In shift to overall health, Weight Watchers rebrands as 'WW'

Julie Spitzer -

Weight Watchers is moving away from diets to focus on promoting healthy habits and overall wellness, and changing its name to WW to better reflect this new image, CNBC reports.

With a new tagline — "Wellness that Works" — the company, famous for helping people manage their weight by assigning points to different foods and organizing support-group-style meetings for its participants, also plans to launch a program called Connect Groups in December, which will help members find others who have similar health experiences and wellness goals.

In addition, WW will offer a new program called Wellness Wins that rewards members for working toward healthier habits. The company will also launch a mobile app through a partnership with meditation app Headspace.

The move aligns with an overarching trend in the U.S. of consumers focusing on clean eating, instead of honing in on numbers on the scale or inches around the waistline.

"This has been part of an evolution of a journey to go from being undisputed leader in healthy eating for weight loss to much broader than that," CEO Mindy Grossman told CNBC. "To truly be a partner to people in overall wellness — for what you eat, how you move, how your mind works — to support you and how you become part of a community."

The company is also offering an integration with Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant, and is nixing artificial sweeteners, preservatives and colors from its own food products.

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