Earlier this month, WeightWatchers made the extraordinary announcement that it would be offering its own version of the ‘fat jab’ Ozempic.

WW members would have access to something called ‘compounded semaglutide’ – an injection that contains the same active ingredient as Ozempic, but was ‘customised’, meaning that it could be sold under the WW brand.

Currently only available in the US, it could well be heading this way very soon.

It is a staggering move for a company that, over five decades, has built its global success on the premise that healthy controlled eating and iron willpower are the key to achieving sustainable weight loss.

Oprah Winfrey, WeightWatchers’ most famous ambassador for almost a decade, was looking the slimmest she had in years – and a month later admitted using weight-loss drugs to get there

But times have changed dramatically and the decision is an indication of the panic that has taken hold of the traditional diet industry – worth £200 billion worldwide – over the runaway success of the new generation of weight-loss drugs that have taken the world by storm.

Barely a week goes by, after all, without the publication of new photographs showing a totally transformed celebrity – some of whom admit to using Ozempic-like drugs and some of whom keep mum.

The Hollywood actress Kathy Bates is the latest to showcase a new body, crediting lifestyle changes for most of her 7st weight loss – and Ozempic for the last 20lb.

But it isn’t just the rich and famous who are injecting themselves. Tens of thousands of us have embraced fat jabs. Wegovy, Mounjaro, Saxenda and Ozempic – the most popular ‘skinny jab’ brands – all work in the same way. By mimicking the body’s GLP-1 hormone, they make us feel satisfied after eating less, and fuller for longer, thereby decreasing our appetite overall.

Property developer Zoe Silverton sums things up well when she describes weight-loss injections as ‘the new Botox – everyone’s getting it’.

She used to use meal replacement shakes and soups to drop weight quickly, but now reaches for Mounjaro. After four weeks of injections, she’s already 10lb down.

BEFORE: The Hollywood actress Kathy Bates, pictured in 1999, is the latest to showcase a new body

AFTER: The star, pictured last month, credits lifestyle changes for most of her 7st weight loss – and Ozempic for the last 20lb

‘I met up with a group of friends recently and said I wouldn’t be eating much as I was on Mounjaro. People started shuffling awkwardly in their seats until two others said they were taking it, too,’ says the 42-year-old, from Essex.

‘By the time our group of eight said our goodbyes, three others had asked for the details of the online pharmacy I ordered through. They see that – just like Botox – it works and makes people feel good and look fantastic, and they want to try it.’

Last week, the Government revealed plans to give the jabs to the overweight unemployed to get them back into work, save the NHS money and boost the economy.

Inevitably, the jabs are having an effect on the traditional diet business, which is seeing sharp downturns in its profits.

An industry previously worth £2 billion annually in the UK – in the form of diet clubs, low-calorie foods, slimming classes, ‘fat camps’, supplements, books and videos – is nervous.

WeightWatchers has been the first to acknowledge and accept the Ozempic juggernaut. In November last year then-CEO Sima Sistani (who later stepped down) issued a grovelling apology to WW members for having pushed the message – long the bedrock of dieting philosophy – that willpower was what it took to lose weight (WW works by using a daily ‘points budget’, with lower-calorie foods having lower point values, and claims to have helped millions to lose weight).

‘These medications have shown, and science has evolved to say, that living with obesity is a chronic condition,’ she said. ‘It’s important, no matter what it means for our business, to just be clear about that. It’s not willpower alone.’

BEFORE: Sarah Le Brocq is perfectly placed to offer a unique insight into weight-loss injections and their impact on the diet world

AFTER: Sarah has been on Wegovy for 14 months and has shed 6st

It can’t have helped that Oprah Winfrey, WW’s most famous ambassador for almost a decade, was looking the slimmest she had in years – and a month later admitted using weight-loss drugs to get there.

‘The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier in my lifetime feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift,’ she told People Magazine.

