They say only two things in life are certain: death and taxes. But for me, since age 12, Weight Watchers has been an unavoidable third—a constant presence in my life.

I started tracking calories (or “points,” as they called them) on the site in middle school. This cycle continued, on and off, into my early twenties—stocking up on kale, bananas, avocados, and other “low-point” foods, only to eventually give in and binge. On a platform where a single low-fat cheese quesadilla was considered a wild Friday-night “treat,” how was I supposed to log an entire family-sized Domino’s Cheesy Bread? For two decades, my relationship with Weight Watchers was a miserable dance of either starving myself or overeating, never in tune with my actual hunger.

So when I heard last week that Weight Watchers was preparing to file for bankruptcy, I couldn’t help feeling a flicker of vindication. It’s not that I think programs like this shouldn’t exist—for years, I truly believed it was helping me. But after therapy, recovery work, and time, my approach to food has changed: I don’t diet, I don’t talk about dieting, and I don’t judge others for their food choices or body size. Looking back, I resent all the time and money (so much money!) I wasted propping up a business model that thrived on people’s self-disgust.

Of course, Weight Watchers isn’t failing because society suddenly rejected diet culture. The rise of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro has gutted old-school subscription programs, especially among younger users who can’t imagine following the same rigid rules their mothers and grandmothers did (with, let’s be honest, little long-term success—about 97% of diets fail). Sure, Weight Watchers may have framed weight loss as a supportive community, unlike today’s Ozempic gold rush, but at their core, they’re the same beast.

Having grown up in the low-rise jeans and visible hipbones era of the early 2000s, I can only imagine what today’s young people internalize from Ozempic ads—like the one I saw last night, featuring a bride giddily getting married in a white dress after (presumably) shedding pounds with injections. As if the wedding industry wasn’t already alienating enough for fat people. Add to that the drugs’ high cost, uncertain long-term effects, and potential to worsen disordered eating, just like any diet. Yet the backlash against people who use them makes me feel like I’m in some alternate reality where the systemic fatphobia that pushed them toward these drugs—a system Weight Watchers helped uphold—never existed.

So while the GLP-1 craze isn’t exactly cause for celebration, I’ll take a small satisfaction in seeing Weight Watchers—a brand I once thought would control my life forever—prove itself fallible. My losses were its gains for years. Now, Weight Watchers has finally become irrelevant.