I never thought I'd say this...

...but I’m officially a Weightwatchers Cult member. I accept this and welcome it with open arms.

It’s had the unfortunate side effect of turning me into the person I used to hate though.

But with that I’ve had a revelation. I only hated that person because;

a) I hated myself, and

b) I didn’t understand what the hell they were talking about.

I didn’t want to hear about people successfully losing weight because I knew that I was steadily gaining. I didn’t want to believe that Weightwatchers was necessary because we all know that if you eat less and exercise more then you lose weight.

Eventually I had to ask myself this question – if you know that “all you have to do” is eat less and exercise more, then why aren’t you?

I can’t answer that to be honest. Who knows. Maybe it was just my fear of failing – better to not try Weightwatchers and sit and sneer at it instead of giving it a go and perhaps finding it didn’t work for me.

I’ve tried hard not to become a Weightwatchers Apostle and have failed a few times recently. It’s hit me hard because I swore I wouldn’t become one of those people. But I now understand how it happens. You rarely get people asking about Weightwatchers and wanting to know how it works, instead you get faced by people (who were like me two months ago) who sit and tell you what Weightwatchers is and isn’t and why it doesn’t/won’t work. I do feel defensive about it, I has worked for me and you want to try and desperately explain that it’s not the big bad d-word and that it’s really sensible.

But I'm to reign myself in when I can feel I'm proselytising. Because at the end of the day, everyone has to find the thing that works for them. Weightwatchers is working for me. It might not work for others. Instead I’m concentrating on myself, it’s not up to me to tell people that Weightwatchers is great, if they want to lose weight they will find their own way. I will continue doing my own thing.

The biggest thing I found difficult to comprehend before is that Weightwatchers isn’t really a diet. I genuinely don’t believe it is. It’s something which has allowed me to make that “lifestyle change” that really annoying thin people always bang on about. It’s educated me – I thought that I was fairly savvy about food before but I’ve learnt I really wasn’t. My main problem was a question of portion size – I would think I was being healthy and would have been if I wasn’t eating enough for 3 people.

I won't lie, at the beginning it’s a complete pain in the arse and you have to weigh things and check things and yes it’s a little time consuming and irritating. But it really all depends on how much you want to lose weight. If you really want to do it, you’ll make the effort. At this point I don’t weigh things anywhere near as much as I used to, I know how much rice/pasta/meat to cook and I’m confident enough that I’m generally making the right choices to stay within my points allowance.

It all depends on how you take the term “diet”. If it means “you can’t eat what you want” then yes, fair enough, it’s a diet. But that’s life. I can’t eat everything that I want to eat, that’s how I ended up over 16 stone. Can I have some of what I want? Hell yes. Do I have crisps most days? Erm hell yes. I just don’t eat an entire family size bag each night.

Do I ever have that horrible hungry feeling you get when you’re dieting and not allowing yourself anything nice? Never. (Which has amazed me because I’m eating far far less than I used to) And if I do get hungry, I eat. I just eat an apple instead of bar of chocolate. To me that’s not dieting, it’s being sensible.

(I won’t lie. The embolism kick-started me into taking this Weightwatchers thing seriously. I want to do everything I can to make sure that my body is working properly. It is definitely something that helps as a motivating factor.)

Nobody understands Weightwatchers less than my Mum. In fact no-one understands the concept of weight loss less than my Mum. She is, always has been and always will be, a skinny malink. She doesn’t need to worry about getting fat because her appetite won’t allow it, I barely see her finish a plate of food, and that’s fine, it’s just how she’s meant to be. This means that she finds it incredibly difficult to understand;

a) how people get fat in the first place, and

b) how people go about losing weight once they’ve got fat.

Over the past 3 days I had two irritating, yet hilarious, conversations with her that perfectly illustrate how much she doesn’t “get it.”

Sunday

Mum: What have you been doing today?
Me: Not a lot, did my laundry, did some baking [made these muffins as recommended by Mooncalf. They’re about 3.5 points each if you speak the lingo. And more importantly, frickin' acesome.]
Mum: [high pitched voice] Ooh 1lb! 1lb! [referring to my 1lb gain last week]
Me: Yeah it’s really not a big deal Mum, for a start they’re low fat and secondly I’m not going to eat the whole freakin’ lot am I? I’m allowed a muffin every so often. JESUS.

Tuesday

Mum: How did weigh-in go?
Me: Good, I lost 4lbs and have now officially lost 2 stone [in your face 1lb gain last week!]
Mum: Oh my goodness you’re losing weight too fast.
Me: Yeah I’m not being daft, I’m not starving myself, it’s just the way it’s going at the moment, I’ll plateau sooner or later.
Mum: Well you can’t lose too much, when you stop Weightwatchers you’ll put it all on again.
Me: Yeah, thanks for the excellent support Mum.

She means well, she just doesn’t get it. And that’s fine. I don’t care if no-one else gets it. I do. And that’s enough for me.