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Showing posts with the label Weight Watchers

Let’s Talk Diet and Perseverance: Today is my Weight Watchers’ One-Year Anniversary

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Jennifer, a Shadow Selfie Hilton Head, South Carolina, April 2017 __________________________________ Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other. – Walter Elliot ______________________ If 5 May 2016 was the day I decided to lose weight, then May 11 of the same year was the day I acted by going back to Weight Watchers and committing to losing 66 pounds. I have been known to make promises to myself and then not do the difficult work of following through, but this time I did. Today, I celebrate my one-year of perseverance, and, so far, a 62-pound weight loss. I have attended 52 meetings in a row, some of them away from home. I didn’t always feel like going, especially when I had a less than stellar week and/or was on vacation, but I have come to realize that the lousy weeks were precisely the times I really needed those meetings. In my 5 May 2017 post , I outlined some of the strategies I used to help me through my weight-loss journ

Choices Beyond the Treadmill...

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In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility. – Eleanor Roosevelt _______________________ My life has taken a dramatic turn, and it all began with a hinky treadmill. No worries and definitely no treadmill accidents – this is a positive turn of events. Let me elaborate by beginning with how I handled my Sioux City vacation this year. For the first time ever while visiting family, I did not fall completely back into bad eating habits. Yes, I did step off program slightly (mostly planned, sometimes not so much), but never to the extent that my stomach hurt and felt bloated. And I did not need one stinkin’ Zantac – a first for a “back home” vacation. For the first time ever , I returned home from vacation with a significant weight loss, despite the fact that I wasn’t always on track with mindful eating. I can point to four possible reasons: I conti

Five Reasons Why I Decided to Lose Weight

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Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward. --Victor Kiam This week at Weight Watchers, the leader asked us to note five reasons we decided to join Weight Watchers and lose weight. My impromptu list (from most to less important): 1. To improve and, now, to maintain current good health. 2. Increase and maintain current mobility-- I have this fear of ending up in a motorized scooter because of decreased mobility due to obesity . 3. Increase self-esteem--always an issue. 4. Cultivate a nicer body, not necessarily an uber-skinny physique, just one that's reasonable for someone my age. 5. Able to wear more attractive clothes that fit well. Now we are supposed to use these reasons to help us keep motivated by visualizing our reasons for joining Weight Watchers in the first place. I have always contended that I would never go on a diet based on deprivation, and I never will, ever again. I have been down that road before and don't want to be the

Eating Well--and BIG and Tweaking Weight Watchers

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Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. --Mark Twain Last year, on September 11, 2010, when I began my healthy eating regimen, I was certain that eating smaller portions was the way to go. And for a while, concentrating on smaller portions worked very well: I was rarely hungry, and I lost about 25 pounds in less than three months. Life was good, or so I thought... Around Christmas time, I started to feel hungry all the time. At first, I thought, perhaps, that all the holiday goodies were just stimulating my taste buds. But even after the holidays, I was still hungry all the time. Then I heard about the Weight Watchers' new PointsPlus program and 0-points fruits. I had tried the previous WW points program, and I really didn't like it too much; it still felt too much like a diet, and calculations were too cumbersome, but I thought I'd give the new program a try. My plan was to pick up program materials and then not return for meetings

ISO--In Search of...Answers: Why Don't Insurance Plans Pay for Weight Maintenance Programs and Obesity Prevention Programs?

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America's health care system is in crisis precisely because we systematically neglect wellness and prevention. --Tom Harkin It seems as though some insurance plans are now paying for weight-loss programs, but why not help the medical community by setting up preventive programs that could work toward preventing obesity in the first place? How about maintenance programs for those who have recently lost weight and reached goal weight? Children, it would seem, are at the most risk for obesity, and reaching them at an early age is crucial. Besides, the younger they are, the easier kids adapt to gradual changes in their diet, although I would not support a program that would embarrass and/or demean them in any way. In addition, older people who were thin in childhood and early adulthood can also begin gaining weight in middle age and eventually become obese. Why wait until someone becomes obese before intervention? Why not start an adult education and screening program, designed especial

Weight Watchers' Weight Maintenance Program: Success or Failure?

