On program, but not hermetically sealed

Jonny Lubitch (Todd's dad):  "My son is not a freak!"

Those of you with a penchant for made-for-TV movies and are 40+ years old might recall the John Travolta magnum opus, Boy in the Plastic Bubble.  Travolta played the part of Todd Lubitch, a young man with an immune deficiency disorder that required him to live in a hermetically sealed plasticized room.  Todd deals with all the challenges of living in his plastic bubble, untouched by others, so that he might live out the days of his life.  Until he falls madly in love with Gina Biggs.  In the final scene of the movie, Todd bravely leaves his bubble to embrace Gina in a tender embrace on the beach and thereby embraces life.  And then the credits come up.  And then Todd presumably dies (not filmed).

I recently discovered that Todd and I have a little bit in common.  Some of my neighbors and friends are concerned about invading my Weight Watchers plastic bubble.

Example:

It's a Saturday night, and my wife informs me that friends have invited us over at 6:30 PM for a drink.  My wife also informs me that we need to be on time as they need us out of there by 7:30 PM, presumably because they have other plans afterwards.  While we are over, our friends mention that they are having a very casual taco dinner, but they understand that I cannot stay as it is probably not Weight Watchers friendly enough.  Although they offer up the fact that they are using 97% lean beef, clearly seeking to avoid a scalding nutritional rebuke from yours truly.

OK, I'm a little crazy, but not nearly that crazy.  Of course I stayed for dinner, and of course I ate the tacos.  And they were very good.

I wondered how my being on program had become such a point of notoriety.  To be clear, my hosts were being nothing other than considerate and thoughtful, and I really don't think they were acting crazy.    If I were just a thin person who had always been thin, I don't think they would have thought twice about having me over for their Mexican treats.

I started reflecting on the fact that it must be something I'm doing.  Maybe there is some sort of Weight Watchers pheromone that I have been kicking off that causes other people to have the biological impulse to shield me from bad food?  Some of the response certainly has to do with the fact that my friends know that I work for Weight Watchers (heaven knows they tease me enough about how I have to stay on program or suffer unspoken consequences).  I started thinking that perhaps a more likely explanation is that I have been so vocal about being on the program that I am scaring the epicureans away.

I remember an observation that Jean Nidetch had made.  She noted that naturally thin people often don't eat all that much food.  They usually do not finish what's on their plate.  They may only eat a bite of dessert, but they will usually stir it up with a fork so it looks like it's been eaten.  In other words, they don't make a big deal out of the fact that they don't eat every single thing in front of them.  If anything, they try to pretend like they are big eaters, even though they aren't.

I am starting to think that naturally thin people might be on to something.  If I always make a huge vocal point about the fact that I'm being careful about what I eat, it's inevitably going to create awkward situations for the people around me.  That in turn can make it harder for me to fully live in the real world.  This in turn makes it harder to create truly sustainable eating habits.

It's one thing to ask the people who are incredibly close to you, like your family, for their support in helping you stay on program.  Most other people do not need to know.  Or at least they don't need to know during the act of eating.  In fact, I suspect it gets a bit grating for people to listen to someone else constantly talking about their eating regimen.

The great thing about Weight Watchers is that it teaches you how to navigate real world situations without having to ask for special help from your host.  In addition, I might do well to consider that a friend is not a restaurant proprietor.  It's perfectly fine to ask your server to bring dressing on the side or to prepare your food more simply.  I'm pretty sure that Emily Post would instruct us that this is not proper etiquette for friends.

Therefore, maybe the alternative is to engage in healthy habits without verbal accompaniment.  After all, I'm not on a diet.  I'm just living my life.

So to all my friends:  feel free to tear down the walls of my plastic bubble.  I'm quite sure it won't kill me.

dk

Far from perfect...

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Las Vegas, the world capital of unnecessary extravagance and possibly the world capital of big food.  Really big food.  Yet, as I write this, I'm drinking coffee with skim milk and having a plate of fruit.  I'm not really being a saint about this.  It's just what I eat in the morning these days.

In fact, I'm pretty far from perfect in a Weight Watchers context.  As noted earlier, I am not a religious tracker, particularly now that I'm on maintenance.  I do get weigh-in's, but probably only every two to three weeks when I stop in and visit a meeting.  I got my last weigh in about two weeks ago when visiting a meeting in Queens (still at goal weight -- go me!)

