Yahoo Health – Oprah’s Weight Watchers Commercial is Making the Internet Emotional

As the New Year approaches and brings with it the season of resolutions, weight loss and fitness programs abound offering myriad ways to support us in our journeys for better health and wellness. Topping the list of these advertisements is a new one by Oprah Winfrey for Weight Watchers that is so moving it is bringing some viewers to tears.

Yahoo Health asked me to weigh in on how a simple advertisement video could resonate with so many online.

Why are we so moved? Why does it matter to us?

Simply put: we don’t want to feel alone, or like a failure. Oprah understands this, shares her own struggles, and helps us reframe these struggles as experiences that matter, and that have made us stronger. She invites us to join her, and this just might be the kind of nudge we all need to turn over a new leaf for 2016, and embark on difficult change.

Oprah hits the mark on this one.

To read the article on Yahoo Health, CLICK HERE.

It’s because she gets it, licensed clinical psychologist Alicia H. Clark, PsyD, tells Yahoo Health. “Her words are empathic, but we also see that she has been trying,” Clark says. “She gets it, and she is speaking a truth about struggling for a goal, trying and failing, even if it isn’t about weight loss.”

This can help people relate, she says, which often allows us to let down our guard. “We feel understood by her emotional words, and we believe her,” she says.

The subject of weight loss itself is also an emotional one, points out Clark. “People do feel lost, buried, overwhelmed, and hopeless,” she says. “She addresses this gently by showing her own struggle.”

And, of course, the message itself is a powerful one. “One of the toughest things to face is failure, and yet it is failure that can teach us the most in life,” says Clark. “Oprah assures the listener that it is OK to try again, that we are actually stronger than we think we are.”