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Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other. --Abraham Lincoln How well does Weight Watchers do in helping their members manage maintenance? I know for a fact that Weight Watchers offers a good maintenance program for its graduates, a.k.a. Lifetime members, but why do so many members fail at maintenance and, as a consequence, end up returning again and again to WW to lose the weight they have regained? To understand WW members' frustration, one just has to go on this posting on Weight Watchers' Facebook. When Consumer Reports rated the best diet programs, the editors rated Weight Watchers as the second best program, basing their opinion on the fact the fact that soup, high in sodium, was offered as a menu option to help dieters to stave off hunger. Never mind that this was just a sample menu among many other sample menus. In other words, Consumer Reports was splitting hairs and needed to justify selecting another progr

The (Rigged) Bingo Game

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All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire. --Aristotle Last night, I dreamt that I was playing a high-stakes Bingo game. The prize: $1,000,000 But some of the numbers on the Bingo card were wrong; for example, "1" was placed under "I." To win, I needed just one number; unfortunately, that was the "I-1" number. I tried to tell the Bingo caller that my card was faulty. He couldn't (or wouldn't) hear me, so the game played on. In the face of impossibility, I kept rooting for "I-1" to be called. But in my heart, I realized that my winning number would never be called; the game, fixed in favor of someone else, had been stacked against me. I awakened angry and lamenting the unfairness of life. However, I have come to realize that we often play games that offer no chance of winning. Extreme dieting, defined as an eating plan that no normal-weight

Thought for the Day--March 11, 2011: Importance of Breakfast

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If you are hungry at breakfast time, that is a good sign. This suggests that you have not overeaten the previous night. One should be hungry in the morning (or whenever your morning begins). Have you noticed that most overweight people will tell you, "I don't eat breakfast because I'm not hungry then"? I was one of them. For about the first two months on my program, I disliked eating breakfast right after getting up and would often wait for hours. I was afraid that eating would kick in my hunger response (something that my grandmother always told me--as if you could avoid hunger by not eating at all). LOL Now I love breakfast, and often eat it within an hour of rising (I still need my coffee first). I eat a good breakfast, my standard fare: Egg white omelet (1/2 cup egg whites, 1 slice of non-fat cheese, and 1 ounce of lean deli ham), which = 3 PointsPlus 1 Deli flat bread, = 2 PointsPlus 1 fruit (usually an hour or two after breakfast), = 0 PointsPlus I may vary tha

I LOVE to Eat...ooh la la

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Anyone who knows me well is aware of my love for food. At one point, I would eat anything that wasn't nailed down. Unfortunately, I looked like someone who was hoovering her food indiscriminately. Something had to be done--and fast. More alarming than just the way I looked, I felt like crap, and it was becoming obvious that my health was beginning to decline: insulin resistance, higher blood pressure, acid indigestion, achy feet and legs, breathlessness when doing simple walking or light tasks, low energy, intolerance to heat, etc. One day, I had a serious talk with myself, and I posed this question: how can I go on yet another restrictive diet, when dieting obviously doesn't work well for me, at least in the long run? Yet, how could I not? My health was at risk. It was showdown time. So, on January 3, 2011, after three and a half months of counting calories (an obsessive activity, I must say) on my own and keeping a food diary, I decided to rejoin Weight Watcher

Thought for the Day--January 29, 2011: Using Extra PointsPlus

I love the Weight Watchers' PointsPlus program, which allows for an amazing amount of food. You know those extra 49 Weekly PointsPlus? They can add up fast! My husband and I ended up at a mediocre Chinese restaurant, one without a grill. No grill = No choice. Lots of fatty foods I would never eat, even on a bad day, and the food wasn't even that good. So why would anyone eat high-fat mediocre food? It was late in the day, and I was hungry. I wasted (waisted?) 41 points on a bunch of nothing. When something like this happens, it's just better to move on and do better. NOTE: I would have felt okay about using the extra points had I at least enjoyed my splurge. It's okay, though. Tomorrow is another and better day.

Thought for the Day--January 26, 2011: Veggies and Fruits

Try to eat more vegetables and fruits--on Weight Watchers, most vegetables and all non-processed fruits are free of PointsPlus. These foods are surprisingly good and filling--and no one ever got fat from eating too many bananas or apples. Besides, you will discover that your appetite will exhibit a natural suppressant when it comes to whole foods. Embracing your palette is not all about chocolate, ice cream, and cake, but the whole rainbow of choices.

Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment