The Watchers of Weight

Right now its 12:12 am and my stomach is growling. I haven't heard that sound very much at all in the last few months and to be honest its a really good sound.

I started the Weight Watchers program again this last Saturday. As you may have noticed, the word again was included in that last sentence. I have a long standing history with WW. The earliest memory i have is around the age of 13, when i asked my mom if i could go to her weight loss meeting. I remember that the room was filled with mostly women, the majority of which were wearing their "weighing in clothes". These clothes were meant to add as little to the scale as possible so as you can imagine there were some scantily clad overweight women in that room. The leader's name was Millie and i can remember her voice almost to this day with its slight scratchiness--yet a surprisingly comforting voice. "Remember that your Dinner plate is not supposed to be like Magic Mountain!" she would say to someone who complained about portion control. I don't remember much else besides that.

The next part of my life that saw the scales of WW was in high school. At the time i was going to be a junior and the only thing i could think of was being like my best friend Derek. He had lost all his "Baby Fat" (as his mom constantly called it), and was suddenly at a normal weight. I was determined to follow in his footsteps and once again i petitioned my Mom to let me come with her. This time i remember more vividly the meetings we attended. The leader's name was Cristy and she was some weirdo bleach blond woman that just didn't make it in life as the country singer she wanted to be. So she taught weight loss meetings instead. The coolest part is that everyone that worked there had been through the program--so in some small way they knew what they were talking about. I was successful at the program and dropped around 40 pounds from 230. It was a huge relief to know that i could do it.

I stayed roughly the same weight from then on (fluctuating up and down 10 pounds or so), and left on my mission to Ohio. You may think to yourself that you see the mormon missionaries either walking around or riding around on bikes all day--so that means they are in shape, right? Well what you don't see is that every night a member of the church has the missionaries into their home and feeds them what is Christmas dinner to most people. So it was a little tough keeping the weight off. Luckily i had some friends on the mission that were crazy about lifting weights and stuff and they kept me in check. In the end i came home with more muscle mass and the best shape i had been my entire life: right around 200 pounds with a good deal of muscle.

To make a long story short, the following months saw mad amounts of movie watching and video game playing, with little in the ways of exercise. Before i knew it i had put on almost 30 pounds. I headed back to WW again, saw some success but dropped out early for some lame reason. 8 months after that, i returned to those same scales to find that i was up to 252 pounds. Even more determined to succeed i went again, and some vacation or something sent me flying off the program and i failed again. Talk about no commitment.

That brings us to this last Saturday. After putting it off for long enough I returned again with the eminent coming of my wedding in 5 months. I told myself that i needed to get the weight off, that i felt terrible in every way physically and that i was a disgrace to my health conscious self right off the mission. When i stepped on the scale i couldn't believe it--283 pounds! How could i have put on that much weight in just over 2 years time. It was incredible to me. Ironically the leader of the meeting that I'm in on Saturdays, Adrienne, is Millie's daughter. She is actually really inspirational and i think that she is a good fit for me.

My first goal, which is also the first goal you are supposed to have in the program, is to lose 10% of my body weight. That's 28 pounds. The 2nd Goal is to have lost a total of 20% of my body weight by the day of the wedding. That 's 56 pounds. You heard it, you can quote me. Wish me luck!