Friday, March 4, 2011

Life on Weight Watchers . . . Accountability

I never thought in a million years that weight loss would be this easy.
Sure, I've only been at it really for two weeks, and tomorrow is only my 3rd weigh in, but I feel like I have come farther and been with this longer than anything. I've certainly seen more results from this than from anything.

The thing is, I KNOW all the information - I know what I need to do, how I need to do it. I know that I need to "eat right and exercise". I know all the names of most major additives and preservatives and what many of them do to your body. I know all the major "power foods" (NOT the WW list) that are said to hold the most antioxidants.

I am a wealth of nutritive knowledge.
Clearly this is NOT an issue of ignorance for me.

The problems I've had in the past rested on one thing and one thing only -
accountability.
I have never in my life been held accountable for my weight issue. Not by my parents or friends or my husband. Not even by my doctors. I may hear every now and then, "Jen, when you're thin, you're going to be beautiful". or "You know your BMI is ------- (insert double digits over 30 here)" But I was never really held accountable.

With this program I am in so many ways.

I think the largest part of it is the fact that I have a lot of people counting on me to be a part of this. My mother in law, my best friend, my sister in law, a good friend from church, and a good friend I used to work with . . . All are friends, all are as close to me as family. If I don't show up, how is that going to feel for them. These people - many of whom started because of ME. That would be pretty . . . well, this is a G-rated blog so let's go with "not cool".

And then you have the weigh in. You can't fudge it when someone else is weighing you in, writing it down week by week. With online weight loss, you can fudge it all you like. It's a lot easier to fool yourself that way. But here, there IS no fooling yourself. Everything you do, every morsel you put in your mouth, every step you either don't take or do is right there in your face - and in someone else's. You want the number on the scale to go as low as possible every week (within healthy ranges, of course) and you certainly don't want the embarrassment of gaining.

So, in a nutshell, accountability is everything when it comes to my personal weight loss goal.

Oh, and for the first time in my life, I finally decided that I want to be out of the 200's completely when this is all over. In fact, my total target weight is 150. I have never in my life thought that it could be attainable, so I always set my goals lower. But now, I know it can be done. Now, I know it WILL be done.

Here's to being losers in 2011!

2 comments:

Beyond Willpower said...

Hey it sounds like you have the right attitude! :)

I am not doing ww, but I feel more accountable this time as I felt awful abandoning my sparkfriends before. I have a few really good ones right now and I know I'd get some strongly worded emails if I disappeared. ;)

Our goals are similar. We will get there too. :)

... said...

You go girl! I am glad that there is such a group of friends there with me! It makes it much easier. Today will be my first weigh in! Thinking negative thoughts...as in negative numbers..anything with a (-) in front of it type of negative thoughts! ;) Will miss next weeks weigh in and that scares me...a little!