New Year Resolutions: Weight Watchers
I’ve taken a few weeks off blogging to finish out 2011, but my mind has been spinning around New Year resolutions, and Weight Watchers keeps coming up. Knowing I’m not the only one with health, wellness and fitness goals for 2012, I thought I’d take a moment to share my personal story and feelings about weight loss for the new year.
My Fat Story
I was born an anxious eater. When I’m bored I eat, when I’m tired I eat, and when I’m anxious, yes, I eat. Munch, snack, graze, sample, taste, gobble, engorge, binge – I do it all. Recently, I took on (and now have resigned from) a chronically stressful job that really fasciltated all my old ways of eating.
Now I find myself in a familiar place – fatter than I’d like and not happy about it. Can you relate?
Weight Watchers popped up in my mind this morning when I opened my inbox and read through this post via SparkPeople, a free, online-based weight management program that seems to be hugely successful. Here’s what I read this morning. It’s entitled Effortless, which really got my attention:
I just realized today that I am 2.4 pounds away from my halfway goal of 17 pounds. I am 5.4 pounds away from being in a healthy/normal BMI range again, where I was 20+ pounds overweight before starting.
For some reason these are strange realizations for me, mostly because it hasn’t happened like I had expected it to. Last year, if you asked me how much I wanted to lose what I have so far, 15 pounds, I would have told you that I yearned for it SO, SO much. If I envisioned how it would happen, it would be in a dramatic way, requiring my full attention. I didn’t have time for that. I didn’t have the money. I had responsibilities, work, socializing to do. That would be too hard to lose weight.
And really, now that I start to reflect a bit on where I’ve come and where I’m going, it’s been effortless. That is not to say that losing weight and becoming a healthier person has not required effort. But, rather, it’s required no less energy than gaining weight had. It’s the simple choice to go to the gym rather than watch TV. It’s the simple choice to get a salad instead of a sub for lunch. It’s the simple choice to track your food for the day in the 15 minutes that you would have been Facebooking or reading your horoscope. It’s just a series of simply better choices.
And here I am just over two months into my Sparking. There’s no triumphant horns signifying my great achievements, no crowd of people saying “OMG you look great!”, but there’s something more profound. I’m simply doing it because it will be done. That’s that, and it’s really no big deal. I feel like that’s a big Woo Hoo, no?
I can completely relate to this Sparker’s weight loss experience. In 2010, I finally got fed up, pun intended, with my munching and my four year, overdue “baby weight” weight loss. I signed up for Weight Watchers with my mother, fell in love with exercise again, stopped making excuses for myself and began praying my way through my “anxious eating” moments.
For a long time, no one said anything about how I looked, but that wasn’t what it was about. As the pounds came off, I blossomed. It was profound, just like this Sparker says.
A Call to Action: Weight Loss Programs
But there is always lifestyle maintenance to consider, and that is where I am today – in need of maintenance.
If you are, too, I strongly consider you check out Weight Watchers. The community and resulting support system as well as the realistic eating plans really work. Can’t justify spending the money? Try SparkPeople.
This chick seems to be seeing results. What has worked for you? Share your story in the comments below!
Here’s to a happy, healthier weight for you in 2012!
