For half a decade, weight-loss guru Jenny Craig could barely speak.
A freak accident rendered her silent for several years after her namesake diet program reached its peak popularity, bolstered by celebrity spokespeople and a catchy jingle that played in the company’s commercials.
The debilitating accident happened in 1995 when Craig fell asleep on a couch with her head resting on her chest. A noise startled her, and her head shot up, causing her lower jaw to snap over her upper jaw. Years later, she recalled having to pry her teeth apart.
“To say I was frightened is putting it mildly,” she wrote in her 2005 autobiography, “The Jenny Craig Story: How One Woman Changes Millions of Lives.”
Thus began Craig’s retreat from serving as the primary ambassador for Jenny Craig Inc., which plans to close soon after four decades because of financial troubles, NBC News reported Wednesday. The network said that it had reviewed an internal letter announcing the closure, which was sent to employees Tuesday.
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The company is among the few weight-loss programs that have ruled the diet industry for decades as millions of Americans have sought to control their weight.
Jenny Craig Inc. has faced increasing competition and waning interest in recent years, especially as dieting has fallen out of fashion and newly popular drugs, such as Wegovy and Ozempic, promise quicker weight loss.
But in the 1990s, the company seemed to be everywhere — even as its founder seemed to disappear. Several doctors expressed befuddlement about why Craig couldn’t speak after her jaw incident, until one finally gave her an answer: The muscles in her face had been stripped and needed surgery to repair.
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Learning to talk again helped Craig better understand her weight-loss clients, many of whom followed diet after diet before finding success, she told CNN’s Larry King in 2001.
“They keep trying things, and it’s very frustrating,” Craig said. “I experienced the same kind of thing. And so I really empathize with them.”
Craig’s desire to help people slim down was born of personal experience. She told People magazine in 1990 that she felt terrible about herself when weight from her second pregnancy was difficult to lose.
“I used to look in the mirror and cry,” she said. “I would just cry and say, ‘What did you do to yourself?’”
Craig, a New Orleans native, and her husband launched their weight-loss empire in 1983 after the pair moved from the United States to Australia and saw a gap in the country’s diet industry. She had worked in the weight-loss field for decades, including at a chain of women’s “figure control” salons, she told CNN. That experience, she said, taught her “the things that work and the things that don’t work.”
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Jenny and Sid Craig’s bet on Jenny Craig Inc. proved successful. The company grew to employ more than 1,000 people and at one point managed more than 660 weight-management centers across Australia, the United States, Canada and New Zealand.
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For the year ended June 1993, around the height of the diet’s popularity, the company earned more than $490 million. It also made the couple millionaires.
The diet, which centers on prepackaged foods and one-on-one coaching, attracted a slew of endorsem*nts from celebrities such as Mariah Carey, Queen Latifah, Jessica Simpson, Jason Alexander and Kirstie Alley. The company also ran commercials featuring Monica Lewinsky, but it yanked the ads from the air after people criticized Lewinsky as a poor role model.
Despite its popularity and expansion, in 1993 the company was beginning to experience financial woes. It later refocused its program to include supplements, exercise equipment and a simpler food program with more choices.
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After leaving the day-to-day running of the business, Craig told San Diego-based Ranch & Coast Magazine in 2017 that she had noticed a shift in the weight-loss industry.
“Now it’s a combination of not only looking good, but eating healthily and exercising so you live longer,” she said.
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Some people involved with the company have said they regret encouraging people to focus so much on their appearance.
Last year, actor Valerie Bertinelli apologized for helping to promote a “diet culture” mentality when she was a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig. Her 2009 appearance in a two-piece swimsuit on the cover of People magazine prompted headlines about how she had recovered her “bikini body” while on the program.
“Looking back now, I was part of a diet culture that didn’t celebrate women no matter what size,” Bertinelli, who starred in the TV shows “One Day at a Time” and “Hot in Cleveland,” told Washington Post Live in January 2022. “It was about getting down to the smallest size you could possibly get to, and if you’re not there, then you’re a failure. And I don’t believe that to be true any longer.”
