Marie Osmond is a spokesperson for Nutrisystem, which I confuse with Jenny Craig often. It’s one of those prepackaged meal weight loss systems that works because you’re eating less calories overall. This is similarly why Weight Watchers and every diet works, although WW allows much more flexibility than other programs and doesn’t require you to eat their food. Marie is so convinced that her way is the right way that she’s mildly shading Oprah for drinking wine in her latest Weight Watchers commercial. For the love of God you shouldn’t have to give up wine, bread, cheese or whatever else you love to lose weight! It’s all about moderation. This happened during an interview with Marie and the CEO of Nutrisystem on Yahoo! finance, which you can watch on their site. It came across more like an infomercial than a legit interview. Plus Marie’s face is fascinating. She’s had so much work done that she looks like one of those dolls she makes. Marie has lost 50 pounds and she’s kept it off for ten years. Good for her. She thinks Oprah’s way is too complicated though because it’s not Nutrisystem.
Marie Osmond seems to be winning the battle of the bulge. The 57-year-old singer and entertainer says she’s lost 50 pounds using Nutrisystem and has been able to keep the weight off during her 10 years as a spokesperson for the weight-loss product company.
“Nutrisystem taught me how to eat, so my body loved me back,” Osmond tells me in the video above. She still eats foods she loves like pasta and chocolate, but says she’s learned portion control and eats smaller meals more often, about six times a day. “I’m not desperately running to have a candy bar,” she says…
“When you’re overweight, you’re overwhelmed,” explains Osmond, who says she’s had success with Nutrisystem because she doesn’t have to weigh in, measure food or count points.
That seems to be a direct jab at Weight Watchers, the rival diet-plan company that Osmond’s friend Oprah Winfrey bought 10% of in 2015. Winfrey has been seen in advertisements flaunting her 42-pound weight loss on Weight Watchers, while toasting a glass of wine.
“Everybody’s trying to get into whatever works for whomever,” Osmond says of Winfrey’s Weight Watchers connection. But, she adds, “To me, toasting a glass of wine, there’s a lot of sugar in that glass. That’s the other thing about counting points. It didn’t work for me. My points were shallow points like ice cream and things like that. Whereas what Nutrisystem does is that glycemic index, that’s the key to me.”
While Winfrey’s involvement with Weight Watchers has helped fatten the company’s flailing stock price, Nutrisystem continues to outperform its rival. Over the past 12 months, Weight Watchers stock is down more than 50%, while Nutrisystem’s stock is up more than 60% during the same period.
Osmond says she was a customer of Nutrisystem long before becoming a spokesperson for the brand. “I actually bought it and started losing my weight. Nutrisystem found out about it and asked if I would endorse [the product].”
Well, get ready to see a lot more of Osmond. She’s currently featured in Nutrisystem’s new ad campaign called Lean 13, which promises customers they’ll lose up to 7 inches and 13 pounds in their first month.
“The best predictor of long term weight loss is short term weight loss, so the program allows people to have fast success, and they tend to continue on,” Nutrisystem CEO Dawn Zier says.
Zier says the trend towards locally sourced, whole grain, unprocessed foods has resulted in changes at the company. “Over the past 18 months, we’ve eliminated artificial flavors, sweeteners and colors from our products, and most of our foods don’t have artificial preservatives.”
I disagree with Osmond and the Nutrisystem CEO of course. Whatever weight loss system works for you for both the initial loss and maintenance is the one you should use. I generally eat “healthy” whole foods overall but I personally don’t stress about gluten, diary, sugar, artificial colors or preservatives, etc. So many people lose the forest for the trees and think you have to eat only whole foods or give up carbs or entire food groups to lose weight. As I often mention (I try not to be preachy about it but it’s changed my life), I use MyFitnessPal and a food scale to count calories. It’s free and you eat whatever you want. These prepackaged meal programs take all the work out of it, but if you want to keep the weight off, how does that work once you’re no longer paying for their food? They claim you don’t have to stay on the program after losing the weight and just continue “eating healthy,” but if you don’t know how to prepare your own foods or how much to eat how does that work exactly? If you’re going to spend over $300 a month on premade food and you don’t want to have to cook or pay attention to portion sizes, why not just buy ready made meals and microwave them at home? That would require doing some basic math though and Marie thinks that’s too hard.
photos credit: WENN and FameFlynet
I have several friends who swear by WW. And I have worked with a couple of men who swear by it. They really lost weight on it. All of them, but one, went to the meetings, though, at least for a while.
