Jenny, I've Got Your Number
867-5309 was the only one I should have called
My first time at Jenny Craig, I took three buses to get there, my backpack ready to hide a week’s worth of pre-packaged foods in the hopes of losing weight for a guy.
It felt like I was constantly being told that I was too fat, but looking back on photos, I wish I’d seen that nothing was wrong with me. At the time, the guy I was in love with told me that he thought I was The One. But… would I ever lose the weight?
So perhaps that was rolling around my mind when I decided to make an appointment and take the long journey into their office. They buzzed me in through their always-locked door and led me back to a weird-vibe office, weighing me on a meat scale, asking me how many pounds I wanted to lose and by when.
The consultant, in a business pantsuit, clacked nosily on her keyboard, handed me a rip-off paper menu that was all set; so easy an idiot could do, she grinned. Then she led me back to the front area where I waited as she took a mini grocery cart and loaded it with my frozen dinners as I handed over my credit card.
“You’ll do great,” she said. “Just eat the foods, drink your water, and come back next week.”
Jenny Craig was founded by a woman of the same name in 1983 in Australia. Within two years, it opened its doors throughout the world, eventually having over 700 centers in Australia, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. By the mid-1990s, revenue was over $400 million. With its popularity also came celebrity endorsements. I might have been too young for Cheers, but Kristie Alley won my heart in Amy Heckerling’s 1989 film Look Who’s Talking as a woman who unexpectedly gets pregnant and hires a cab driver played by John Travolta to watch her baby (voiced by Bruce Willis). So by the time 2004 rolled around and she signed on as a spokesperson for JC, it felt like an older sister or auntie was guiding me to the solution of my problem— my body and its excess weight.
Alley went on to lose weight, which wasn’t a surprise. With planned, packaged meals and weekly weigh-ins, as well as a contract that I’m sure stipulated some pressure, it set her up to be a public figure for another weight loss success story.
At first, JC felt like a relief. Like most new diets, I went in with a renewed sense of commitment, excitement to meet a new goal, and new foods that were okay to eat. (I recall one commercial Alley did in which she went berserk over being able to eat fettuccine alfredo while still on track to lose weight.)
Her before and after pictures lit a fire under me. And because the person I was seeing at the time thought I would be perfect if only I was smaller, this seemed like a guaranteed success story for me too. Every week, I went to collect my foods, shove them in a backpack, ready to unbox them to hide from my roommates. Because it was expensive, and I felt pressure to lose weight quickly, I didn’t go out. I couldn’t risk being tempted to eat anything that wasn’t a pre-packaged food. In fact, I preferred going to bed earlier so I wouldn’t get hungry and ruin my day’s progress.
Like most diets, I quickly got tired of the foods. Within a couple of weeks, I’d tried every JC menu item. I’d learned which protein bar was the most palatable, but even still, had to scarf them down because it soon started to make me gag. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing this program because I was embarrassed I couldn’t figure out how to lose weight on my own; because I was paying so much to do it; because I didn’t want people to know that I wanted to lose weight.
I even remember one time I was heading somewhere with my mom and she wanted to stop for lunch. I lied that I wasn’t hungry as she sat there and ate. But I eventually got so cranky, I ran to her car and pulled out a tiny can of JC tuna, hid it in my pocket, and scarfed it down in the bathroom, relieved that I didn’t cheat, satiated enough until my packaged dinner.
All of the hiding and sneaking wasn’t part of the JC plan. Maybe if I’d been more open about it, it wouldn’t have been as disordered. But there was something about being on this expensive meal plan that made me feel like a failure. No one my age seemed to be struggling with their weight. JC seemed like a middle-aged soccer mom’s plan to lose baby weight, not the solution for a twenty-something who thought she was fat.
So, I lost the weight. Alley did too. Then I gained it back because I stopped buying the food. Alley did too, saying, “I’m not circus fat. I didn’t hugely screw up. I didn’t gain 75. I gained 30.”
Even within the weight loss community, maybe especially, is fat shaming. Alley declaring that she wasn’t ‘circus fat’ makes it sound that if she was, that wouldn’t be okay; that at least she’s not *that* fat. She’s not the only celebrity to endorse weight loss programs and products; JC also had Valerie Bertinelli, who owned up to her role in the diet industry in 2011. "Yes, I spent 6 years 'shilling' for Jenny Craig," Bertinelli said. "I have been buying into the diet industry my whole life and then I became part of the problem, so here I am today receiving the karma of my actions."
Not all celebs are remorseful about it. Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander, MADtv’s Nicole Sullivan, early aughts TV star Sarah Rue, Carrie Fisher, and even Mariah Carey had all signed on to help sell Jenny Craig to the masses. (Carey said, "I mean, for people who have struggled with this their whole lives, I feel for them so much more now just as a human being, that I want to do something that helps.") The idea, I suppose, is that if these celebrities have all the resources in the world and they chose Jenny, it must be the magic bullet. Maybe it is. But the thing is, it’s not sustainable. It’s still a diet. And the point is losing weight, even if that means microwaving your sad little meal at home alone to do it.
When I met up with a friend for brunch a few months ago and saw the restaurant was next to a Jenny Craig, I stopped in my tracks. A part of me filled with shame that it looked like I was walking towards the infamous weight loss center. But strangely, it was empty. On the window was a sign stating that it was going out of business. It had been years since I even thought about JC (despite random calls and emails asking me to come back for a special rate). Perhaps now we’re living in an age where diets are less appealing (or maybe it’s all the Ozempic that’s more available).
I continued onward, said hello to my friend and opened the menu. “Let’s eat.”
PROMPT: Describe the first diet you ever went on. How did you first learn about it and what motivated you to start? How did it feel any time you ‘cheated’ or ate foods that weren’t allowed?
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Christina Berke is a Los Angeles based writer working on WELL, BODY, a memoir about eating disorders, body image, and childhood trauma. An excerpt of this was Longlisted with Disquiet Literary International. A former Managing Editor for Black Mountain Institute’s award-winning literary magazine, Witness, she currently reads for Split Lip. Find out more at www.christinaberke.com.