DietBlog: Evidently serving customers does me good! I was a little apprehensive about the weigh-in tonight, mostly because I didn’t do much exercise last week once I got my wisdom teeth out. But there it was – 82.6kg. That’s another 1.1kg lost, which brings me to 17.5kg in total. (That’s 38.5lb for the non-metrics.) I have to say, I really think the novelty of using the “eTools” on the WW site is what’s driving this recent surge. I’m tracking EVERYTHING, even the meals that I’d normally write off as too much trouble to look up. (Like last Saturday when I had movie popcorn and then four slices of pizza.) My only annoyance is when I enter my weight and the thing says: “It looks like you’re losing weight too fast. This might lead to health problems.” Dude, I’m not wasting away here. I’m losing because I’ve still got a fair amount to lose. So quit giving me grief, website!Tonight’s meeting was really good. Megan got a lot more staff so there was no sign of the queues we had last week (that went out the door). Our topic was “support,” and I brought up the fact that I decided pretty early on not to be embarrassed by this process, and that I was going to blog about it on my personal site. This means I have a great support network – that literally spans the globe – who talk me through the bad times and help me celebrate the great moments. I was a little surprised to learn, though, just how many of the other members don’t share their experiences. A lot of them are embarrassed about being there. As the girl sitting next to me said, “I haven’t told any of my friends. It would be like having to admit to them that I’m fat.” Which I can get… and which I also don’t get. I mean, I had about five minutes there at the beginning where I thought I’d keep it quiet, but who am I kidding? You guys have seen me. I was big. Being coy about the numbers doesn’t change that fact. So it was a bit of an eye-opener, especially when Megan mentioned that when we see each other on the street, we should probably avoid mentioning WW in case other people should overhear. And now I feel kinda bad, because this thought just never occurred to me. I’ve actually seen ladies in the shop carrying bags with Nibblies (WW branded chips that you can only buy at meetings) and I’m all, “Hey, Weight Watcher! What meeting do you go to?” And they sorta freeze and then flee. So it was a good lesson for me to learn. Not everybody puts her life out there for public consumption, and I shouldn’t assume that other people are as open about their struggles as I am. They should be, though; come out of the fat closet, folks! …But I’ll try to be more respectful in the future.
The Other Andrew
February 8, 2006 — 10:05 am
Hey Kris, I re-joined Fat Fighters… err, Weight Wtachers I mean… this past weekend. Fun times ahead! It’s all a bit more polished than when I did in 2002, loving the choice of Points and No Count plans. I haven’t tried the eTools thing yet, but I’ll check it out. There’s some sort of 14 day trial apparently. This post gives me added incentive to try it out.
Staci
February 8, 2006 — 10:49 am
I think you’re totally right that people should be more open about their weight loss efforts – it results in additional support for them. Of course, I’m not exactly living that lesson. I’ve mentioned WW or weight concerns in general all of twice on my website, and I was totally self-conscious about it. Interestingly, though, I’m more embarrased at the thought of my family reading it than my friends or strangers. I can’t really explain that, but it’s the thought of my mom and dad reading about my failures in that area that keeps me from writing about it…
Kris
February 8, 2006 — 11:10 am
Cool. Are you doing the Saturday morning Newtown meetings? I actually debated joining WW a few years ago when I lived there, but bailed after deciding I couldn’t be bothered getting up at 8 in the morning. I think Miss Jane (from Halloween) goes to one of the Newtown meetings, but she’s been away on holiday for ages.
And yeah, I started with the eTools trial a few weeks ago. It’s not a perfect system, and I have quite a few gripes and suggestions to send to the support team. But since I’m in front of a computer most of the day anyway, it has really kept me on focus with the tracking in a way the paper notebook never did. I went from the two-week trial to the three month subscription, so I guess I’ll see how it goes from there. Your mileage may, of course, vary. 🙂
And Staci, I know what you mean. Oddly, for me the hard part isn’t the parents… it’s you guys! The people I knew from years ago who haven’t seen me in a long time. I’m still trying to live up to my peer expectations, I guess.
At any rate, losing weight is HARD. I think that’s the big message I’m trying to get across with all my “DietBlog” posts. And the more people who realize how hard it is, the more supportive and encouraging they’ll be to anybody who’s struggling with it.
misstialouise
February 8, 2006 — 11:54 am
I think there’s another aspect too, I went through something similar when I started seeing a pschologist and taking anti-depressants last year.
By nature I’m a fairly self-sufficient person, I like to sort things out for myself, do things myself, fix things..
