On Tuesday, I signed up for Weight Watchers for the third time.
Brief history of my relationship with WW:
First signed up in April of 2007, when Asher was six months old. Starting weight was four pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight; by October (and Asher's one-year birthday), I was down nearly 30 pounds and was at my lowest adult weight ever. I quit paying for the online service sometime that winter, and got pregnant with Lucy in April of 2008.
I signed up a second time a few months after Lucy was born; sometime in early 2009. It was pretty effortless losing weight after Lucy, except that I was never diligent and committed enough to get my weight down to where it had been pre-Asher. It was within five or six pounds, though, and for me at that point – what with the chasing two children around all day, one of whom also kept me up ALL NIGHT LONG UNTIL SHE WAS 16 MONTHS OLD – it was close enough. No, my smallest-sized pants didn't fit, but I still had plenty of clothes to wear (okay, so “plenty” is a bit of a stretch, but WHERE WAS I GOING EXCEPT TARGET), and besides, I really liked the fact that I could eat something and not fear growing OUT of those smallest-sized pants.
You know what I mean? You get down to a certain weight and you get almost... I don't know, MORE paranoid. Because being a smaller size and screwing it up feels so much more demoralizing than being a larger size (when you don't WANT to be that larger size) while you work to BECOME a smaller size.
So I was happy in my a-little-bit-larger state of being. And I maintained that five-or-six-pounds-away-from goal weight for, what, a year? But here's what happened: I started to lose a grip on what was appropriate for me to eat. My portions started to get crazy, I ate chocolate by the handful, I was drinking a beer (and a half) every night with dinner just because it tasted good with what I'd made. And what happened as a result of all of that indulgence was that I was too afraid to get on the scale and see what damage I'd done. If I hadn't worn a pair of pants in a while, I was afraid to try them on for fear they might not fit. I spent HOURS (well, CUMULATIVELY) worrying whether or not my underwear was getting tighter.
When I finally DID decide to get onto the scale, it was only after I'd committed to eating decently for a week or so, and when I saw (as I always did) that my weight hadn't changed drastically (a pound or two at most), I'd haul my butt downstairs and cram some M&Ms into my mouth, because WHY THE HECK NOT?
What I don't have to tell you is that this is not exactly a healthy way to live. A lot of bingeing, a lot of poor decisions, a lot of FEAR of things that I've spent my whole life being afraid of, save for that one small, amazing window of time after Asher was born when I was enormously proud of all I'd accomplished concerning my body. Guess what? It turns out I DON'T LIKE LIVING LIKE THAT.
One thing that says a lot about how I've been living is the fact that I have been exercising my TAIL OFF over the last year, with nothing to show for it but weight maintenance. I am fitter than I've ever been in my life, but the scale doesn't reflect that. When I squeeze in a “quick run” these days, I am averaging FOUR MILES. A year ago, a “quick run” was only 2.8 miles, and there were days where that felt challenging. In contrast, if I have time these days for a long run, I'm apt to keep going for five, six, even EIGHT miles, and feel fantastic when I'm done. Do you know how many calories I've been burning and then replacing with crappy food? A LOT.
I realize there's kind of a stigma attached to signing up for a weight loss program three separate times in the span of four years, but I don't actually feel like I have – for lack of a better word – relapsed and am doing the walk of shame. Even when I wasn't following Weight Watchers to the letter these last few years, I still had the objectives and basic lessons stuck in the back of my mind. I knew what I was putting into my mouth and how it went against the basic principles, but I also saw, through trial and error, how I could work the system and not gain a bunch of weight. Except that over time, I manipulated those principles to a point where I wasn't sure what was appropriate for the goal I wanted to reach and what wasn't.
So joining Weight Watchers this time around isn't just about losing weight or fitting into a smaller size. It is about me getting a refresher course on how to eat better. How to eat correctly. How to stop eating so much crap. It's learning how to eat so that I can live without fear. There won't be some big Thirty! Pound! Weight! Loss! Reveal! or anything like that, because the most I really plan on losing is seven pounds... 10 pounds, while nice, seems pretty near impossible given my previous attempts and natural shape and composition. And I don't want to get hung up on numbers. I want to get hung up on how much food I really need, not how much I want to eat and can simultaneously get away with. Even though that sound really good, now that I'm three days in and dying for a hunk of chocolate the size of my arm.