However, in that meeting, one of my Weight Watchers shortcomings became uncomfortably on display.  I was minding my own business, and the Leader suddenly asked me whether I followed the Good Health Guidelines.  I think she (reasonably) presumed that as the CEO of the company, I must be pretty observant of these types of rules.  I was a bit stumped because I knew the answer:  not always.

Upon reflection, here is where I stack up on the GHG's:

Follow 'em:

• 5 servings fruits and vegetables:  yep.  I consume fruit by the truckload (more out of desire than discipline), and I like my vegetables just fine.  That said, I don't tick off each of the five each day.  I just know that I easily hit these target on most days.
• Whole grains:  I do in fact choose them whenever possible.
• Milk:  also an easy one as I eat a lot of yogurt and cottage cheese
• Protein:  also an easy one.  I'm a big fan of both fish and chicken.
• Sugar & alcohol:  I don't go over-board here, and I don't have a huge sweet tooth (or at least it's not that hard to control)
• Activity:  no issues here

Ooops:

• Water:  although I drink diet soda, which technically counts, I should really drink more water.  Less artificial sweeteners and more bona fide/nature supplied hydration would be better.  
• Oil:  this may happen naturally as my wife uses good oils when she cooks, and I would normally order entrees cooked with olive oil in a restaurant.  That said, I do not actively track this, and I certainly am far from disciplined about it.
• Vitamins:  I think I had my last vitamin when I was roughly 7 years old

As you can probably see, I follow the GHG's more by accident than by design.  I think that's a good reflection of the Weight Watchers program that it naturally steers you to the GHG's through things like filling foods.  I have also learned that the only way I can stay OP and not lose my mind with hunger is by eating the kinds of foods promoted in the GHG's.  Therefore, the program naturally saves me from my own lack of discipline and difficulty following rules.  

That also said, the GHG's I don't follow really do represent good health practices, and I really should follow them.  Popping a vitamin each morning would not be such a hard thing to do.  Although, I do struggle to remember to feed my dog her pills in the morning.  Water is a bit more of a challenge, but I could get into the practice of walking around with the big Weight Watchers water mug.  Oil is something I should just be more aware of.  

My observations on all of this:

1. I am not a super-disciplined rule follower, yet I generally fall in line with Weight Watchers rules.  I attribute this to the fact that the Weight Watchers program is based on a lot of common sense, so it's easy to accidentally follow the rules.  
2. Having been on the Weight Watchers program (mostly) for roughly ten years, most of the rules are kind of second nature.  As I noted on an earlier post, the rules and guidelines are not a lifetime sentence to drudgery.  They really do become second nature over time.  That's why lifestyle-based programs, rather than fad diets, make more sense.  
3. I am pretty good on the program, and I'm at goal weight.  Yet, I ain't no saint.  BTW, that's perfectly fine.  I do what works for me, but I'm not the perfect model of the Weight Watchers program.  Most of us aren't, and that is totally OK.  
4. I can do better.  Being more disciplined about the GHG's would be less about getting a gold star (or Bravo star as the case may be), and much more about living in a healthier way.  That's always a good thing.

dk

Small objects can be dangerous to my circumference

(Found this image on a bunch of different blogs.  Inappropriate & disgusting but funny.  And a good cautionary tale for not eating too much candy.)  

Research just in.  All small candy has calories.  And most has fat.  It really doesn't matter how physically small the candy is, it still has calories.  A few fun facts:

• Reeses cup.  Just one cup:  3 POINTS value
• One solitary, sad and quite lonely Hershey's Kiss:  1 POINTS value
• One fun size bag of M&M's (peanut or regular):  2 POINTS value
• One fun size bag of Skittles:  2 POINTS value
• One fun size Almond Joy:  2 POINTS value
• One of those little tubes of Smarties:  1 POINTS value

All of the above consumed at once:  Priceless.  OK, technically, 11 POINTS.

I'm really not trying to be a preachy, irritating buzz-kill on this.  I did this research mostly for my own benefit as I brace myself for the onslaught (and aftermath) of Halloween.

