Weighing in Crazies

This post could have different titles:

1) Weigh-in Rituals

or

2) Why I Don't Attend Weight Watchers Meetings

Either title would apply to this post.

In 2002, I lost over 70 pounds by attending Weight Watchers. I quit, gained it all back plus a few, and here I am again. This time I chose Weight Watchers Online.

The weigh-in rituals were bad. I had some stinking thinking going on.

I live in a small town. We have one Weight Watchers meeting on Wednesday nights. No others to choose from, no Weight Watchers facility, just the lovely church basement where the meetings were had.

I loved our leader. That was because I knew her outside of Weight Watchers. She has a son a year younger than mine, and we were in Cub Scouts together. She was our Popcorn chairperson (an unenviable volunteer position) and did a fantastic job. I was a den leader. We saw each other a lot, and I always enjoyed her company. Her husband was really nice, too.

I started dreading meetings, though. She was the reason I went, but my thinking got ugly. I started in with those stupid weigh-in rituals. Our weigh-in time started at 6 pm. The meeting started at 6:30. Right off the bat, that is our supper time. No way would I eat *before* attending a meeting. By the time I got home, I was starving.

Wednesdays were very unhealthy for me. I would eat a normal breakfast and lunch, but refused to drink anything in the afternoon, let alone have a snack.

I would force myself to pee. I was obsessed with getting everything out of my body. The whole afternoon, I would go into the bathroom every so often and try to get rid of whatever I could get rid of.

When it was time to get ready to leave, I would change my clothes. I wore the thinnest, most light-weight yoga pants I could find and a light-weight shirt. Not smart, in Minnesota in the winter. I wore slip-on shoes with no socks. If people at the meeting noticed me, they would think I owned only one set of clothing.

When arriving at the meeting, I would go to the bathroom. Gotta get rid of every last drop.

I would stand in line and watch the women. (There were only two men there.) I wasn't the only one with rituals. These ladies would undress themselves as much as public decency would allow. They took off their jewelry, even their rings. The took off the shoes. Some would even take hair clips or pony tail holders out of their hair. They would do this while standing in line, which means the person next to them often got an elbow. Then many would be standing there holding all this stuff and suddenly realize they had to go to the bathroom. Their stuff would be on the floor holding their place in line.

I was lucky in that I could do that at home before I left the meeting, otherwise I would have been the same as them.

When I would finally arrive to the scale, I would be hoping and praying that the scale on the right would be the one I got. See, I had a preference. It made no difference that those scales were put up after each meeting, and the odds were that I had weighed on both many times, I simply HAD to go to the scale on the right. If I was unlucky enough to have the scale on the left, I was really upset. Seriously!

When I started out, I kept my shoes on. I figured I'd have a bad week somewhere along the line and need to slip the shoes off for an added boost some week. Yes, that happened, and I became another who would take her shoes off.

The second I stepped on the scale, I would exhale--have to get all that extra stuff like air out of the lungs for the weigh-in.

As JackSh*t posted, I would also get haircuts on Wednesdays because, you know, a half-inch hair trim makes all the difference in the world. Oh, and I would clip my nails on Wednesday afternoons, too--fingers and toes.

I was absolutely obsessed with the weigh-in rituals.

It was insane.

The minute I got home, I was famished. Oh, let me set myself up for a binge here with this crazy thinking and the crazy rituals. I didn't actually binge ever, but I was in crazy "I need to eat NOW" mode.

Many of the women at the meeting would sit down and eat a WW 2-point bar after weigh-in. I suspect I wasn't the only one who had chosen not to eat on Wednesday afternoons.

I was one who paid as I went. I got smart and started going to meetings every other week, which would guarantee a loss-a bigger loss. Even when I did that, I still did the stupid weigh-in rituals.

NONE OF THAT WAS HEALTHY. It was bad physically and emotionally.

That is why I do not attend meetings this time. I know I would fall into that stupid trap again.

Now, I weigh myself every morning. My official weigh-in day is Monday, but I like to weigh daily as it keeps me on track.

Gone are the stupid rituals. Now my Monday-morning ritual is this: Wake up, go potty, strip down to my birthday suit, hop on the scale. Done. Some Mondays I wait a bit to see if, well, you know, if I could get rid of something else. Because something else is weight, you know. This morning I waited a half hour, but didn't have that, um, constitutional. That's about as crazy as my weigh-ins are now.

I was laughing at myself this morning. Not long after I weighed in and logged my info in on the computer, I had my morning constitutional. I was down another half pound. Damn! Had I only waited. I laughed because I knew better. I'm not going into that stupid thinking anymore. It is what it is. If I am truly down another half pound (which I believe I am, because Saturday and Sunday I had the same weight as my post-constitutional weigh in this morning) it will just have to wait to be recorded until next week.

While I would like to visit with Patty, my lovely Weight Watchers leader that I no longer see because our boys are done with Cub Scouts, I choose to put my health first. I am not going to get into that stupid thinking pattern any more. If I went to a meeting, that stinking thinking would be back in a heartbeat. So I choose to set myself up for health instead.

~~~
The toilet monster is a funny little joke my son played on me a few years ago. He knows Mom heads straight for the bathroom first thing every morning, and he thought he was clever. He was, it was funny, even though I almost peed my pants ripping the monster off and out of the way. He snapped the photo himself. =)