Jean Nidetch Biography

Out of all the famous food and nutrition professionals, I chose to do my historical biography research paper over a woman by the name of Jean Nidetch. Jean Nidetch was an overweight homemaker who became a slim, successful business woman by being the founder of one of the biggest weight loss programs, called “Weight Watchers.” With her personal experience and struggles of being overweight, she developed a program to help and teach other people how to do it themselves. I chose to research her because some of my family relatives and friends have done weight watchers in the past and lost a lot of weight. I love to learn about different types of dieting, and Weight Watchers is very effective for all of the people I have talked to. I have always
She tried all kinds of different diets, and even began to see doctors for advice and medications. Although some of the strategies she took helped at first, they never lasted in the long run. In 1961, Jean described herself as “desperate” to lose weight. She went to the New York City Department of Health Obesity Clinic where the professionals put her on a very strict diet. With this new diet, Jean had some success, but often found herself cheating and eating things that her diet did not allow. Her nutritionist was very healthy and had never been overweight, so Jean found it difficult discussing her misbehaviors with her because she felt like the woman would not understand how dieting could be so hard. One day, Jean decided to invite six of her overweight friends over to her house to discuss any secrets they each had to dieting. From that day on, the group agreed to meet every week to share their troubles and successes with the new diet. Jean was known as an amazing motivator, and a great public speaker. These character traits made Jean very well known. By sharing her story and working towards her goal, she became a living example for all of her patients. By word of mouth only, Jean's group of six grew drastically and quickly. By no time, she was teaching and talking to hundreds of people in need of losing weight. She then began to hold biweekly meetings with people and private meetings with those who were not able to come to her meetings. Jean developed a reward system that gave her clients a gold pin for losing ten pounds and for every ten pound after that, they were given a diamond chip. On October of 1962, Nidetch reached her personal goal of losing seventy two pounds and never gained the weight back. Jean then reached out to help her family. By attending the meetings and following the diet plan, Marty Nidetch lost seventy pounds, while Jean's mother was also very