Second Post

Let me Count the Ways:

Let’s begin at the beginning. I always find that a good place to start.

The first real diet I can remember trying was Weight Watchers. It’s hard to find someone who will knock this program - and for good reason. WW is a sensible, easy to follow plan that does work. That being said, I’ve been a WW on and off about a billion times. After a while it becomes second nature to eyeball any morsel of edible matter and calculate points like a diet savant. 

Your mind becomes consumed with activity points, food points, flex points, fiber, SmartOnes, journaling, and the meetings. Oh the meetings. I’ve attended meetings in several different locations, but they are all strikingly similar: sweet senior citizens who very discretely handle your payment and accordion-folded weight loss log. Weighing in on the private scales while the leader or assistant either congratulates you for your stellar weight loss or displays genuine concern over your gain while you feverishly try to cram your log back into it’s protective plastic sleeve, hiding the number that defines you from the world. Surely that’s an activity point or two, no? The meetings themselves all consist of a combination of metal folding chairs, wood paneling, and a chalkboard. Being somewhat cynical and sarcastic and a pretty good public speaker and teacher, I always found it hard not to mentally critique the leader. I spent most of the meeting making silent snarky comments to the imaginary fat-fighting friend sitting next to me. I spent the rest of my time watching significantly overweight people trying to get comfortable in a folding chair straining under their girth. Can they not invest in something more fatty-friendly? Padded benches perhaps? Once, a leader asked us all to look around the room and notice how we were all sitting. Most of us had our arms crossed with our hands resting on our combo belly-lap-boobage area. She said that we were hugging our fat, holding on to it, afraid to let go of it. Actually, I was just trying to keep my ass centered on the chair and my arms off of the arms of the poor person next to me who was also trying to keep her ass firmly in the chair. How closely can you pay attention to the virtues of brussels sprouts when you are wondering who will be the first to collapse their collapsible chair? I’ve attended meetings solo, with best friends, my sister, and mother-in-law. Although I love her dearly, that last one was not the best idea. She adored the leader who had this absurd habit of stressing really important words in baby talk. Yeah, baby talk. My mother in law found this endearing and funny. I found it the perfect fodder for the sarcasm-lobe of my brain to go into over time. “Ok, people. Remember, it so, so important to weigh and measure EVWYTHING that goes into our MOUFS, K?” It was a good thing my arms were crossed in the perfect ass-centering position or I would have had to shoot my had in the air and ask, “Does the INCWUDE BWOCCOWI?” But I displayed spectacular restraint and lasted about 3 meetings before I decided it was better for me to quit than to let my mother in law witness the release of all my saved up sarcasm in a tirade that surely would have been quite a scene before promising everyone would “See Less of Me Next Week!”.

I have no problems with the program itself. I think it has all the elements necessary to help someone successfully lose weight. I actually lost 40 or so pounds a few different times with WW. Intellectually, I know its probably the best way to lose, but I just can not get geared up for it again. Sowwy Weight Watchers, it’s not you, it’s me. Really.