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Thursday, 10 February 2005
Dabbling at Weight Loss
Someone posted on the Weight-Watchers' board, "I started Weight Watchers online early in January...have dabbled with the program, staying on program until evening...not losing weight...having a problem making the leap full time on program. I need to know what it is that keeps you on program. I think it will help. It is on my mind all day, everyday."
My response:
My first reaction was, it’s so much effort being on program part-time, why not do it full-time and reap the benefits? But then I realized that even small changes make a positive difference. The exercise will improve your health, and it sounds like you’re no longer gaining. But apparently doing it halfway isn’t working for weight loss (well, it was worth a try, huh?).
The mechanics of how I stay on program are easier to identify than what made the difference mentally. Mainly, when I’m tempted to go off program, I go to the Weight Watchers’ board and read the posts. Sometimes, trying to answer questions like this one helps me to re-focus on why I’m doing this. Sometimes I read the official Weight Watchers articles. I also try to arrange things to make it easier to stay on program, by keeping my trigger foods out of the house, making sure we have ingredients for Weight Watchers-friendly meals on hand, stocking up on healthy snacks. I try to keep some of the zero-points veggie soup made up. And I try new recipes that sound good, so I don’t feel deprived, or like I’m eating "diet food."
The WHY is harder. I watched my sister sort of diet for years, until she got diabetes, and then continue to halfway diet, until she died of complications from diabetes and weight. So I if I was going to do it, I wouldn’t mess around. But even my sister’s death wasn’t enough to make me want to change the way I ate. I think it’s because it’s so big a part of my identity, being a "foodie" and proud of it. I love to eat different cuisines, cook creatively, talk about food, read cookbooks, even go grocery shopping. I saw weight loss as something I had to do occasionally, so that I could go back to eating "normally." Whenever someone talked about "changing your relationship with food," I heard it as being asked to give up something precious to me. Since I don’t equate being fat with being ugly, I never seriously objected to looking fat (in fact, I kind of liked being curvy and cushy); and it seemed to fit my foodie image.
What started me on this weight loss effort was a high blood sugar test; it looked like I might be growing insulin resistant. So it was more about being healthy than about being thin. But I was still planning on making only temporary changes, at first just for 12 weeks, and then just until I reached goal weight. But along the way, something’s changed in how I’m looking at it.
Part of it stems from coming to this Weight Watchers board and being inspired by other people’s stories. Part of it is that I’m enjoying some of the changes that have come with being 50 pounds lighter, like being able to move better. Part of it is because it’s getting harder to lose the weight, and it’s coming off so slowly, that I hate the thought of wasting all the effort I’ve put into it.
But it’s also because I’ve begun to realize that I don’t have to give up being who I am. I don’t have to start thinking that fat makes people look ugly, just because I get thin. I don’t have to eliminate the foods I love from my life (in fact, I can appreciate them more by having them infrequently, because I really pay attention to them now). I am not going to morph into someone who likes fat-free cheese and diet sodas. I can be even more creative in the kitchen by coming up with dishes that are both tasty and healthy. I can change some of my behavior without changing who I am.
I can’t say how well this will work in the long term. I still have so much to learn, about not turning to food to help get me through the crises in my life, about how to manage eating out in restaurants, about how to manage family holiday food traditions, about being more physically active, about how to make these changes permanent without devoting my life to it, about achieving balance. But at least now I’m WILLING to learn those things. I can’t say I won’t ever gain weight again, because I’m not perfect, and I expect I’ll make some mistakes along the way. But I do plan to continue doing what I need to do for my health.
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