Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch dies aged 91

"I was a fat housewife married to an overweight bus driver raising two very overweight kids with a fat group of friends and an overweight poodle," Jean Nidetch once confessed, describing her life before she started a support group that would become one of the best-known weight-loss programmes in the world.

The group was Weight Watchers International. Nidetch, the organisation's chief evangelist since it was incorporated in 1963, died on Wednesday at her apartment in Florida. She was 91 and had complications from dementia, said her granddaughter.

Nidetch had no formal training as a nutritionist and peddled no revolutionary weight-loss regimen. Instead, she offered many dieters a new way to shed pounds - not in shame and alone, but in companionship forged through common struggle, and with regular meetings where they could share setbacks and triumphs.

Her insight came from her own years-long battle with weight, first as a chubby child and later as a homemaker in Queens, New York, gorging on cookies at night. She was 1.7 metres tall and nearly 100kg when, by her account, she hit a low point. A fellow supermarket shopper told her that she looked "marvellous," then asked when the baby was due. Nidetch was not with child.

In 1961, after repeated failures at fad dieting, she enrolled in a public obesity clinic. The meal plan promoted there - heavy on fish, vegetables and fruit - was appealing and effective. But she described the emotional experience as devastating.

Endeavouring to stick to her diet, Nidetch invited six overweight friends to her home, where they formed an impromptu support network whose ranks steadily grew. The members bought a scale for weigh-ins. Nidetch developed a rewards system including prizes for weight-loss milestones.