Lose the Buddha: Why I Quit Weight Watchers

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Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Why I Quit Weight Watchers

I remember the first time I stepped into Weight Watchers, mainly because I knew that it was going to change my life.

I mean that with all of the sincerity I can possibly muster.

I knew that within those walls, and during those meetings, and in between the pages of ridiculousness that lie in those weekly pamphlets you received after weighing in, hell, even while I stepped up on the scale, week after week, that what was missing from my life and what would be key to me getting healthy would be revealed through Weight Watchers.

I was not wrong.

I learned about portion control. About how many daily servings of fruits and vegetables I'd need to ellicit a positive reaction from my body. I found out that I could make healthy, nutritionally sound meals that didn't taste like death warmed over. I grew to like weighing myself because it provided a certain amount of accountability to what I was doing. I learned how much I loved to exercise and the positive impact it had on my life. I figured out how hard I had to work to see results. I may never have done any of these things 100 percent, day in, day out, but I tried.

But here's the most conclusive thing happened to me in the three years I've been doing Weight Watchers:

I never reached goal. Oh, elusive, elusive goal. Never. Not once.

My goal weight - as dictated by Weight Watchers - is 131 pounds. I missed it by about eight pounds, almost two years ago. I've gone back and forth as to why I never made goal - I like to drink, I hated fat-free cheese, I separated from my husband, to borrow an old excuse originating with Wendy of Pound, Manifest Destiny, blah blah blah. These things, with the possible exception of Manifest Destiny, were all contributing factors.

But really? I only gained back 15 pounds when my personal life went south. And while I may exaggerate for comedic effect, I'm not a huge drinker. No, mostly I never made it to goal because the idea of a goal weight turns me into a monster.

Despite everything I've said here, I can't shut off my brain from making blanketed assumptions about my self-worth based on my daily POINTS intake. I can't seperate the person I actually am from the person who is making a choice to eat a veggie burger sans fries, or a bacon cheeseburger with a side of fried potato goodness. Because when I'm constantly tracking food values, when the outcome of that week is based on what I do of every second of every day, I can barely breathe.

I am having a hard time seeing myself as a woman of worth based on my heart because my inability to not constantly labor over what I am or am not eating, whether or not I am in the gym or at home, seems to negate it all. And during the time I spend counting points, planning, figuring out when I'm going to get into the gym, browsing aisles of workout equipment and wondering whether or not buying maybe a new sports bra will do the trick, I hate myself just a little bit more.

Let me be clear: Weight Watchers works. If losing weight is your only goal, it's the best under the sun. On this third go round, I lost 10 pounds. I am back into clothes I haven't been all year. But once again, my life began to revolve around what I put in my fucking mouth, the decision made therein, and how it effects how I see myself.

It's not this way for everyone, I know. My struggle to lose weight and keep it off, especially over the past few months, taps into my own sense of personal failures about my life overall. It's not Weight Watchers fault that I can't chill the fuck out and lose weight. But, if I can be blunt, they have set up the program in such a fashion that they condition its user to believe that without them, and without careful adherence to what they instruct, we're all fucked.

After all, "when you fail to plan, you plan to fail" anyone? And time after time I've been preached that part of my planning must include Weight Watchers and all of its practices. What equals failure in this instance? Despite all of the happy talk, we know it's the number on the scale going up or maintaining.

If all you care about is the number on the scale, that's cool. This process isn't so emotional and tied up for everyone. But losing weight and staying in shape encompasses more than that for me, and ultimately my *real* goal was to find a way to wrestle with those demons and not let myself keep falling into a black hole of ridiculousness any longer. My time and energies were better spent on more worthwhile endeavors than hating myself.

And yet? Three years later? Not only have I never hit goal weight but I never really got to the more important one, and that's to trust in myself. I spent years cultivating knowledge, practicing patience, collecting the tools and for what? To just stand around here frustrated as hell and angry.

Why don't I trust in myself?

That's a longer entry, and not worth going into, but I've spent the past couple of weeks experimenting with not following any plan at all and let me tell you something: this ain't algebra.

I know how to eat heathfully, and I know how to exercise. And with each passing meal, I force myself to take a deep breath, scan my kitchen, and tell myself, "It's just food. Find something to eat." And that's it. Nine times out of 10, I make the "right choice" for my mind and body. That one time? Well, we need to work on how much I consume of the "wrong choice" when I do, but that's ONE TIME OUT OF TEN. And it's not only healthy, but also not in a portion so huge I could feed every person in my apartment building plus their pets.

I needed to pay $40 a month to a corporation for that outcome?

