Back on Double W- Meeting #1

Well as I had hinted at last week, I re-joined Weight Watchers this past week. As I've been trudging through my runs, feeling heavy and out of breath, I knew that addressing the food aspect of this was going to be crucial to running feeling and actually being better for me in lots and lots of ways. I can't say that I felt an overwhelming difference in my first run after joining Double W, but I'm no dummy...I know it takes a little bit longer than that.

While I was sitting at the meeting, my first thought as I was initially miserable at the group of mostly women I was sitting around, was that I knew what my first goal was going to be: Lose enough weight so that I'm comfortable going back to the meeting I was at the last time I broke up with Double W about two years ago. I loved my leader Judy and the women in that meeting were fun and interesting (for the most part). This meeting just seemed off from the beginning. It's hard to pinpoint what was bugging me the most- the screaming and enthusiastic leader (who I really did warm up to by the end), the woman eating her freaking Greek yogurt right next to me who was smacking her lips and sucking it off the spoon (Meghan are you dying?) or how depressed I was at the thought that I was looking into my own future. I was surrounded by so many women in their 50s and 60s who were still struggling with their weight and still trying to find the answers of why they were there in the first place.

I don't want that for my life. I'm happy that I'm 29 and dealing with this now. And although I feel like I've been "dealing with this" for the past 10 years, I know that I really haven't actually been dealing with it. I've never actually done what's necessary to lose the weight and to keep it off. And I so desperately want this to be the time that it finally sticks. I mean, I am training for a freaking marathon. I figure since I'm going to be putting in the physical activity, I might as well back it up with proper nutrition.

The question the leader was asking people was something about what's your weight loss secret. People went around the room talking about the usual things you hear at a Weight Watchers meeting like:
* Don't let the clock tell me when I'm hungry
* Be kind to myself
* Let a slip up be just that and don't let it carry into the next day or week

Being the "new kid" I didn't want to speak up, but as I sat there I thought about what my secret is...for right now.

It's to drop the buts. It's my form of beating myself up and discrediting myself. I see myself do this time and time again. And as recently as Sunday when I ran four freaking miles! What I really felt was, "I ran four miles, but I walked for nine minutes." Screw that, I ran four miles. Just because I took about a two-minute walking break after each mile doesn't in anyway mean I didn't accomplish a four-mile run. I've been going back and forth about the marathon plan that Hal talked with me about- the whole run five miles and then walk one- because I was wondering if that meant I actually had run a marathon. I'm running a marathon but I'm walking four miles of it. Why do I feel like it's not important that I will be running 22.2 freaking miles? It's so my thing and I need to stop that noise immediately.

So while my natural instinct is to say "I joined Weight Watchers, but I've done this a million times" I'm just going to leave it at "I joined Weight Watchers and I feel really good about it this time around."

I will say that the work I've done over the past year and a half or so with my nutritionist and my therapist has made me feel better prepared to do Weight Watchers. I feel more realistic about not trying to work the program around the way I want to eat, but to rather just actually follow the program the way it's intended to work (novel idea, I know). I feel like I have more tools and maturity to do what's best for me, and it's a great place to be in.

So that's my takeaway from Meeting #1. I am hopeful that I'll have intersting things to share from Meeting #2!