DietBlog: So, I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting tonight. Needless to say, I was a little apprehensive. I kept wondering when we were going to drink the Magic Kool-Aid. The room was full of boxes of WW-branded products and books and videos, but thankfully they didn’t seem to really “push” any of that too hard. I filled out my forms and paid my joining fee, and then I got to step on the dreaded scales. Ouch. I’ve officially got – and I’m just gonna say this – twenty kilos to lose. (I’m not gonna do the conversion for you Americans. My embarrassment does have its limits.) What really pisses me off is that a year ago I was within seven kilos of my goal, and now I’ve got to do it all over again… and this time make it stick. Anyway, back to the meeting. A lot of folks just seemed to check-in, get weighed, and bolt, but a half dozen of us stuck around for the meeting proper. Our leader is an older lady named Emily who was really, really encouraging. She even showed us her “before” photo! And get this – I wasn’t even the chubbiest girl there. (I know it’s shallow, but that was a total relief.) We talked about what our goals are and what sort of concrete changes we can make to achieve them. A couple of the attendees were “lifetime members,” i.e. people who’d achieved their goal weights and were maintaining it. (I felt much more charitable to them after that revelation, as I’d been sitting there wondering why all the skinny beeyotches had come to torment me.) It sounds cheesy, but they really were inspiring and they had some good tips about how to get started. Emily even handed out a couple gold star stickers to people with really good suggestions. I really wanted to think it was lame, but deep, deep down in my heart of hearts, I admit that I desperately want a gold star sticker of my very own. So lame or not, the encouragement is working! Afterwards I headed to the store to stock up on supplies. The hardest part right now is re-hardwiring my brain for shopping. Most of the things we were used to buying on Atkins are now verboten, and lots of stuff that was previously off limits – Potatoes! Honest to Christ, potatoes! – are back on the list. I mostly feel bad because we’re going to be cutting out a lot of the things that the Snook really enjoys: fat meat, fat milk, fat cheese. We’ve arrived at a compromise though, where he can have whatever he wants for lunch as long as he does the low-fat dinner with me. Tonight I made us some pizzas on Lebanese bread (from the Week 1 guidebook). Pretty good! I added up my daily points and I was just under my daily quota. It’ll be even better this week once I implement my first concrete lifestyle change: walking to work every day. Wish me luck!