In March this year, after releasing a documentary heralding the revolutionary arrival of weight-loss injections, the conflict of interest became too much and Oprah stepped down from her board position at WeightWatchers, donating her shares (then worth around £2 million) to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Oprah isn’t the only celebrity with ties to WeightWatchers to come out as #TeamOzempic. In 2023, WW ambassador Robbie Williams revealed his 2 st weight loss was down to ‘something like Ozempic’. He declared the injection to be a ‘Christmas miracle’.

WeightWatchers’ most recent financial statements showed the company’s revenue had shrunk by 10.9 per cent year-on-year and, in the last quarter, its net income was down a whopping 52.2 per cent from the previous year at $23.3million (£17.9million).

No wonder WW decided to embrace an ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ approach. Despite the irony of hoping that a drug will lift the brand out of the doldrums, as far as the markets were concerned announcing the launch of their own ‘Ozempic’ was a step in the right direction. It led to a 25 per cent jump in WW’s share price.

To hammer the point home, at the time of writing, WeightWatchers’ market value is put at $113.22 million. Meanwhile, Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic, is valued at $2.72 trillion.

Other companies are not so lucky. Another weight-loss giant Jenny Craig, Inc., which had more than 600 weight management centres in Canada and New Zealand as well as America, folded last year after 40 years.

An Ozempic injection pen like ones used by the famous and not so famous to lose weight

Sarah Le Brocq isn’t surprised by WW’s about turn: she is perfectly placed to offer a unique insight into the drug and its impact on the diet world.

Sarah has a scientific background and spent years working in the pharmaceutical industry. She’s also an obesity expert who works with NHS England and founded All About Obesity, a campaigning group fighting for better understanding of the disease. She’s been on Wegovy for 14 months and has shed 6st.

As far as she’s concerned, weight-loss injections are a game changer.

‘I’ve been overweight most of my adult life,’ she says. ‘I’ve tried WeightWatchers, Slimming World, LighterLife, The Cambridge Diet, Atkins and various juice cleanses. It’s been a lifetime spent looking for that magic bullet.

‘If you stick to those diets you will lose weight, but 95 per cent regain it within five years because the plans don’t help you change anything.’

She believes traditional diets fail because they don’t understand the science behind obesity. ‘Due to my own experience with weight loss and gain, I’ve studied obesity in depth. You can’t ‘behavioural change’ your way out of it; you need to look at the physiological response in the body, and that’s what these drugs do.’

Sarah has found that, thanks to Wegovy, her body no longer craves food in the way it used to.

‘The other diets make you feel you are missing out,’ she says. ‘I don’t feel like that on Wegovy. I eat what I want but way less. I eat a fraction of what I did and feel completely satisfied.

‘There’s no way I could ever finish a three-course meal, for example, and because I’m not hungry, I make healthier food choices.’

Does Sarah think these injections are the death knell for the traditional diet industry?

‘In my view, the only positive thing groups like WeightWatchers and Slimming World offer is the social aspect.

‘When it comes to people who have a BMI of 30 or above – meaning they’re obese – then, yes, I think they’ll turn their back on the traditional diet industry. The drugs make far more sense than programmes that can never work long-term for them.’

Sarah believes she will now be on weight-loss jabs for life.

‘Research shows that when people stop taking these drugs, they regain the weight,’ she says. ‘I think, down the line, the advice therefore will be to not come off it.

‘It makes sense when you look at obesity from the perspective of it being a chronic condition. We don’t take people off hypertension medication when their blood pressure is under control, because we know it will shoot back up again. It’s the same principle here.’

While WeightWatchers is the most recognisable global diet brand, Slimming World is the biggest in the UK.

Today, it has 13,000 weekly groups in the UK and Ireland with 700,000 members. In 2018 that figure was 18,000 groups and 900,000 members.

The Slimming World diet works by categorising food as ‘Free’ (eat as much as you want), ‘Healthy Extras’ (carefully portioned but essential for a healthy diet, such as nuts) and ‘Syns’ (only eat in moderation).