I have two girls who still Trick-or-Treat, and they are very skilled gatherers.  I fully expect them to return with bags stuffed with all manner of empty calories.  My children are much stronger than I am.  They are perfectly happy to have one or two pieces of candy per night, and in all cases they are substituting for whatever treat they would have had otherwise.  I, on the other hand, would be perfectly happy to have three to four pieces per night in addition to whatever else I might have normally eaten.  In my past, heavier life, that might have been six pieces.

Three to four pieces of candy may not seem like a big deal, but it pretty much is.  It amounts to about 8 POINTS or 400 calories (plus fat).  It is roughly equivalent to eating an extra hot dog on a roll each night.  For a month.  It's not a wonder why people, including me, tend to gain weight this time of year.  My goal this year is to stay on my current weight through January 1st.  I did it last year, and I can do it again if I have a plan.

My plan for tonight.  Going to a Halloween party at friends' house.  The kids will do their candy hunting & gathering while their parents get their Mad Men on in a cocktail party disguised as "home base" for trick-or-treaters.  Drinks, appetizers, and candy.  My plan:  don't worry about it.  One night won't kill me, and Saturday night Halloween's don't roll around that frequently (every six years to be roughly precise).

My plan for the next 30 days.  Stay away from my kids' candy.  They earned their bounty, and frankly they will apportion it more responsibly than I.  Truth be told, I like the thought of eating candy more than the act itself.  Also, I find the notion of inhaling 2 POINTS of anything so smallish to be pretty unsatisfying.  Therefore, I am going with the zero tolerance strategy.  My kids don't approve of theft, so I am sure they will help me comply.

Two key takeaways for me from this exercise.

1. Calculate ahead.  Knowing how crummy the POINTS deal is on a food can help take the fun out of abusing it later.  
2. Make an explicit plan for the specific situation, and then work to stick to it.  

I've already done #1.  We will see how #2 goes.

Have a rocking Halloween, but remember the wise words of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus from Hill St. Blues:  Hey, let's be careful out there.

I'm ready for my closeup Mr. Demille

(No, not me..  BTW this photo of Gloria Swanson completely freaks me out)

I kind of imagined myself as slightly subversive and revolutionary when I started my blog this past March (not accounting for the fact that probably 500 million people have blogged before me).  The blog was not part of the official Weight Watchers universe as, at the time, we did not have blogging functionality (we do now!).  It was kind of my own thing, as much personal as professional, and it was not officially recognized by the Weight Watchers website.  As of Tuesday, the tech guys are putting in links on the big website to expose my navel gazing and poor writing skills to a larger audience.

So for those who may be meeting me for the first time.  Hi.  For your convenience, I have collected a selection of links to previous posts that you might find helpful for getting a fast update of the story of me.  So, in chronological order:

1. In the Beginning
2. Documented proof of my Lifetime Membershipness
3. Gruesome things I used to eat (for good reason) before Weight Watchers
   
4. A man going to meetings
   
5. Restaurants can be hard
   
6. My dog can eat faster than me (but only just)
   
7. Big weakness #1: airplane food (blech)
   
8. French hotels have bad gyms
   
9. How I learned to eat breakfast
   
10. Weight loss celebrity gone horribly awry
    
11. How I learned to eat lunch
    
12. Unmastered habits
    
13. Learning to exercise
    
14. Bad music for the sake of good workouts
    
15. Respecting the scale
    
16. More on habits: naught & nice list
    
17. Regular exercise: habit or impressive discipline?
    
18. Needing (and finding) a reason to stay the course
    
19. Lose for Good, my Before & After shots, and a bunch of groceries
    
20. How to be less irritating on maintenance
    

So that's about what I've got down on paper so far.  I do, by the way, realize that there is a handy navigation system over there on the right.  I just thought this might be a more convenient way of doing a quick spin.

By the way, I spent last week flying to and from Sydney with each leg of the commute being 27 hours.  Suffice it to say, I ate with reckless abandon.  Still haven't conquered the airplane.  I did, however, work out lots and lots including this weekend.  I will, in fact, get my tail back on program this week.  Travel or not.  Really.

Am I man or cow? My lifestyle of grazing...