By telling other people, I was having to admit to to them and myself that I wasn’t able to do it ‘on my own’.
Admitting you need help sometimes is hard too. Except when I come in and ask you for colour/yarn help, Kris.. 😉
The Other Andrew
February 9, 2006 — 1:56 pm
Yeah, I go to the Newtown am meetings on Saturday, getting up early is no issue for me so I go to the early one. They have a second meeting at 10 as well. The leader seems nice, and given that it’s Newtown there is always a fairly diverse bunch of people there. It’s the meeting I was going to when I joined them the first time, and that certainly worked for me then.
Dusssssst!
kate rambeau
February 10, 2006 — 2:19 pm
i think sometimes people don’t want to talk about it in case they fail? when you make it a big deal that you are going to lose weight, everyone is encouraging and asks seemingly harmless questions like “how are you doing?” or “are you there yet?” or worse still “why aren’t you there yet?”. but its a slow process of losing weight permanently and it gets annoying or difficult to answer, and even harder when the journey is not as smooth as you expect (weight goes down a bit, up a bit, down a lot, up a bit etc…)
personally, i’d rather achieve quietly, and when i finally get to my goal weight, then i’ll want to shout it from the rooftops, but not until i’m actually there.
Kris
February 10, 2006 — 2:48 pm
I can see that, Kate. But I wonder if shutting people out of the process can do more harm than good, because it makes it look like this is an easy thing to do. That somehow losing weight is a magical process with a beginning and an ending but no ups and downs in the middle. My goal with my posts about WW on this site was to tell the good, the bad, and the ugly, so that people would know just how HARD it is. For some reason, there is a very vocal subset of formerly fat people who like to berate overweight people and make it seem like they’re just lazy and that losing weight is all a matter of just willing it to go away. They always seem to pop up in the weight-related threads on MetaFilter and they drive me INSANE. I want to be healthy and inspire other people to be healthy, but I don’t want to make them feel bad or give them unreal expectations. And I don’t want it to look like I’m some sort of perfect person and that this is all happening easily for me. It’s so hard.
And wow, you must’ve come across some jerks. I’ve never had a single person say “Why aren’t you there yet?” Even during my worst times, talking about it with someone else usually helped because they’d be all, “What are you talking about? You’ve lost TWELVE KILOS. That’s amazing! Focus on the positives! Don’t beat yourself up; you can do it!” Maybe I’m just surrounded by nice people. 🙂 I’m wracking my brain here and I honestly can’t think of a single person who’s made me feel uncomfortable about it, other than my crazy yoga teacher who told me that I was getting too skinny. (Like I had developed some eating disorder or something when I was still more than ten kilos overweight.) It somebody even HINTED that they thought I was taking a long time about this process, they’d probably be on the receiving end of a K-HOW-KAPOW. (That’s my signature move from kickboxing. I’m not 100% sure what it entails yet, but there’s definitely an uppercut followed by a right-roundhouse-kick in there.) Or at the very least, the Snook would tell them to stop being mean and we’d never talk to them again.
Everybody knows that quitting smoking is difficult, right? I mean, statistics show that smokers have to “quit,” like, several times before they finally kick the habit. I just want people to realize that kicking unhealthy food habits is EVEN HARDER, because you can chuck out all your cigarettes and avoid going into bars, but you can’t go without eating.
I’m not arguing with you or anything, by the way. Just musing here. The Snook and I were discussing the “embarrassment” issue the other day because this random lady in Newtown passed me the other night and was like, “Oh, hi! I guess I’ll, uh, see you next week!” And he was like, “Who the hell was that?” And I had no clue, but her reticence to mention any other detail pointed her to being a fellow WW member. (I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you, fellow Fat Fighter! I tend to sit in the front and participate a lot, so the shyer people in the back tend to be a little out-of-focus for me. Come say “hi” to me at the next meeting so I can learn your name.) But anyway, I was telling Rodd about the last meeting and how I’m trying not to “out” people in public, but I still think that’s kind of a silly position to take. I mean, I think it’s a bit ridiculous to pretend you don’t have a problem when people can SEE that you do, like having a combover or something. “And it’s not like I broadcast everything!” I said. “I mean, if I had gonorrhea or something, I wouldn’t be making “STDBlog” posts and talking about THAT.” I just don’t see the point in hiding it.
Just be grateful I’m not trying to quit smoking, you guys, because this would be a 100% QuitBlog all day, all the time… 🙂
(Speaking of which, does anybody else think that guy on Survivor is going to lose it completely?)