I have to admit that I’m feeling like somewhat of a hypocrite. For three years, I’ve been touting Weight Watchers as the greatest thing since..well, whatever your greatest thing is. The best thing about it, I claimed, was that it wasn’t a diet. It allows you to continue eating the foods you love as long as you watch your portion sizes and count your points (I follow the old flex plan).
This was, of course, true for me at the beginning. When I started, I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 30+ points. I could eat an entire Totino’s pizza and still have plenty of points left for the day. As my points dropped lower and lower, I had to make sacrifices and changes to keep within my points. We all do. That’s the point. But I’ve always been a quantity eater.
I’ve recently realized what a hypocrite I had been. While I was claiming all of this about how WW allows you to eat whatever you want and wasn’t a diet, I was on a diet. I would eat all kinds of things with the lowest amount of possible points so that I would be able to eat as much as possible. That didn’t leave room for a lot of the things I loved. I was depriving myself. Some things I was able to tweak recipes for to get their points lower, but honestly, anything over three points was in the “high point” range to me. I would always eat my daily points and flex points, but would eat a lot of low point items. There are things that I adore that I haven’t eaten in three years, because I wasn’t able to make their serving points low enough to fit my new “lifestyle.” I think I went a little overboard in my WW obsession.
I think that’s why I’ve been having such a hard time getting back on track. I keep eating all of those foods that I love while the little “feed me” demon in the back of my brain is saying “Eat it now! Eat it now! Once you get back on track, you won’t be allowed to have it anymore.” And we all know how hard diets are to stick to. That’s why WW has advertising telling you to throw out the diet. I have to get out of this frame of mind and allow myself to get back on plan and not be so strict with myself this time around. I have to remind myself that it’s okay to have pizza once in a while that isn’t made on a low-fat english muffin with fat-free cheese (ugh) and turkey pepperoni and still remain on plan.
While I’m not back on plan 100%, I’ve gradually been decreasing my craziness over the past couple of days. Your support and comments have made the difference. Thank you.
For some reason, while writing this post, my thoughts kept returning to this:
Great visual pam. Glad you’re back to posting, I miss you when you’re not here.
What you are talking about is why I decided to stop counting calories and I’ve been doing ok with it. Some days are worse than others with food but I think that’s normal for everyone.
Dawn’s last blog post..9 days to go
Ha! I think that’s the hunger demon! I know that’s what he looks like, bigger than life and evil.
I’m totally a hypocrite too. I’ve done the same as you, totally cut out all the foods I love and gone to very low Point foods. Because I’m just like you, I’ll take quantity over quality.
You’re right that we need to not be so black and white, and let a little gray area in our life. We don’t have to be 100% OP 100% of the time. If we were, we’d be freaks.
Finding balance, that’s the key. And for people like us, it’s just about the hardest thing in the world to do. I’m following your lead on this, and am going to try and eas up on myself a bit. Wish me luck!
Diana’s last blog post..Struggles
This is why I’ve always supported healthy eating, instead of dieting. A lifestyle change doesn’t mean eating smaller portions of unhealthy food – that’s just dieting. Healthy eating means eating reasonable, filling portions of healthy food. Yes, it takes time to let go of our addiction to the unhealthy stuff, but pretty soon the healthy stuff becomes our favorite foods and that is when we’ve finally made the lifestyle change. Nobody said it would be easy, though!
But I know that you can do it!
Hanlie’s last blog post..When the going gets tough, the tough get tougher!
I treat myself after every successful weigh-in with a dessert/take-away/meal that I like but don’t eat during the week before weigh-in.
I try and not give up any foods, I keep telling myself that I am now living a healthier lifestyle and to keep making those better choices. That better choice may be a small peice of cake rather than a big one, or one cookie instead of 10 etc.
I still struggle with portion sizes when I go out to eat, but I keep working at it.
Ron’s last blog post..My evening snack
Losing weight = hard
Maintaining = harder
Reversing a slide = hardest
I wish you the best of luck. Please keep posting, I’m rooting for you.
I found your site through the anti-jared…I appreciate your honesty. It is so nice to know others struggle, get obsessed – but mostly are refusing to give up! Keep at it – you are a true inspiration.