Between July 2001-July 2003 I lost 35 pounds on Weight Watchers. Starting at 206 pounds, I made it down to 170. For a while I maintained a site on my progress. This was before I began using a blogging platform, but in the past week I have moved all my entries to this blog. 

On July 18, 2003 I wrote: “Two years, 104 weeks, 35 pounds. 35 pounds that I’ve kept off, and are gone for good.” 

Ouch. I stopped going to WW meetings. 3 years later, 32 of the 35 pounds had returned. I re-enrolled, and wrote a post on my blog. I don’t know how long it took, as I didn’t record it anywhere. (And I actually forgot that I had regained almost the entire weight and re-enrolled in 2006.) I lost 25 pounds, and since then have wandered between 180-190.

I have re-enrolled. My goal is to get back down to 170, and re-evaluate once there. I’m not sure my original goal of 150 is rational.

This past weekend the family went to the Renaissance Festival in Wentzville, Missouri. I had to have a turkey leg, mead, and fried oreos. I still lost almost a pound. The WW plan is still very flexible, but I need to journal what I eat, or I don’t lose weight.

Week 1: Sept 16 – Sept 23 – lost 0.8 pounds
186.8/186/170

Between July 2001-July 2003 I lost 35 pounds on Weight Watchers.

For a while I maintained a site on my progress.  On July 18, 2003 I wrote: “Two years, 104 weeks, 35 pounds. 35 pounds that I’ve kept off, and are gone for good.”

I stopped going to WW meetings. It’s almost 3 years later. The 35 pounds have returned.  To be precise, 32 of them.   I returned this afternoon after work, and re-enrolled.

I considered waiting two weeks.  Over the next two weekends I have one cousin getting married and one friend. There will be a lot of food and drink. But there’s always something.

July 18, 2003

July 11-18: gained 2.75 pounds

I’ve been in WW a solid 2 years. I stopped maintaining this website a year and a half ago, but I continued going to meetings. However, I haven’t kept to the program as much as I would have liked.

Whenever I do journal, and keep to the program, I lose weight. But I find I lack the discipline necessary to keep this up for long periods. Luckily, since I have learned new eating habits, and I now know how to eat sensibly, closing my eyes and “using the force” seems to result in maintenance rather than gain. A lot of this, of course, is due to continuing going to meetings, since I know when I go up a pound I have to apply myself the following week to lose it.

Most of those 2.75 pounds last week were due to going out and drinking the night before weigh-in. According to my home-scale weigh ins, that weight is gone, two days later. Once I reach lifetime, I’m set. I’m a Jedi Master when it comes to maintenance. But I’m still 15 pounds away from that goal. (My goal of 150 pounds hasn’t really changed, but 155 pounds is the upper limit for my height, and that is going to be my ‘official’ goal. That way I will build in a little padding to help maintaining lifetime.)

A little over 12 weeks ago I switched to an At-Work meeting, and my weigh-in day has changed from Wednesday to Friday. I decided this weekend to recharge this website, without even realizing the total coincidence of my last weigh-in day. I knew I had started in late July of 2001, but I didn’t remember it was the 18th. Exactly 2 years. Two years, 104 weeks, 35 pounds. 35 pounds that I’ve kept off, and are gone for good.

I’ve experimented with several exercise activities. I was walking daily at work with some coworkers for several weeks, but then the coworkers dropped out, and it was very difficult to keep it up when I was the only one walking. And then the summer heat in St. Louis hit, and there was no way I was walking in that. There’s a yoga class in my neighborhood on Wednesday evenings I’m thinking about trying.

My co-workers are different from my co-workers back in Week 19. Approximately Week 26, I was a participant in what the company lovingly referred to as the “Involuntary Severence Program.” Lots of other terms out there for it. As my WW leader at the time told me months later, “You could have responded by eating a lot, but you didn’t.” She’s right, but I couldn’t afford to. I finally found another non-temporary job March 10th, 2003. I am no longer a computer programmer, but write to corporate and private foundations and ask for money on behalf of a local non-profit. Grant writing. Rather than producing reams of code to benefit a Fortune 500 company, I am actually returning something to the community. My salary is about half what I was making previously, but I’m enjoying it.