No program is for everyone, though.
yup, I have a couple of friends who are WW “lifers”. it works because it teaches you how to eat healthily, what foods have what nutrients/calories/fat content, and allows you to “cheat” by using the point system. want a brownie? have one, but that’s a third of your points for the day, and dinner will have to be a salad with no dressing.
if you change your habits, you can keep the weight off. simply buying some company’s prepackaged meals doesn’t work once you stop buying/eating them.
Heeeeey doofus, Happy New Year girl. xoxo to yesterday’s comments on the wacky thread. Missed you!
My sister is a lifer and she said nothing taught her portion control as WW. She lost like 120 pounds and has remained healthy and active. Some days she legit wouldn’t eat more than veggies so she could save her points for a fancy dinner or a bunch of wine. The next day she picked it back up without an ounce of guilt. I loved that! I think it’s manageable if you’re knowledgable about foods and which ones are high points and which ones you can eat freely.
Um, the best predictor of long term weight loss isn’t short term weight loss. Not at all. Otherwise every crash diet would have worked.
IKR? That comment seemed so out of whack.
Yeah, that comment earned some serious side-eye from me. I’d be stunned if there was a high correlation. Although I suppose what she’s saying could be technically true in the sense that there isn’t really anything that predicts a person’s weight loss, so short term weight loss was the best predictor, but still an objectively terrible predictor.
Honestly, I’ve been doing WW for a little while now, and it’s been both pretty easy and pretty effective. The meetings are good because it’s a lot of strategizing on how to deal with the stuff that results in overeating or eating the wrong foods. Plus, with Nutrisystem, it seems like you go off it at some point, or else you’re paying out the nose for crappy prepackaged food forever. If you get to your goal weight at WW, it becomes free.
As someone who has done every diet in the world, they all work. However, I did WW and lost 90lbs almost 10 years ago. I have kept it off and do not follow WW anymore. How do you eat in restaurants etc when you are having your food delivered? How do you learn to cook healthy foods when all you have to do is microwave?
it also doesn’t help when your are trying to integrate your own food or and knowing how they fit into your day, or WHY you choose certain foods. on ww or myfitnesspal (lost my baby weight both times with mfp, never tried ww but i think it’s basically just an easier code to track macros) you understand what budgeting your calories/fat/etc means. you learn what a big bowl of ice cream does to the rest of the day, or what a small bowl does. you learn to save enough for a good dinner if you are going out, or learn that a light dinner can cover a more fun lunch. if you want to make it fit, you can, and you can eat what you want, and learn to adjust if you want to fit in a wine or beer or brownie. that’s real life!
Haven’t there been rumors that Marie’s weight loss was achieved and/or maintained by surgical means?
^^^^This…. I don’t trust weight loss claims from celebs because you can never be too sure of that kind of thing.
I know other people who swore they kept weight off through diet and in reality had surgery to do it, so I don’t think it would be unusual in our society.
I ordered nutri system to lose 10 lbs or so. I received a giant box of food that didn’t need refrigeratoration. The food was horrible. Maybe I should have kept it in the event of an apocalypse but no way was I eating that “food.”
Wasn’t there some little flak about Marie promoting the lose X pounds per month, when she had not actually done that program? She lost the weight long ago, so it’s not like she has 10 or 13 pounds to lose in a month now.
As for her face — She looked very different during a holiday parade a few years ago, yet her face sort of settled.
Ugggh. All diets work ….some are healthier than others, some work better for individual preferences than others, Generally I don’t judge the diets themselves,, ,,just the smugness of those who tout one as better over the others. As the smugness is real.
To MOs credit…..she’s kept the weight off. Good for her, I admit my reaction to OW is “tired of your weight dialogue “. It’s been going on for decades so ….nope, you aren’t a diet icon and I shut down listening to you on all topics weight and health.
I’m likely influenced by my SIL, a WW teacher, The woman is addicted to WW as an avocation, but clearly has an eating disorder and is so thin she had to sew mini weights into her clothing hems to pass the WW weigh in of weighing enough!
Did MO really do it with nutrisystem though? I thought she had weight loss surgery. Kinda reminds of all the other celebrities advertising hydroxycut or whatever, you never really know if they use the product they hawk or they throw up all the food or what.
So sad about your SIL 🙁
I have no idea if MO had weight loss surgery or not. Never heard that rumor before reading it here today…..
When I was 20 pounds overweight I thought about nutrisystem but ultimately I just didn’t want to have food shipped in. I’ve yo yo’ed a bit over last 12 months but now am about 10 pounds over my goal weight.
WWs makes sense but I’m not a fan of meetings or the group thing. As another poster shared….I think the my fitness pal app is great! Seems to follow the same theory as Ww, and the app Has been helpful to me when I’m actively focused on weight loss.
The whole celebrity endorsement angle just bugs me so much, hard to trust any of them as being honest and authentic…..
The only one I actually had any interest / affinity for was Valerie Bertinelli. Didn’t she do Jenny Craig?
After being diagnosed with lupus I packed on the weight due to steroids and my inability to move due to joint problems. The way that has worked is taking one day at time and making better choices everyday and not beating myself up for not having a great day. I think that Oprah and Marie are both ingenious about there weight loss. They both have chefs, trainers, nutritionist and other staff that help with the everyday mundane task of life. So for them to endorse a weight loss company is crap, sorry but it is. They want to act like they are doing it to help others(especially Oprah) but if they really cared they would not be doing it for a paycheck. I understand that these programs can help people but the best way to lose weight and maintain it is not by following what some celebrity says to do.
I think nutrisystem, jenny craig or any other diet plan that has you eating manufactured foods instead of learning to eat clean healthy fiber rich foods is doing your body a disservice. I’ve known MANY people who tried both and the moment they stopped buying the food and changed over to regular eating packed the pounds on again.
Same here. As soon as they tried going off the packaged food (which looked horrible years ago, not sure now) they gained back the weight.
I was going to say that she hasn’t kept it if off for 10 years, she was pretty chunky on DWTS, but apparently that was 10 years ago. LOL Time is going by way too quickly for me.
I do agree people need to do what works for them to lose weight. I can’t just count calories or points (WW) and those pre-package foods (nutrisystem) make me feel like crap. I don’t lose weight with any of those programs. I’ve also noticed that people who I know that have lost weight with the pre-packaged foods end up being skinny-fat. They’re skinny, but they still have a lot of fat on them and not enough muscle.
The bottom line is you have to make a lifestyle choice to keep the weight off, no matter how you lose it. If you go back to eating the way that made you fat in the first place, it’s going to happen again. I eat keto and I’m constantly asked “yeah, but what happens when you go off keto?” Why in the world would I go back to eating the foods that made me fat and sick?
I’m with you on the myfitnesspal pulpit. I did do WW about ten years ago and have used myfitnesspal for about 3 years. It really has worked for me.
My issue with prepared meals like NutriSystem is that you don’t relearn how to cook or retrain your habits on a fundamental level. If you can no longer afford the meals (which are usually expensive) than you’re more likely to revert back to your old habits.
WW and calorie counting don’t suit my temperament however I can how they enable people to reexamine their eating choices and create better dietary habits.
Mindful eating and meal prep is working for me. It’s taken me like a year to lose two inches off my waist. It’s frustratingly slow but at least I’m either maintaining or losing weight. When I go grocery shopping I don’t buy processed food. Making myself leave the house for chips and chocolate means I only have them when I really want them. I also replaced Diet Coke with a weekly kombucha.
I realise this was a bit of a ramble! I just try not to talk about my weight loss goals with people irl because I don’t want to bore them or accidentally trigger someone with an ED.
I tried Nutrisystem and most of the meals were inedible. I think people lose weight on Nutrisystem because they’re throwing most of their plate away. Breakfasts were the best but they were all pastry type items, which I can’t imagine is healthy.
Is it me or…..if you look at Marie’s nose in the 1st photo (with her mouth open) and then look at the photo of her in the mustard sweater…did she get a nose job?
M.O. did lose weight with Nutisystem while she was doing Dancing With the Stars. You can see her lising each week if you look on Youtube. She credits that show and Nutisystem for her weight loss. And she has managed to keep the weight off for the past 10 years.