Weight Watchers to the rescue ..... again

You may have picked up on some of my weight-gain angst in this post.  And if you are one of the three regular readers of this blog, you might recall that I am a Weight Watchers veteran and former employee.  I lost a decent chunk of fat back then and kept it off for six years.

                     

Seven years later.... along came a series of unfortunate events excuses: ..... two foot surgeries, my 60th birthday, my lifelong love affair with food, and a pathetic drum beat of soothing talks-to-self about how it's okay to be a little pudgy at this age.  My pre-2008 weight wasn't so bad .....  I had six years of wonderful size-8-thinness, but now I'm allowed to wear big earrings and brightly colored scarves and dance into old age with a graceful flair while I eat as I please.  After all, grandmas are supposed to bake cookies, darn it! . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

uh-huh.

This innocent scenario turned sour as I hit my old weight and flew right past it.   Life descended into a frantic grab at any form of dieting as I fell head first into scale numbers never before produced by Yours Truly.   Mediterranean diet, yes!  I can do it!  Or Paleo, maybe?  No, I'll just eat all natural and organic.  I mean, it's all about being healthy, isn't it?  Count calories ..... it worked before, didn't it?    And the pep talks about all that aging gracefully crap had lost their charm as the pants size ballooned well into the double digits....  

Finally at the dawn of summer, probably the worst time for me to attempt any semblance of self-control, I crawled back to WW.

I stood on that familiar scale calm and composed .... while mentally I was on the ground in the fetal position, clutching the leg of the WW receptionist, and whimpering for help.

I had become one of the hundreds of poor souls that I, as a WW employee, used to weigh in every week.  They had previously lost weight on the program and then dropped out because they had convinced themselves that they had been reborn and over-eating was a thing of the past.   Fact: (At least in my experience) Most new WW enrollees are former WW members, returning for help.

The lesson here is ..... life will never be "under control" on my own.  I'm just not that person.

In all honesty, the magic of WW is not their diet because any diet will work if you do it.   It's paying the money each month, committing myself to attend every meeting possible, and facing that scale each Thursday evening at 5:30.  Somehow that locks me in.  I cannot stray off into the weeds of random peanut butter cups and Dairy Queen blizzards.  Now and then, yes, but in small portions.   Accountability rules.  Yeah, the meetings are a little rah-rah hokey-like with cheesy awards and gold stars, but if I can sit among my little group of fellow losers knowing I just lost another 1.8 lbs, I'm happy.  I can rah-rah along with the best of 'em.

Six weeks later I am proud to report a loss of 13 lbs.  I'm not there yet, but it's the best (and only) progress I have seen in a year.  I feel safe again.  I feel on track.    My pants are still in the double digits and probably always will be, but hope has returned ..... and it feels good.  So the big earrings and colorful scarves will be packed away until ......maybe my eighties, when I'll get them out, throw them on, and dance into the kitchen to bake those cookies.