I went to Weight Watchers as a thirteen year old. A friend of my parents’ was a Weight Watchers leader, and when we spent time at her house she made Weight Watchers recipes, and talked up the meetings, until it became clear that I was her direct target, with my vaguely pudgy body.
“Rude much?”
Unfortunately, that first foray into dieting set me off on the anorexic path: if eating less is better, eating nothing must be perfect. For a year and a half, I ate less and less until I lost my period, and spent a summer fainting. When I started to eat again, and no matter how little I ate, I gained weight. Fast. It turned out that I had burned out my thyroid with my starvation adventures, and I’ve been on synthetic thyroid replacement pills ever since.
In my twenties I did a very simple on-line program, with calorie counting and recipes. And it worked. Except that I, again, reached a point where I thought I should stop eating altogether, and I panicked at every food choice, and lost almost all joy from eating. And then I got very very tired, and short of breath, and no matter how much I exercised, or how little I ate, the weight crept back on. That time, I ended up on pain medication and spent years going to every kind of doctor in the book.
“I’m starving.”
My current attempt at Weight Watchers came from an offhand suggestion from the cardiologist, when he did a work up for my borderline high blood pressure. I pooh pooh-ed it at first, because there are other reasons for my blood pressure to be high, but when I looked up the new version of Weight Watchers it looked manageable. I figured it couldn’t hurt.
At least for now, the list of unlimited foods makes this plan doable, because I don’t have to worry about getting to the end of the day with no calories left in my budget. I’m still overwhelmed by all of the different point values, though, and I am entirely dependent on the Weight Watchers app to tell me what I can and what I can’t eat, and when; but I’m not starving, and that’s a relief.
Except, weight loss is a dangerous thing. It’s like gambling or video games: you can get addicted to the high of success, and lose track of everything else that matters to you. Like staying alive. Chances are high that losing weight won’t improve my health in any significant way (because my health problems caused the weight gain, rather than the other way around), but there’s some relief in being on a plan, and having clear guidelines to follow, instead of having to trust my own judgement all the time. Food has always been stressful for me, and maybe making it simpler will reduce some of my overall anxiety.
I eat a lot of canned peaches (juice drained), and Greek yogurt (plain, nonfat, with Truvia sweetener). I eat a lot of chicken and eggs and veggies and fruit. I’m still trying to get a handle on the Smart points, and how much to budget for things like oatmeal, or whole wheat bread, or sweet potatoes, or, of course, ice cream and cookies.
Cricket thinks the unlimited chicken thing is Nirvana. And she’s sure that I chose this diet plan with her in mind.
“Chicken!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
You’re welcome, Cricket.
rachelmankowitz 