Oprah's loss is Weight Watchers gain as diet firm stocks rise

Oprah Winfrey loves bread and despite eating it daily, she managed to drop 26 pounds with some help from Weight Watchers. Celebrating her weight loss, the talk show host tweeted a video about her diet.

"I love bread," Winfrey says in the new commercial. "That's the genius of this programme. I lost 26 pounds and I have eaten bread every single day."

As if dropping the pounds was not rewarding enough, the 26 January post on Winfrey's account, which has 30.9 million followers, led to a surge in the diet company's stock value. Prior to the tweet, stocks were trading at $11.35 (£7.91, €10.43) but shot up to $13.29 (£9.26, €12.21) by the end of the day, a 19.51% jump.

The money-making tweet earned Winfrey — a 10% stake-holder in the company — $12.5m in a single day. According to a CNN report, the company's market value rose by nearly $150m after Oprah's tweet — a little more than $5.6m for each pound she lost.

Winfrey picked up the $43m stake in the floundering fitness company last October after which its stock value rose from $6.79 to $15 in November.