I told my best friend at some point months and months ago that the tuna sub from Subway was probably the most unhealthy choice he could make, despite his thoughts to the contrary. I learned this ... somehow. Over years of looking up the POINTS value over at Dottie's, I suppose. Today I was bemoaning that I'd found a great article on unusual cheese fries offered in various restaurants in Chicago, and how unfortunate it was that I'd found it in the midst of all of this effort I'm making and he said: "If it makes you feel any better, I had a pang of sadness when I suddenly realized I wanted the Subway tuna sub but didn't want the fat equivalent of making out with a can of Crisco."

Now, he doesn't need to lose weight, nor is he a health nut, but he just simply knows that the option isn't what's best for him and moves along. Is that easy for everyone? No fucking way. Should it be that easy for me after three years of this? Maybe.

And that's what I really need to work on, more than losing another 10 pounds, more than fitting into another piece of clothing. I need to learn how to trust myself, and trust that making a good or bad decision is just a decision and that I can make the ones that are best for me without turning it into a big fucking ordeal.

With Weight Watchers, everything is a big fucking ordeal. Hell, with the money they spend on printing up all those stupid, red "I Lost 5 Pounds" bookmarks they could have hooked us all up with some new Firm tapes.

I'm not done here. Not by a long shot. I'm still working on me. But I'm leaving Weight Watchers and formal diets for good. It's time to do, well, nothing.

Posted by Erin at 02:20 PM | filed under: Random

comments

Bravo! I applaud your commitment to escaping that cycle... Although I've never joined WW, I've been in the game of tallying calories and deciding whether I'm good or bad based upon the number on the scale every day... I fall into this pattern time and again, and have to consciously choose NOT to be party to the mental madness it perpetuates.

Living healthfully is about balance, and WW is the opposite of that, I think. I'm truly sorry for those people who look at it as their salvation; I see it as a relentless game that teaches women to to continually focus on themselves and to value themselves as little or much as their weekly weigh-in says they should. Sure, such an unaccustomed level of self-scrutinization can be fun and even empowering at first, but it becomes relentless in its limitations.

Getting off that ride can be scary, but it can also mean glorious freedom. I wish you the very best!

posted by: Steffany at December 12, 2006 05:40 PM

Congratulations on your decision and I wish you the best as you live your life making reasonable choices.

I envy you that you're mentally ready to take this on. I rejoined WW in September because I wasn't doing it on my own. I needed the shame of somebody else weighing me and the accountability to get me started. I'm a reasonably intelligent adult and I know all the right things--portion control, healthy choices, exercising, etc.--but I don't have the right mindset to convince myself to follow my own advice. I always hope that getting started will help me to do that.

I hope you continue to post here and let us know how things are working out for you.

posted by: Dellface at December 12, 2006 06:04 PM

Don't cut off your nose to spit your face. Absorb what you learned from the organization because it seemed like such a good idea a few years ago, and reject the useless. You learned a lot from them, and it was a stepping stone to where you are now, a much more balanced and knowledgeable person.

gassho

posted by: supplementyourlife at December 12, 2006 06:48 PM

Congratulations! I've been on and off the WW bandwagon myself and I've been the most successful when I've been off the WW but on the gym and feeling good about life in general. I appreciate your point about learning to trust yourself. That is the hard part - but hopefully recognising that is the first step.

Thanks for writing.

posted by: Vanessa at December 12, 2006 08:21 PM

I love the sentiment of this entry. I have never joined WW (though I am overweight), but I have always felt that there's got to be a way to LIVE, to enjoy the things that you enjoy -maybe in some modified way - and to work toward a weight that is more comfortable. I am trying now to eat and drink everything that I love but in smaller portions and to exercise daily just cuz I like it. That seems like more of a life to me -confident that the end result, though not model thin, will be sustainable and not wracked with guilt or endless analysis.

posted by: Julie at December 12, 2006 09:28 PM

How funny. I just quit too. I've quit in the past, sure, but I always kept my eTools subscription. This time, I even cancelled that. I have all the same reasons that you articulate, plus I just can't concentrate that much on the scale anymore. My clothes were fitting again, I obviously was doing something right, and I'd lost a grand total of 5 lbs in three or four months. Yet my clothes were fitting again. But every week, I felt like a miserable failure.

I know I'm the type that has to track food to really know what I'm eating, so I still do that over on SparkPeople, but I'm not making that the be all and end all of my existence.

*shrug*

posted by: nicole at December 13, 2006 01:03 AM

Hear, hear!

There has to be more to life than assigning a points value to everything we eat. I quit WW (after a number of attempts to lose weight with them) because meal times were more an exercise in maths and guilt than enjoyment and nutrition after a while.

