 |
| Weight Watchers Lifetime Members Keychain |
*The stats are out there. In 1960, the average woman weighed
about 130 pounds. And the man in the Insurance Actuaries weighed about 180. Now
the average woman weighs 160 pounds. Is she really that much taller?
Some women are very tall. But most of us are simply fatter. Women
have become much larger, and so have the men. We are a nation of obese people. So what are we going to do about it? We can
all take a page from Oprah’s book, and join Weight Watchers.
I’m not being facetious. I actually did, about five years
ago. And it worked, too. You gain lots of remarkable knowledge if you simply stick
to the plan. But the mystery of it all is not found in the loss of the weight.
It’s found in this ugly little term that gains very few
supporters. It’s called Maintenance. Maintaining weight loss is not a glamorous
business. You use a scale and measuring cups, and what my father liked to call
“Won’t Power.” Meaning that by sheer force of will, you won’t return to the
habits of mindless eating that led to the inevitable weight gain from the time
you left college till the day you suddenly turned fifty and realized you were
about twenty or thirty pounds overweight.
The pounds pile on mysteriously through the years. And in
middle age, suddenly we want to regain our youthful figures with diets that
claim you can lose all that weight in thirty days. It’s an illusion. Or it’s
just delusional thinking, because nothing like that happens overnight. In my
case, it took me about a year to lose the weight I wanted to lose.
But the trick is that it is only the beginning. You have to
learn to keep the weight off. You have to adopt a dieter’s mindset. That
doesn’t mean that you can’t indulge in a dessert, or deprive yourself of a
favorite food. It means you have to pay the piper.
When you do overindulge, you have to work it off the next
day. You have to cut back, and learn to eat mindfully. Never again can you
simply “let yourself go” unless you are prepared to train to run marathons. And
even then, discipline is required to fuel your body with energy, and not empty
calories.
That is the dirty little secret of success for all long-term
losers. You must learn the habits of mindful eating. And then you have to
continue to work every day to maintain your goals. This dirty little secret was
revealed recently in a diet book I read. The bottom line proved that each and
every day of our lives, we are dieting. For good and for bad, we eat to our
goal weights.
Life intrudes. We go on vacation, we go out to dinner, and we
celebrate the good times with our friends by consuming good food and drink. And
sometimes we eat to mask pain and sorrow and grief and all other emotions.
These are all taken into account while we are losing the weight. When we
maintain, we are expected to maintain it all…. And I confess, that hasn’t
always been easy for me.
I’m sure there are others who feel the way I do. Exercise
helps, but it can only go so far. When
you reach your goal weight, you are expected to become a “Lifetime Member” who
maintains, and if you slip off the wagon, you are again a Weight Watcher who
has slid. But to be a member of the group that has maintained, and maintained
and is ready to maintain some more…
It’s not as glamorous nor as fun as the dieters group. There
is no magic bullet to weight loss.
Sometimes going back to the group does help you to connect. But the most
important times are those monthly weigh-ins where you can see the tangible
results of your accomplishment. It is simply a small slip of paper given to
those of us who maintain our goal weight. And you record it in a book from month
to month, and from year to year.
Long live the lifetime members who are out there every day
struggling to maintain and to be heard. We are all accountable to each other,
but we know what counts the most-becoming accountable to yourself. In the end,
that’s the only way to survive the battle of maintenance.
No comments:
Post a Comment