I truly think that if I were ever stuck outside for an extended period of time, I would eventually start grazing on grass. I cannot rule out the possibility of a genetic mutation that would lead the formation of three additional stomachs. I get cows, and I understand why they graze. Cows never seem particularly bored, and they usually seem pretty content (assuming they aren't tipped). I attribute their utopian existence to the fact that they get to eat all the time.

I am a boredom eater. Always have been, and may always be. Give me a jam-packed busy day, and I stick to my three square meals -- I'm happy as if I had good sense. Give me a slow Saturday around the house, and you can always find me prowling around the kitchen. Even worse if I'm slightly sleep deprived. I'm not hungry, yet I am deriving curious pleasure from small handfuls of food. It's not a good habit, but it's also one that has been embedded over many decades. In other words, it's not an easy habit for me to kick.

I was thinking over the past couple of days about all the fancy new healthy habits I have acquired over the past 10 years with Weight Watchers. They include POINTS-friendly breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. I am a mealtime warrior when it comes to staying on plan. As I was self-admiring, it occurred to me that to conquer these new meals, I was simply making better food choices. I was swapping out bad foods with good ones. In retrospect, it wasn't that hard once I got the hang of it. I did not have to fundamentally change any eating occasion behavior in the sense that I always ate breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is not as though I had to drop a meal.

Grazing is a tough habit for me to beat because it requires potentially eliminating an eating occasion. What to do? As I see it, I have two choices:

1. Find some other activity to replace it. We tell members this all the time. "When you are feeling bored, why not do XXXX." My problem is that I cannot for the life of me figure out what XXXX is. Summersaults? Tiddlywinks? Long form algebra? Meditation, possibly combined with rudimentary levitation?
2. Replace the questionable grazing provisions (e.g., nuts) with lower POINTS ones (e.g., carrot sticks, fruit). I was in a staff meeting this week, and I noticed a box of Jolly Time popcorn (endorsed by Weight Watchers -- 1 POINTS value). I like popcorn, so this could be a nice add.

Both of the above are probably applicable. As I think about it, the X factor that could help me get a grip would be making it a point to more actively track my POINTS, particularly after dinner and on weekends. As they say, what gets measured gets done. In this case, they is mostly accountants and efficiency experts, but they do have a point.

I have a special form of boredom eating that I will be facing on Sunday night: flying to Australia. 22 hours each way combined with ample sleep deprivation. It will not be pretty. I worked out like a convict today, and will probably do the same tomorrow to get prepared for the eating onslaught.

If anyone would like to share their outstanding success tips on any of the above perplexing challenges, I'm all ears (and stomachs).

Kids and vegetables

The secret of good nutrition is that there really is no secret. It's a function of focusing your food choices on fruits, vegetables, lean meats, whole grains and low fat dairy. And try not to eat too much. All the behaviors and new habits that are required to make those types of choices second nature is where the real work is. For me personally, I cannot imagine how I could stay on program if I wasn't completely captivated by all manner of fruit. Accordingly, fruits and vegetables are a big part of my diet.

I think about these five categories of food every time I go grocery shopping. It seems that more and more, my family does almost all of its shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store. The interior aisles are the domicile for endless array of heavily processed foods that are too often loaded with sugar, sodium and fat. I recognize that the perimeter of the grocery store is also on balance more expensive, and I am grateful for the fact that we can afford to focus our diet on unprocessed foods.


This weekend, I had a stark reminder that many others in this country have much less access to these healthy foods. I was very proud of the fact that Weight Watchers had the opportunity to sponsor a Fit & Fun in the City event at the Harlem Children's Zone this past Saturday. It was a great event at an inspiring facility that serves a 100-block zone of 10,000 children in Harlem. The Fit & Fun event served to launch the construction of a vegetable garden on the roof of HCZ that the kids in that facility will attend, maintain and benefit from.





Former President Bill Clinton gives introductory remarks to an energized and engaged group of mothers and fathers in Harlem.


