Anniversary of the first day of the rest of my life...

Wow, what a difference a year makes. One year ago today, at 11:40 AM, I walked into Weight Watchers for my first weigh in and meeting. I remember it very well. It was a little intimidating because I was the only guy there. Fortunately, the leader was very good and she made us all feel comfortable. As I read the materials and listened to reports from those that had already been members for a while, I realized that it wasn’t the program that was magic, it was the desire for change.

Several people had obviously been attending for a long time with what I considered relatively little progress. Others had shown significant weight loss. As I listened to the side conversations, it became obvious there were two types of conversations going on. Some people were talking about what they could eat on the plan and ways to eat more and stay within their ‘points’. Others were talking about ways to take what they were eating or liked to eat and make it fit into the plan. The difference may sound subtle, but over time it became apparent that it was the difference in successful participants and not-so-successful participants.

There is a different topic each week at the meetings and they also try to give you some tools to help you change your mindset about food. Tools for discovering what you think about food and why you think it. Tools to help you change your self image. Tools to help you deal with situations where you will be surrounded by less than healthy choices. A hammer is a great tool, but it is useless if someone doesn’t swing it. The same is true with the Weight Watchers tools.

I lost a little over 8 pounds the first week. That actually made me a little depressed because I had logged all my food for the week and I still ate a lot of food. Then I realized how much I had actually been eating before and it was disgusting. That is when I resolved to make this work.

Other than my desire to change, the single biggest factor in my success has been that Lee did the program with me. It made it nice to have the accountability at home and at the meetings. She was willing to try recipes I found online, even if they weren’t for her favorite foods. She even started running so we could do the races together. She swore she would never run a race, now she is going to do a half marathon!

Today I ran the first annual Robert’s Weight Watchers Anniversary 5K in 24 minutes flat. I am also going to do my monthly weigh in. I never thought I would celebrate anything by running and then getting on a scale. As I said at the beginning, what a difference a year makes...