FitCity Indianapolis asked reader Cheryl to write about her experience with finding her healthy weight, including her participation in Weight Watchers. Below is her story of the good, the hard and the cravings that still haunt her.
For 195 days now I have been a Weight Watcher’s participant. The plan is fairly straightforward. The support structure is awesome – from my family, my fellow WW group, the WW staff and my employer — Angie’s List.
Angie’s List not only brings the WW program in, but pays for it as long as I’m really following it, and also supplies me with an on-site gym staffed with kick-ass trainer. If I keep track of the hours I spend in the gym and report my weight loss, I even earn quarterly points, which for the first half of the year has resulted in the company rewarding me with two, $75 gift cards to spend at local stores. It’s a whole collection of awesome perks. A cynical person might point out that there’s a bottom line company benefit to the perks, but my bottom, um, line, is winning, too. So to me it’s all good, and I’m grateful the company thinks enough of its workforce to help us reconfigure our brainwaves and live healthier lifestyles.
Despite my gratitude and healthy evolution, there’s not been one of the 4,680 hours in my WW life when I’ve not had at least a fleeting desire for decadent food, or empty, alcohol-rich calories. Everyday life doesn’t make it easy to put those thoughts aside. If it’s not a billboard throwing a bacon cheeseburger at me, it’s a TV commercial offering stuffed crust pizza for next to nothing or a stick-figure from Hollywood wearing a size zero miniskirt and getting orgasmic as she eats an entire cheesecake.
I swear to you that my couch teams up with the TV and bookcase to woo me to come hither. The Monon Path – a block away – just lays out there, silent. The bike doesn’t beckon, either.
I have always loved food that’s bad for me. In my pre-WW days, I’d tolerate a little green on my plate, but I love lasagna oozing with four kinds of cheese. Pair it with a big slab of crusty bread dripping with garlic butter and I’m in heaven. I would share state secrets (if I had any) in exchange for chocolate ice cream.
You’d think that after logging nearly six months of healthy eating and regular exercise, my palate would reject such food fantasies and my muscles would scream to be put to use. Sadly, that’s not the case. Like the fat cells that cling to my thighs with all the strength of a two-year-old determined not to go to daycare, the fantasies are still with me. The muscles have entered into a no comment pact with the Monon Trail and my bike.
I might spend my days and nights grazing through bowls of mini carrots and cucumbers fresh from the garden, but my first snack loves remain potato chips so greasy I have to have a pack of napkins to keep the key board clean. Or cookies. Any kind of cookie. Or Hershey’s kisses.
Losing weight is hard. Switching to a healthy lifestyle is harder. Actually enjoying the healthy living is proving to be impossible.
Still, I try. My shopping cart is loaded down with fruits and vegetables long before I get to the good stuff in the grocery. I read my trashy novels while I ride the bike or hike miles up hills on the treadmill in the gym. I go to the Monon Trail regularly whether it wants me or not.
But buying fruits and veggies means I have to consume them before they rot and bring fruit flies to my kitchen or brown goop in the fridge. Cooking creates a mess in the kitchen and smelly garbage. Exercise makes me hot, sweaty and smelly, and it increases the laundry load, too.
Bags of potato chips don’t cause that kind of fuss. Boxes of cookies will remain happily where I left them without growing mold that creeps along to the next organic substance it finds. Chef Boyardee has the good manners to stay happily canned until I’m ready for him. And I was never once turned away hungry from my friends at McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Rally’s or any other fine establishment where you don’t even have to get out of the car to get your fat, salt and calories.
Still I’ve turned my back on the ease of convenient and/or fast food and become a master at making zero-point WW soup. It’s the secret to my success. But I have shop for the ingredients, wash and chop them, combine them, cook them, ladle them out into plastic ware for taking to work and then find space in the fridge to store them. And that’s just to make soup! What about breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks? Walking across the street to Burger King or having Chinese food delivered was so much easier.
Am I happy to be spending so much of my precious free time thinking about diet, making good choices and exercising as I should? Well, no. I’m not. Really. I’d much rather lay on the couch with a bag of cookies and a book or a TV remote in my hand. I’m not UNhappy, though, that I joined the WW team. I might be a little bit proud of myself for hitting the gym or doing something active nearly every day. I still want the cookie, but it’s easier to reach for the fruit or Skinny Cow dessert instead.
I’ve lost 32.4 pounds since January. I’m three pounds away from hitting the maximum weight suggested for my height. I want to get well inside that range, so I still have lots of work ahead of me. And then, I want to keep it all off. There’s still a chance that this new thinking I have going will find a way to push out the 44 years of bad habits I’ve honed over the years of my existence.
I wish our societal structure and economy would make healthy food more accessible, affordable and coveted. It’s hard for me to choose healthy over easy and I have a job that makes it easy for me to work out during the day so I can spend time with my family in the evening. I have a wildly supportive friends and family structure. I’m lucky. I know it. And I’m grateful. Shame on me if I can’t pull this off.
If you’re struggling in your quest to life a healthier lifestyle and/or lose weight, I strongly encourage you to find a friend or family member to help you through it. I’m not very good about asking for help for anything. I don’t read self-help books. I worked for two years at Angie’s List before I joined the program. If I can bring myself to tap into a support structure, so can you.
Do whatever works for you, but do something. Hate the process every step of the way if you have to. Be cranky, like me! But find something that works, suck it up and keep at it. It’s a great feeling to realize that slimmer girl in the mirror is you. It might even be better than chocolate ice cream.
(Okay. Not better. But maybe a tie.)
Tags: cravings, eating healthy, Weight Watchers
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Thank you, thank you, thank you for this post!!
I think that many of us who are finding our way to a healthy lifestyle struggle. I certainly do. Even though some of my bad habits are replaced by healthier foods, I still haven’t “fixed” the behavioral problems for eating- late night snacking, comfort foods in response to stress.
Support is important- whether through a group like WW, a friend, an online support group, your family.
Keep up the good work!
Agreed on the need for support, and thanks for nice words! It’s Weigh-in Wednesday. Cross your fingers!
Confession of the weak: I ate a fiber bar instead of ordering at McDonald’s last night, but I helped my 9-year-old finish her fries………… I can’t live without a little bit of badness…
Cheryl – Congrats to you! I am an off-the-wagon WW. Oh, I’m still paying the weekly fee, but summer has not been kind to my weight loss. Well, to be real, I’ve not been kind to my own efforts. My new, smaller clothes still fit, but not as comfortably. During the school year, I have a workout buddy. But the unpredictability of summer makes it more difficult. But I am going to try to make the last 4 weeks or so of summer be more healthful than the first 8.