there are those other classic things that draw us
Speaker 1: to diets, like wanting to look good and wanting to
Speaker 1: be healthier. It's a combination of a cultural and a
Speaker 1: medical issue, and too much emphasis on either one or
Speaker 1: the other oversimplifies the problem. So will we ever actually
Speaker 1: be done with diets or will diets always be with us?
Speaker 1: I put the question to Sabrina Strings, an associate professor
Speaker 1: of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, A scary thought.
Speaker 1: Sabrina says that it's complicated. People are pushing back on dieting,
Speaker 1: but then there are others who are still restricting what
Speaker 1: they eat because they think it's better for them that
Speaker 1: they'll lose weight and be healthier. And so I think
Speaker 1: what we often want to see is straightforward progress, but
Speaker 1: life is a lot messier than that. And this is true,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about any form of oppression. As long
Speaker 1: as weight is important in society, there will be an
Speaker 1: opening for dieting, even if it's called a lifestyle change
Speaker 1: or wellness. And that makes sense because for all the
Speaker 1: changes going on, there's still an intense focus on weight
Speaker 1: loss that we have in our culture. In fact, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what we're going to talk about in our next episode.
Speaker 1: We're going to tackle the big billion dollar question of
Speaker 1: weight and health. After all, everyone knows that it's healthier
Speaker 1: to be thinner, right right, Well, there's a lot more
Speaker 1: to it than that, and actually the evidence about weight
Speaker 1: and health is a whole lot sketcher than advertised. We're
Speaker 1: going to find out why the prevailing narrative isn't quite
Speaker 1: right and also what happens when someone dares to put
Speaker 1: out research undermining the narrative. And so there's just like
Speaker 1: this constant level of harassment, not just like a scientific discussion,
Speaker 1: which is what I would have expected, but more like insults.
Speaker 1: In short, things get nasty. Losing. It is written and
Speaker 1: reported by me em A Court and edited by Kristin V. Brown.
Speaker 1: Magnus Hendrickson is our senior producer, Stacy Wong our associate producer,
Speaker 1: and Blake Maples, our audio engineer. Our theme was composed
Speaker 1: and performed by Hannis Brown. Thanks to francesco Leavy and Timnette.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe to Prognosis if you haven't already,
Speaker 1: and if you like our show, please leave us a
Speaker 1: review that helps others find out about it. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: See you next time, h