It was also a great event that featured a fantastic line-up of speakers including Bill Clinton, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Rachel Ray and Allan Houston (former stand-out Knicks player). During a panel discussion held by NY Times Wellness Editor, Tara Parker-Pope, a consistent set of themes emerged. As adults, we need to work harder to steer our kids away from sugary processed foods and more toward fruits and vegetables. As adults, we need to be both role models and focused parents when it comes to healthy eating. As adults, we need to find ways of making nutritious eating fun and engaging. All-in-all, it was thoughtful and inspiring commentary.



Fun & Fit in the City participants including Dr. Oz, Rachel Ray, Allan Houston, Tara Parker-Pope, NY City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (and me!).


During the Q&A session that followed, several mothers expressed their frustration about the lack of availability of unprocessed foods in their neighborhood markets. They often have to travel surprisingly long distances to get to fresh markets. As many of these women are working one, two and sometimes three jobs, this becomes a considerable issue to overcome. Many policy experts have now come to refer to economically disadvantaged neighborhoods as food deserts due to the lack of healthy foods in their markets.


With the Lose for Good campaign, we are working for the second year with Share Our Strength, a fantastic organization that focuses not only on feeding children, but feeding them the right kinds of nutritious foods. Our contributions have gone to help support an initiative called the Good Food Gardens, jointly run by Share Our Strength and the Food Network (another fantastic group of people). I am proud that we have been able to make our own direct contribution to the issue of childhood hunger/obesity, but clearly much more needs to be collectively done.





Above our the NYC chefs who participated in Chefs Lose for Good. They collectively lost a ton of weight which further contributed to our Lose For Good drive. In the backdrop is a Good Food Garden which will be placed into a NY housing project.


To learn more, visit www.strength.org.

Tracking POINTS: life-in-jail sentence or salvation?

Having been in a Weight Watchers place (literally and figuratively) over the past 10 years, tracking POINTS (we used to call it journaling) has been a presence in my world for 25% of my life. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

To provide proper context for this discussion, I suppose I should share a little bit of my personality wiring. It seems that there are people who thrive on to-do lists, and those who find that exercise slightly more preferable to inserting toothpicks underneath their finger nails. If any one has ever had to take the Myers-Brigg personality test, they indicate the distinction between J(udging) and P(erceiving). J's love to-do lists, and P's prefer to take life as it comes. To put a finer point on it, J's use to-do lists on weekends, and P's find that practice to be more than a little bizarre.

I am a P. I do use a to-do list for work out of sheer necessity, but definitely not for the love of the exercise. My OCD tendencies tend to evidence themselves in ritual, not in elaborately detailed project management plans for how I plan to spend my Saturday.

I have always hypothesized that J's love to track POINTS for the same reason they love to write to-do lists. It gives them a sense of control and comfort, and brings a chaotic world into their submission. Similarly, I think that P's struggle to be religious trackers. Or at least I do.

So, in theory, I should probably despise the Weight Watchers program because it requires me to do something that I do not seem wired to do. Yet I heart the Weight Watchers program. Quite the little paradox I have going.

Counting POINTS when you don't want to...

When losing weight with the Weight Watchers program, I definitely relied on counting POINTS, but it would be a lie of gigantic proportions if I were to say that I tracked every single thing I ate over a 10 year period of time. Yet, I have no doubt that I would not have had success with the program if I had never counted. So with all this said, here is how I have used POINTS:

1) Achieving lift-off: on my last (and hopefully final) round of losing weight, I was pretty disciplined in counting POINTS for the first three weeks, including weekends. The exercise helped me return to reality on portion sizes, foods that were good POINTS values, and damage incurred by seemingly innocent grazing expeditions. For the first three weeks, counting gave me good focus and disciplined me in the process. It served both an educational (portions and food choices) and accountability (staying within the right input range) function.

2) Pattern recognition: for most of my breakfast and lunches, I usually eat from a fairly limited repertoire of meals. I used POINTS to identify meals that worked within my budget, and then I really didn't have to sweat counting them each day once they were embedded into my routine.

3) Mine detection: during both weight loss and maintenance phase, I have used POINTS to pre-identify dangerous choices, particularly when dining out. Getting nutritional information and converting it to POINTS early has allowed me to pre-approve foods so that I could safely incorporate them into my list of acceptable meals.