The most recent accounts filed at Companies House (in May last year) show Slimming World has current net liabilities of £4.8 million.

Louise Temlett, a web designer and podcaster, is a former Slimming World member who has turned to Mounjaro. Three weeks on, she has lost a stone. As well as decreasing her appetite she has found that the jabs do what no diet ever can – liberate her mind from the ‘noise’ around food.

‘My mindset has changed,’ she says. ‘Mounjaro has completely killed my appetite and the unhealthy foods I used to crave no longer appeal.

‘I don’t desire junk food. I used to eat breakfast and immediately think about lunch, I don’t do that any more. It has freed up my mind to focus on other things. From a mental health perspective, it’s been a revelation.’

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Louise, 47, from Bath, did lose 7st with Slimming World in 2009 but, after having her children, the weight piled back on. Despite losing so much weight on the plan, she wouldn’t consider returning.

‘There were lots of repeat customers in my group and it became almost a toxic environment because nobody was stepping out of their mindset to go and do something on their own, they were just repeating old behaviour. The groups gave us a community but I don’t think it was a particularly healthy one.’

However, unlike rival WeightWatchers, Slimming World is sticking to its calorie-cutting guns.

Carolyn Pallister, registered dietitian and Head of Nutrition, Research and Health at Slimming World, says: ‘We have complete confidence in our tried, trusted, evidence-based methods. We also recognise that the new generation of drugs are an important innovation within the weight management industry.

‘Research has shown that the GLP-1 medications do aid weight loss, but they’re not a magic bullet and they certainly aren’t for everyone. Some people won’t be medically eligible to take them, and there are many who won’t want to use a weight-loss medication.

‘It is very easy to believe that this new generation of drugs are the holy grail and that they’ll see rates of obesity reducing. However, it’s important to remember that they’re a short-term medical intervention with many unpleasant potential side-effects.’

It wouldn’t be fair or accurate to pin a downturn in fortunes entirely on the rise of weight-loss injections. The pandemic saw a huge drop off in people paying for slimming clubs and gym membership.

But what is interesting is that, post-pandemic and in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, while people aren’t rejoining slimming clubs for as little as £6 a week, they are willing to spend between £150 and £200 a month on Ozempic.

The majority of weight-loss injections are issued privately in the UK, and exact figures for the number of prescriptions are unknown. However, Superdrug, one of the biggest providers of these drugs, tells me its nurse-led weight-loss clinics are experiencing a mighty 38 per cent month-on-month uplift in customers.

Ozempic and similar drugs are also a contributory factor to the reduced demand for diet books. In the US, the publishing world was able to link a sharp decline in sales in 2021 with weight-loss drugs being approved for use: who needs a low-fat diet recipe book when you don’t have an appetite in the first place?

By contrast, over on TikTok, Ozempic-related content was trending to such a degree earlier this year – with some videos notching up 70 million views – that the company launched a crackdown on influencers promoting the jabs.

Not that it will have any impact on property developer Zoe and her friends. Unlike Sarah and Louise, Zoe does not have a BMI over 30 and shouldn’t have been able to ‘score’ Mounjaro to simply drop a dress size.

While some online services such as Superdrug and Asda require the patient to send a photograph of themselves standing on scales, showing their weight and also holding up a sign with that day’s date, other companies are less strict.

‘It was so easy to get,’ Zoe tells me. ‘You put ‘Mounjaro’ into a search engine and hundreds of private pharmacies come up. I was asked for my weight and height, which I lied about, and then all I did was use a filter to make myself look chubbier on the photo I sent in. The prescription was issued within 30 minutes.’

Zoe insists ‘everyone’ is using these drugs.

‘I’d never go back to soups and shakes that make you feel miserable and ravenous,’ she says, adding: ‘Why would anyone?’

Words to send shivers down the spine of the diet industry.