Can Oprah Winfrey save Weight Watchers?

This month, Weight Watchers unveiled its “beyond the scale” weight loss plan, with a new logo and fitness app touted by its latest celebrity spokesperson, Oprah Winfrey. With less emphasis on pounds and more on “making time to take care of yourself,” Weight Watchers hopes Winfrey’s golden touch for sales will win back dwindling membershipand end 11 consecutive quarters of revenue declines.

Financial troubles for the weight loss giant began in 2012, when wearable fitness devices like Fitbit and Jawbone, coupled with free nutrition apps like MyFitnessPal, made tracking diet and activity easier and more cost-effective than going to meetings. According to a Duke University study, Weight Watchers members spend about $377 a year on its services and products for an average weight loss of 5 pounds.

Weight Watchers also battles a changing cultural mindset. In 2013, market research company NPD Group reported that dieting in the United States had hit an all-time low. That year, only 20 percent of adults said they were on a diet, down from 31 percent in 1991. Americans also reported abandoning diets sooner.

Weight Watchers’ corporate leadership hopes its new plan and spokesperson will help potential customers see the company differently.

“People don’t want dieting and deprivation,” Gary Foster, chief scientific officer for Weight Watchers told FOXBussiness.com. “They want a more holistic and personalized solution. … They are also looking for success to be measured by more than just one number on the scale.”

Winfrey, who has been using the new plan since October, agrees.

“I’ve wishy-washed with diets and exercise my whole life. Now I’m ready to go beyond the scale and declare a new way of being in the world,” she said. Winfrey claims Weight Watchers enables her to “have accountability to myself.”

But in a world where diet has become a four-letter word and bathroom scales are no longer central to a “holistic approach,” how do you measure success? Perhaps by looking at another set of numbers. Winfrey purchased 10 percent of Weight Watchers’ stock with an option to purchase an additional 5 percent at current stock prices. The day she announced her association with Weight Watchers, the company’s stock doubled, giving Winfrey a one-day earning of $70 million.

Winfrey’s power to influence consumers is widely acclaimed and proven. But for the celebrity who has experienced success at nearly everything she attempts, permanent weight loss remains elusive.

In 1988, Winfrey walked out on stage in size 10 Calvin Klein jeans and credited the Optifast program with a 67-pound weight loss. That day, a million people called Optifast, and sales of liquid diets soared. But within two years, Winfrey had regained most of the weight and denounced liquid diets.

This time, Winfrey insists her partnership with Weight Watchers is a lifetime commitment.

“I wanted a plan for life, and here it was in the form of Weight Watchers,” she said. “It’s a whole shift in perspective.”

Will Winfrey have the same optimism two years from now? Traci Mann, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota and the author of Secrets from the Eating Lab, points to a studythat followed Weight Watchers dieters two years after their initial weight loss. On average, they regained six of the 12 pounds they had lost and continued gaining in the years that followed.

“No diet, not even Weight Watchers, can claim that more than a small minority of its customers successfully keep the weight off in the long term,” Mann wrote in New York Magazine.

But what may be considered bad news for dieters could be good news for business. As dieters lose weight, only to gain it back, an on-again-off-again relationship with Weight Watchers may be their “new way of being.”

According to Weight Watchers’ former chief financial officer, 84 percent of the company’s business comes from repeat customers.