January 9, 2009
Friday

I almost titled this piece “Oops, I Did It Again, AGAIN!” but I didn’t just now rejoin Weight Watchers today. I’ve been a member off and on since September of 1972, when I was 25 and weighed 149 pounds, having gained 25 pounds since my college graduation three years before, most of that in the emotional turmoil I let myself descend into over a broken romance. The whole sorry saga of my love-hate off again-on-again relationship with Weight Watchers is at Refiguring. It starts with February 1, 2006. I don’t remember how many of those I transferred to this site. I keep that area going so I have a throwaway version of this set-up to play with. If I try to monkey with the code and something breaks, I really haven’t lost anything. I tried out inserting the Blog 365 and The Hunger Site badges there first.

Oh, yeah, The Hunger Site logo. I carry a fair amount of guilt and uneasiness about my social and economic situation, especially regarding the ways I am able to (and choose to) address my obesity. I have never experienced what hunger researchers call “food insecurity.” When I say I am hungry, I mean that it has been a few hours (or maybe only twenty minutes) since I had anything to eat. I can eat anything I like, from the best balanced nutritionist-designed menu to a loaf of bread the size of a Honda Civic. I am certainly not a wealthy woman, but I am better off than a whole lot of other people, maybe even most other people. I am so well-off that I can afford to join a club that every week tells me the same thing — eat less, move more.

The title of the latest incarnation of the Weight Watchers plan to eat less and move more is called Momentum. All of the materials are redesigned (which means they don’t fit into the carrying cases members may have bought as recently as Thanksgiving), although the program is tweaked only a little. Some old concepts are going by new names. In fact, I don’t think there are any new concepts. Nothing beats eat less, move more. The problem is that the directive to “eat less” can be a challenge for some people with different-from-average hormonal and metabolic systems, so that the amount of food allowed to avoid weight gain or even weight maintenance can be un satisfyingly small. And to “move more” can be difficult for people with different-from-average musculoskeletal and orthopedic factors.

The thing I noticed most about the new materials is the absence of pictures of people’s faces and bodies. It’s mostly food and hands holding food. That seemed odd.

I’ve been attending the meetings instead of weighing in and ducking out. It can’t hurt and it might help. I like to go on Thursday or Friday evenings to meetings that Sandra leads. She’s a teacher (high school art) and so has good presentation skills. Tonight there was a woman in the row I was in who had some official-looking badge on and was taking notes on a yellow pad. I heard her tell someone she was an area supervisor, and suddenly I remembered all my tension-filled sessions with a principal sitting in my classroom (such as the one who counted the number of times I said “um,” calculated how many ums a minute that was, and recommended a reduced ratio). “Sandra’s super,” I said to her quietly on my way out.

I did manage to lose .6 pounds this week. (Yes, it’s measured in tenths of a pound, A stick of butter is .25 pounds. I lost the equivalent of two sticks and a little for your English muffin.) And I spent four hours today on my fiction work (not writing my own, but reading manuscripts for workshop next week, which can be as important for my own advancement as actual creation is). So I guess I am back to normal, finally.

And back to keeping The Hunger Site logo prominent on my blog and in my mind. The hungry and the homeless are the social outcasts I care about most. Right now my reluctance to leave my comfort zone means that clicking a corporate logo and helping without getting my hands dirty is about all I can do. It can’t hurt and it might help. I pray for the day when I will finally do more.

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