Thanks for expressing it so eloquently! :o)

posted by: Cath at December 13, 2006 09:40 AM

For the love of God, you said it sister!

posted by: denise at December 13, 2006 11:01 AM

love the post and thank-you for sharing honestly what you've been thru with WW... i think more of us have jumped on the wagon than not and have said the same things, "i know what i have to do, i know how much i need to exercise, i know what i shouldn't be eating, why am i paying $15/week for this..."... but some of us need the weekly verification and some do their own thing, like me, and hold themselves accountable in other ways...

i wish you the best of luck and hope you keep us posted on your progress... :o)

:: happy holidays ::

posted by: jodi at December 13, 2006 11:38 AM

I applaud you, I really do I honestly believe that Points, and all that crap just give you a food fixation. If you go over your points you suck, if you stay within your points your probably eating stuff you don't even like. So then you eat the crap plus what you really want. If you're really curious I suggest "The Overfed head" and "how to survive your diet" both deal with fixing the food disorders that come with dieting. Good for you. I suggest eating whatever you want but not all you want. You want chili-cheese fries fine, just don't eat all the chili cheese fries.

posted by: Michigan Librarian at December 13, 2006 02:29 PM

I could have written much of this, WW did help me for a while (as did eDiets and using fitday to track) but it didn't take very long for me to become crazy about it, and then it was all counterproductive. I am trying very hard right now to work on "me" and feeling good about myself, so that I can bloody well get on with my life. I found the techniques in the book "Feeling Good" by Dr David Burns to be helpful with negative self talk and general anxiety/depression issues. I am doing a lot better now, and now I am trying to get myself in gear to focus on exercise. Just exercise, not food. Exercise will make my body and mind feel better, food...not so much.

posted by: Rosemary Grace at December 13, 2006 03:51 PM

I quit WW to, but because I found the meetings tedious and inconvenient rather than informative and inspiring. Not too mention that $40.00 a month is an outrageous price for what the offer. The past couple of years I've been doing calorieking.com and have found it much more enjoyable and easier to maintain. However, It's not for those who don't think that counting is worth it. Fortunately for me I find keeping track or my nutritional counts fun and exciting, except on major Holidays when I regard them all together.

posted by: Gloria at December 13, 2006 05:20 PM

Girl -sounds like my "Intuitive Eating" approach. I'm scared to admit this, but I think it's working... Shhh. Don't wanna jinx it! :-)

posted by: Literacygirl at December 13, 2006 09:09 PM

Awesome.

I quit (as you might have noticed) because I decided that nursing my son was more important than separating out 13 potato chips and 1 fistful of nuts for a snack and writing it down. I'm just not in the mindset yet.

posted by: casey at December 14, 2006 03:27 AM

I never was on Weight Watchers, but I did have an unhealthy relationship with FitDay. And came to the same conclusion that you're coming to - it's not what works for me.

Part of the reason that I never joined WW? Because I think they would assign me a goal weight that I don't really have any ambitions to reach. Yes, I want to be fit and healthy, but no, I don't think I'll ever be anything but "overweight" according to BMI. Nonetheless, I think it would be frustrating to have the implication hanging over me that what I think is right for me is wrong.

posted by: K at December 14, 2006 07:27 AM

I didn't read this as WW bashing at all...Erin, you've made a brave choice and I think that you've gotten your Ph.D. in WW, and can now go forth and teach the world how to live a healthy lifestyle.

I too am a repeat-offender at WW- I really wonder what the recidivism rate is, because I've never been able to hit goal either.

Good luck in your pursuit of a healthy lifestyle.

posted by: Kate at December 16, 2006 01:07 PM

Your comments on weight watchers and dieting really resonated with me. I don't know if you've read "The Obesity Myth," but it's a really eye-opening book for anyone on a diet, and the author (whose name I can't remember) talks at one point about how dieting can lead to disordered eating, and that many successful dieters are simply people who have managed to adopt a permanent disordered way of eating. It definitely made me step back and consider how I want to lose weight--which doesn't include weight watchers or sparkpeople (which was literally starving me with its low calorie range).

posted by: Liz at December 16, 2006 01:14 PM

I hear you on this one. I joined in May 2005 with my wife, but my wife made lifetime membership in december 2005. I stopped going at that time to save the weekly fees and didn't like the meeting schedule in my neighbourhood anyway. The knowledge was good though, and I better for knowing WW. Meanwhile, almost a year later and I'm halfway back to where I was when I started. Rather than trying something different or going back, I'm now blogging my daily progress and meals and counting points (with picture) directly on my site. Hopefully I can keep it up.

One thing that always peeved me about WW was that despite I was expected to pay every week, the booklets stopped coming in week 9? or something like that. You lose interest and stop paying attention in the meetings (or was is just me?)

Anyway .. how's it working out doing nothing?

posted by: HART (1-800-HART) at January 8, 2007 04:36 AM

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