206.6/171.5/150
35 pounds since July 18, 2001

Jan 09, 2002

Week 19-22: gained 2.2 pounds
Week 23: lost 5 pounds

When I began WW back in late July, at one of the early meetings, my group leader told all of us you could approach holidays, vacations, special events, etc from a variety of directions. You could plan to lose, plan to maintain, or plan to gain as little as possible. The important part was to be in control.

During the past holidays it was basically my goal to maintain, though I held out a little hope that I might lose a little. From one perspective I maintained almost exactly. Last week I weighed in at the exact amount I weighed one week prior to Thanksgiving. However, theoretically, I should count from the Wednesday immediately prior to Thanksgiving, and in that case I did actually gain 2 pounds over the period. There’s no question in my mind though that it could have been a lot worse.

Last week I declared the holidays over and went back to my normal eating routine. When I weighed in tonight, my group leader’s jaw dropped when she read the scale, and I got to give her a big smile.

I lost FIVE pounds this week!

Previously the most I had lost in one week was 2.5 or 3 pounds, and that was early on. For most of my time on the program I’ve lost weight in bits and pieces, rarely more than a pound a week. I’ve been on the program 23 weeks, and lost 17.5 pounds. This is by no means a complaint. This is 17.5 pounds I wouldn’t have lost if I hadn’t joined WW, and it’s 17.5 pounds I have no intention of ever finding again.

2002 is a new year, and I am extremely happy the way I’ve begun it. For the first time in a long time I made no New Years Resolutions this year regarding my weight (besides promising myself that I would remain on WW until I reached my goal.) I made other resolutions regarding other areas of my life I am gaining the confidence I can tackle as well.

The one thing I have stopped doing over the past few months, and which I am going to start up again, is journallling. I know that’s one reason I’ve been losing so slowly; but as frustrating as that’s been, what’s more frustrating is that I have no idea what I did this week, and I would so much like to repeat it!

206.6/189/150
17.5 pounds 23 weeks

Nov 21, 2001

Week 17: lost 1/4 pound
Week 18: lost 2.5 pounds

I was happy to lose in week 17, but I had hoped for more than a quarter pound. This past week made up for that. I joked with my group leader that it was just in time for me to gain back over Thanksgiving. Though I do not plan on overeating as I have in the past.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I have some out-of-town cousins visiting, who I rarely get to spend time with. I have a good job. Many friends. And I’m 15 pounds lighter than I was in July.

206.6/191.8/150
14.8 pounds 18 weeks

Nov 7, 2001

Week 15: gained 1 pound
Week 16: lost 1 pound

The last two weeks are a wash, though I know why I gained a pound two weeks ago. Over that weekend I went winetasting. And while I budgeted for the wine, I didn’t budget for the cheese and salami my ‘friends’ brought along. And the more I drank, the harder it was to pay attention to what I was eating.

Tonight I had dinner at my parents house and went upstairs to my old room and removed a set of weights from an old closet. (They’d been sitting there for over five years.) As I joked to my mother, they’re not doing me much good there, I should at least put them in one of my closets at home.

Instead of that, I have placed them on the floor next to my computer table. Now when I’m downloading something, and getting bored, instead of getting up and walking to the kitchen, I’ll get up and lift some weights. At least, that’s the idea. We shall see if it works.

Halloween night I went to a haunted bookstore. Besides fun things like tarot card readings, and ouija boards, they had a 15% discount on all books. I found a collection of poetry by Edgar A Guest. Within I found a very inspirational poem: Can’t

206.6/194.5/150
12 pounds 16 weeks

Oct 24, 2001

It’s amazing how those weeks fly by:

Week 12: gained 1/4 pound
Week 13: lost one pound
Week 14: lost 1/4 pound

At least I’m doing slightly better with the weight loss than keeping the site up to date, but not by much. My pace is bothering me. It’s not exactly a plateau, but I’d like to lose a little more quickly.

