I will never ever take part in Weight Watchers ever again. I consider it a weight-loss cult that does nothing but bring people down.
I have my reasons for this, I will explain them thus.
My first experience with WW was during my teens when my mother joined up. She attended meetings for all of 4 weeks before she decided she was too tired to go to them. However, during that 4 weeks, I learned quite a bit.
I learned that if women are good, they will track every single thing they eat. They will lose weight every week and if they don't, they have been bad and should be looked upon with shame.
I learned that a goal weight is flexible and always flexible downward. If you start with a goal weight of 130 pounds a few weeks later it becomes 125, then 120, then 115. One of the women attending had been with the program for 5 years and was only “five pounds away from her goal weight!” She looked anorexic.
I looked over all the printed information that was given. It was a lot. And of course, you didn't get it all at once, you got it bit by bit. It wasn't until later after my mother had stopped going that I realized that not only did women get together (because it was always all women) once a week to pry into others progress, or lack thereof, but they paid good money (and not a small amount either) to take this bullshit.
I was forced onto the program about a decade later by my ex-mother-in-law when she and my ex-husband decided they were going to do the program. By this point the whole “points” thing had started and it was even more confusing than just counting calories. It was supposed to be simpler, but in reality it wasn't. At least calories and fat and stuff is ON THE DAMN LABEL. You had to “calculate” or “look up” point values. What a fucking joke.
And of course, there were the meetings. I was forced into attending the first five and then I told my then-husband that if he made me go to another one I'd kill myself. After listening to a “motivational talk” by a woman similar to the one I'd met in my teens who had been on the program for years but was still on her “last 5 pounds” but looked emaciated, I wanted to bolt from the room. I wanted to scream at the woman that she looked just fine and that she should stop worrying about the last goddamn five pounds and concentrate on maintenance. But of course, I couldn't make a scene like that when all the women around me were eating it up and making encouraging comments and saying that they hoped they could stay determined like her.
It didn't help that at the start of this stupid affair I'd been weighed and I didn't lose a goddamn ounce. I'd followed the stupid plan perfectly, ate exactly in-between my min/max points and exercised, and I hadn't lost a damn ounce. The woman running the scale gave me a pitiful look. “It's not good to lie about your eating.” She said to me with the tone that a parent uses to gently scold a 5-year-old for some minor offense. My mother-in-law turned red with embarrassment and scolded me all the way home for “eating on the sly”.
I got into a fight that night with my ex-husband. I told him I'd follow the program and weigh myself at home. I'd keep a journal of what I ate and the point values but I refused to go to another goddamn meeting. He reluctantly agreed, but I got to hear every week about how “concerned” the leader of the group was about my “initial falling off the wagon”.
Is this typical of a WW group? GOD I HOPE NOT. But these two experiences have made me want to stay the hell away from anything related to the program for the rest of my life.
Okay. Really going to bed now. Honest.
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