Damned If You Do...

and damned if you don't.  Ain't that the truth?

I'm fat.  It's no secret.  I went from being underweight in high school to gaining the freshman 15 (and then some), blew up as I planned my wedding and mourned the people who wouldn't be there with me and added even more pounds during each of my pregnancies.  Moving to Delaware was another nail in my skinny jeans' coffin -- I hate it here and it makes me unhappy.  So what do I do to make myself feel better?  Eat lots of sugar.  And carbs.  Which turn to sugar.  Great coping skills you got there, Christy.

So, yes, I'm fat and I don't particularly care.  How I look should probably matter more to me than it does but whatever, it's not my focus.  Hearing that my blood pressure was still high weeks after Bonnie was born, though, that does matter to me because my children matter to me.  They need me to be healthy and present so I need to drop the weight and I need to drop it now.

I turned to Weight Watchers for help 5 weeks ago.  I'm sneaky and GREAT at justifying just about anything so losing weight on my own is not going to work.  I need the accountability of having someone else weigh me and I need the witnessed win or loss to keep me motivated.  (If a pound is shed in the forest and no one is there to track it, is it really lost?)  Am I excited about the new-and-improved me?  Hell no.  It sucks that I have to each much, much less of many things I love and that I can't eat a few things at all but that's how it goes.  I did this to myself and now I have to suffer the consequences.

At any rate, I joined WW 5 weeks ago and attend a meeting (which I hate) after weigh-in every saturday morning.  Then I come home and plug my weight loss into weightwatchers.com.  What I've lost so far feels like a modest amount given what I need to lose overall.  I was thinking that I have made decent progress but no big deal until I got the following message from the website just now:

This is an important moment. You’ve hit your 5-percent Target, your first significant weight-loss goal. 

Great job! Now, go and celebrate. (Celebrate what?  That I'm not being a gluttonous idiot anymore?  Doing what I SHOULD have been doing all along is not cause for celebration and that kind of "praise me excessively for doing the right thing" attitude is a major part of what is wrong with society!)

And be sure to tell your Leader about your milestone.  (NEVER.  I stopped needing a sticker to make me feel like a good girl in the third grade but thanks anyway.)

Please note:You’re probably excited to be losing weight, but you’re losing faster than is recommended. Although it’s normal to lose over 2 pounds in one week, if you lose more than an average of 2 pounds per week over a four-week period, this could pose health risks, such as heart irregularities, anemia or loss of muscle mass. Please slow your weight loss; your doctor can help you do this if you’re not sure how, or ask your Leader for ideas.

Keep up the great work. See you next week!

Are they kidding me???  Thanks for the buzzkill, dudes.  What is this supposed to do for my motivation?  "Oh, wow, I'm losing too much weight and we can't have that.  Pass the twinkies!"  I eat the maximum number of points I'm alloted each day.  I drink the water as recommended, I take a multivitamin.  I'm doing everything they tell me to do and the weight is melting off of me.  How is that a bad thing?  I think it says that it's weight that really, REALLY doesn't belong on my and that is why my body is giving it up so easily.  I'm not going to talk to my doctor and I'm not going to talk to my "leader."  I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing because losing weight like I am has to be healthier than keeping it on.

I don't even like Twinkies.