As I thought I would several weeks ago, I’m really enjoying shopping at the Whole Foods Market. I’ve begun supplementing the WW smart ones I bring to work with several Amy’s entrees, which I’ve found tastier. (Though I’m careful to look at the package before I buy as Amy’s concentrates on keeping it vegetarian, which doesn’t always mean low points.)

Yesterday for lunch I had a bag of mixed baby greens with fat free creamy dill dressing, and it was only one point (all in the dressing). I was able to eat a little more at my weekly gathering at Steak n Shake and still consume only 22 points for the entire day. I may do this again, but next time I’m going to get a different bag of salad. The baby greens were tasty, but a little too green for my liking.

Also, in the past 3 weeks, I’ve learned the formula behind the WW slide rule.
(Calories/50) + (Fat/12) – (Fiber/5) I’m now able to estimate in the store how many points something is before I buy it.

206.6/194.5/150
12 pounds 14 weeks

Oct 3, 2001

Tonight I received my 10 pound ribbon, and have lost 11 pounds over the past 11 weeks. It feels good.

Last December I received as a gift a pair of courderoy pants that were too small. They were so tight I couldn’t even button them. I refused to let them out; telling myself that doing so would be admitting to myself I would never lose the weight. I can now button them. They’re still too tight to wear, but another 10 pounds and I suspect I will be able to wear them. If I can maintain this rate of a pound a week, I should be there two months from now, in early December.

At the meeting we discussed the sort of eating habits we’d suggest to someone trying to gain weight. We were all of course experts on that, and came up with some good advice.

For example:

• Eating as fast as possible
• Seconds, and thirds
• Clearing the plate
• Don’t talk
• Desserts
• Fast food

Then of course our leader suggested we look at the list and pick out the one item that gives us the most problems, and do our best this week to turn it around. For me that is definitely the speed at which I eat my food. [This is a problem since it takes the brain 20 minutes to realize that the stomach is full, and one can eat a lot of food in 20 minutes.]

I also still haven’t managed to work exercise into a regular routine. I look forward to losing weight quicker once I can figure out how to do this.

206.6/195.5/150
11 pounds 11 weeks

Sept 26,2001

.It must be the shirt…3/4 of a pound can’t make that much of a difference. There was another food-day at work at the end of last week, that had leftovers that went into this week, but I still managed to lose a little.

I have made a New Years resolution to start getting some exercise. I am going to take a half hour out of each day to do exercises. I don’t think I can convince myself that I have enough time to walk for 30 minutes a day, but I can probably convince myself I have the time to exercise in front of the television set. It couldn’t hurt.

206.6/196.8/150
9.8 pounds 10 weeks

Sept 19,2001

Tuesday night my family had a holiday dinner to welcome in the new year. Cheese appetizers, apples and honey, wine, lots of challah, and some real nice desserts.

24 hours before weigh-in, there wasn’t much to do except try to have as good a week as possible beforehand. I ended up breaking even with no weight loss or weight gain. My group leader asked me, “a year ago, would you have gained weight?” and I knew the answer was, “yes.” So I should be happy with what happened.

The one mistake I made during the dinner was eating more challah than I probably should have, but the plate ended up in front of me, and I kept tearing off small pieces. It was so good.

I’ve also lately caught myself slipping on journaling. I journal in my mind from day-to-day. Since I am able to eat 3 meals a day, and do very little snacking, it’s not difficult to figure out at dinner how many points I have left to spend. However, not writing it down, I don’t know on days I want to eat a little more how many points I’ve saved up. It’s easy to tell myself “I’m sure I’ve saved enough for this,” but I don’t know for sure.

I also need to be a little more active. The health food store I mentioned a few weeks ago is finally opening next Wednesday. It’s about six or 7 blocks away, so it’s close enough to walk to and pick up a few small items and walk back. I’m going to try to work that in my routine at least once a week.

206.6/197.5/150
9 pounds 9 weeks