Nifty Fifty

At Weight Watchers we have a saying: “Every ounce counts.” That’s why I show up at every Tuesday weigh-in with shaved legs, trimmed nails, and, if I needed a haircut anyway, I will have had it done the day before. I won’t wear earrings or my watch, and I even skip the usual moisturizing process. I figure that not only will the lotion add weight, but that the dry skin flaking off my legs might just help me on the scale.

All that trickery – and following the program – has finally paid off. I am now down 800 ounces. For those of you who are math challenged, that’s 50 pounds, or approximately the size of a sturdy toddler.

Don’t get the wrong idea. Unless I have a sudden growth spurt, I will continue to be way over the recommended weight for my height. Any doctor seeing me for the first time would tell me I have to lose weight, not knowing I started 50 pounds ago. This process isn’t like “The Biggest Loser,” the TV show that takes obese people, puts them on a ranch and subjects them to trainers who bully them into incredible weight losses each week. This is a slow trip from one end of the scale to another, one that requires attention to every single decision involving food.

For someone accustomed to eating daily from the four food groups – cake, candy, cookies and chocolate – I have had to rely on Weight Watchers to help me change my bad habits. (In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I miss every one of those groups.) But Weight Watchers practices tolerance, too. As long as you stay within your daily allotment of “points,” you can occasionally treat yourself to something yummy. In fact, it is better that you do, so you don’t just fall off the wagon and quit over a Hershey bar.

I’ve done Weight Watchers before – and so has every woman in my group. But this time it seems to be sticking. Maybe I reached the end of my rope, hit rock bottom and realized I was running out of excuses and time. Now I know that I am in this for life and I am finally heading in the right direction. This is one of the main reasons I retired, so I could concentrate on my health. Never mind that I gained 20 pounds first.

I have learned that if you kind of follow the program, it kind of works. But if you really follow the program, it really works. And, actually, it isn’t all that bad. I eat plenty of food each day and just have to make sure I write everything down and stay within my points. It’s not like it doesn’t count just because you didn’t write it down. Before this, just writing down everything I ate would have required pulling an all-nighter. It’s just possible that I was eating too much, you know?

The benefits of my loss are measurable. I wouldn’t say I am bounding up the stairs, but my knees don’t ache anymore. My first time seeing a basketball game at the Prudential Center I had to ask someone if the seats were that much bigger than they are at Rutgers or whether my ass had gotten that much smaller (a bit of both, I was informed). I did so much more work around the house and pool this summer than I was able to do in previous summers because I had more energy. This all makes sense since I am no longer lugging 50 pounds of dead weight around with every step. I can even tie my shoes better.

As my WW leader put it, every five pounds we lose is the equivalent of a brick. The way I see it, the three of us at WW who are around 50 pounds down now collectively have lost a small patio.

These days, as I promised myself, I have been busy shopping in my closet. I have made numerous trips to the basement to gather up the smaller-sized jeans and pants and put away – or, in some cases, give away – the bigger clothes. I can fit into the suits I wore before I retired, though I have eliminated the ones with the huge shoulder pads that look like Linda Evans’ wardrobe from “Dynasty.” Some of the suits are too big now, which is a great feeling. One pair of pants that I tried on was still too tight to wear, so I stuck a note on the hanger that read “Not yet.” By the time I tried them on again, they were ready to be labeled “Yet.” Now they are about to make the trip to the basement, where they will be stored with the clothes labeled “Bigger Sizes.”

I also bought new clothes to make sure I would have things to wear as my body got smaller. Some of these were returned before I even wore them because by the time I got around to wearing them, they were too big. I have a new relationship with the Return desk at Kohl’s, and I wisely keep all tags on garments until I am ready to wear them (is that where the term “ready to wear” originated?).

I set a goal of losing 50 pounds prior to the start of the Rutgers Women’s basketball season on November 13, and I met that goal. But the fact that my butt will fit into the seats at the RAC isn’t nearly as important as the fact that on my most recent trip to the endocrinologist, she eliminated one of the three drugs I was taking for diabetes. One out of three is a good start. Maybe I will get to the day when I am no longer considered diabetic and I can get off all of those medications. That would be the best news.

So, this is not the end of the story. I still have a long way to go, but at least I am on my way. I see light at the end of the tunnel – I just hope it isn’t the high beams from a Drake’s Cake truck filled with Devil Dogs. I have installed a force field around my car so that it cannot possibly turn into the parking lot of the nearby strip mall that is the home of Five Guys, Baker’s Treat and a candy store. I will continue to show up every Tuesday to Weight Watchers and exhale before I get on the scale. After all, every ounce counts.