4) Recharging: now that I'm on maintenance, I have not been actively counting POINTS other than keeping mental notes of rough ranges for different meal times. However, when I feel myself going off the rails, I look at counting POINTS as my safety net. After returning from vacation at the end of August, I started feeling kind of gross. I used the POINTS tracker to refocus and to get myself back on the track of righteous healthy living.

One other key for me in counting POINTS: technology helps. A lot. Weight Watchers Online/eTools has been a huge help for me in sticking with the discipline when I need to. The POINTS tracker (web and now iPhone) allows me to perform the tracking process in break-neck speed. Having favorites and being able to drag-and-drop into the tracker has made the process pretty speedy (usually less than 5 minutes). The Recipe Builder has been a similarly big help.

In no way shape or form should the above be treated as an official Weight Watchers recommendation on how everyone should use POINTS. Everyone is wired differently, and I do believe it is important to find an approach that is livable for you and your life/wiring/circumstances. But no matter who you are, counting POINTS can and should be a salvation, not a life sentence. It can be your first line of defense in an otherwise weight-unfriendly world. At least it has been for me.

Shameless Plug (but true!)

Last weekend, Weight Watchers' iPhone application was released on the iTunes store. My horrifically biased review: it completely rocks the house. Particularly for a version 1.0 release. OK, I said I was biased.

What's the point and why do I care?

As noted in prior entries, I have often said that I needed the meeting to lose my weight with Weight Watchers, particularly the weigh-in which kept me honest and focused. As I've also said, I rely on the website in general, and Weight Watchers eTools (many of the same tools as Weight Watchers Online) in specific. I don't track my POINTS all the time, but when I do, it's the internet or nothing. I guess I'm just not a paper tracker kind of a fellow.

This works well except for the fact that I look a little conspicuous whipping out a laptop in the middle of a restaurant or grocery store. In other words, the web site is great, but what if I need to do my program business on the road? Once upon a time, we had a Palm application, and it was pretty slick. Until I stopped using a Palm. Then we launched Weight Watchers Mobile, which totally works, but it just does not have the same kind of umph of the web site.

Before I go further, one other point of important bias-related caveating: I am a total iPhone super freak. LOVE it. LOVE it. LOVE it. It is always a good time to pull up Google Maps for no apparent reason. The browser rocks. The interface is beautiful. Etc.

I had seen screen shots of the new iPhone application, but the technology team did not provide me with a demo prior to its release. Therefore, I got mine roughly when you got yours. It really did surpass my expectations, particularly in user interface, graphics, resources, etc. It is one of those applications where you keep discovering new stuff. Most importantly, I can now track and search on the fly.

I even use it as a video game of sorts. I call it "Let's find the scariest thing at the Restaurant." Yesterday's winner was the Arthur Treachers (listed under Nathan's Famous) Shrimp Boat. 88 POINTS. I kid you not. I'm not really sure what a shrimp boat is (I think it is fried shrimp, tartar sauce and fries), but for that many points it should be able to fit a person inside of it (not the other way around).

A few important notes about the iPhone app... 1) anyone can download it, but you need to be a Monthly Pass/eTools or Online subscriber to get full access to all the tools (in which case they are free), 2) you need to have a live connection (cell or wifi) to enter POINTS into your tracker, and 3) it's only going to get better. I say this in a self-serving attempt to avoid scorching flames from any potentially irate users.

Give the iPhone app a go and let me know what you think.

That’s great about your weight loss. Now please talk less.

So I’ve lost my weight, and I’ve been maintaining it (officially) since this past February. When I was losing my weight, I definitely talked about it a lot in various forums: meetings with staff, family, co-workers, people at Weight Watchers meetings, etc. I was part of the crowd that was sharing the struggle. When I went into maintenance, my need to talk about it did not subside. In fact, I even started writing this blog so even more people could listen to me talk about it. Frankly, some people found this a bit irritating.

From the perspective of someone has either just starting a weight loss effort or is perhaps just contemplating it, hearing from people on maintenance can be either incredibly motivating or intensely grating. The reasons it is motivating are fairly obvious, and by chance, I happened to be someone who liked hearing from people who had gotten to their nirvana weight loss place.

So why would having someone on maintenance regaling you with stories of their success and continued struggles be annoying? Frankly, I think the reason is that sometimes they (I) are being annoying. Specific behaviors that I and others on maintenance can be guilty of include:

1. Look at me, dammit! I’m thin! OK, it’s true that looking thinner can be great fun and a really big boost. It’s been a great accomplishment to lose weight and keep it off, and I’m proud of it. Further, I really like compliments and accolades due to my inherent shallowness. It’s just that it’s kind of sad to ask for the compliments (even in a passive-aggressive sort of way).
2. You should learn from my example! There are few people more ponderous than the converted. We have a tendency to proclaim our healthy lifestyle virtues at excessive decibels and frequency. “NO THANK YOU WAITER, I DO NOT WANT ANY DESERT.” Ex-smokers can suffer from this as well.
3. Am I disciplined or what? This one is somewhat similar to #2. I push myself pretty hard on the lifestyle thing, and I don’t mind others knowing about it. It would also be nice if they would kindly take the time to heap praise upon me and perhaps carry me on their shoulders while running off the field.
4. Yes, in fact, I am all-knowing. I possess all useful tips and knowledge about successful weight loss, and it is my right to over-dominate every conversation to ensure that all others benefit from my vast and unending expertise.

There is nothing wrong with feeling any of the underlying emotions in the above four points that might lead to the ensuing behaviors. I should celebrate my success, and a nice compliment goes a long way. I can show by example. I do have useful information to share, and I can help others. I think the trick is to make it less about myself and a little more about wanting to help the people I care about. This will help me in getting the volume levels a bit better calibrated.

Lifetime Members are an invaluable source of information, motivation and support in our meetings, particularly those that the become Leaders and Receptionists who run our meetings. Most of them do a really good job of getting the aforementioned balance right. I promise to do better!

So for everyone I have bugged over the past eight months, please accept my apologies for my ponderous rookie-like maintenance behavior. But seriously, do these jeans make me look fat?

Spreading the word on LFG

I love the Lose for Good campaign on a lot of different dimensions, not the least of which is that it's a really good cause and a great incentive to tackle a weight issue. I am also continually amazed by the amount of attention it attracts. Last year, we had more articles covering the campaign than any other event in recent history. We are starting to see the same interest this year. I think this is the result of two big factors: 1) it is a very timely event and 2) the power of our community.

Lose for Good seems to be striking an even bigger chord this year. Today, there is so much discussion about the importance of dealing with the obesity issue and our lack of healthier habits as a nation. In the context of the ever-increasing healthcare bill in the US, there is no shortage of policy makers eager to have a positive impact on the obesity problem. It is a key part of reducing the cost of health care in the US.

I have no doubt that policy makers can make an important contribution to the cause, but the real solution ultimately lies in each one of us. Doctors can guide us, but they cannot fix our weight problems. The government can create policies to encourage weight management, but it cannot fix our individual weight problems. Only we as individuals can solve them, and we all recognize that a weight issue is not such an easy problem to permanently solve. Adopting healthier habits and making them second nature takes some time and effort, and we all face the temptations to quit.

Sometimes we need a little extra incentive and boost of motivation to help us push through and to give us a sense or urgency to succeed. As I mentioned on an earlier post, having this job gives me a great excuse to stay OP. Lose for Good is another fantastic reason to stick with the program. Every pound we lose goes to help both ourselves and someone else. What better incentive to lose weight than the reward of doing some good.

To put it all in context, the two arguably biggest issues facing our country are healthcare and the economy. Lose for Good is a great way to do our part to have a positive influence on both. Solving our own weight and lifestyle challenges is a direct way of helping to fix our healthcare system. Given the recession's impact on so many people, families and children in the form of hunger (example: demand at food banks is up 40% in many communities), the food drives we are running are a great way to help ease the pain of this economic crisis.

Simply stated, Lose for Good is the right idea at the right time. Combine the idea with the power of the Weight Watchers network of service providers (20,000 strong), meetings members and Online subscribers, and we have a campaign with power that is terrifying to behold.

We are already seeing the pickup of the campaign in the press on both a national level and a local level. I did my own little bit yesterday with interviews on CNBC and Fox News. Amusingly, I showed the producer of the Fox News segment my blog, and she had them post my Before & After pictures on the segment. Now I really have to keep the weight off.

Here are the clips.