I am on a weight watchers high..ya know that euphoric feeling that comes over you when you are still in your first few weeks of ww? I joined last week so that I can at least loose a little bit of weight while I wile away my days waiting for my insurance company to take their thumbs outta their asses and approve me. Anyhow of course I lsot my obligatory 4.5 pounds in my first week, and of course it wasn't even hard...not at all as a matter of fact. There were actually a couple of days that I couldn't even eat the last couple of points. Why is this??? Why can I do so well on ww for the first 4 or 6 weeks, then I just peeter out. Maybe, no probably because I loose those first 20 lbs so easily, then it gets harder. I know your only supposed to set small goals, but I can't fool myself completely, that 140 pounds over all that I have to loose to get to my goal is a HUGE, Ginormous, Gargantuan Monstrous number and it scares the shit outta me. I loose 5 pounds and I think ok, only 135 to go....you're 5/140ths there girlfriend....go, go, go, you CAN DO THIS. Then I start the mental figuring...this is what I always, always, always do when I start a new weight loss effort...I'll be walking on the track, or on the elliptical or on my way home from ww or anywhere and I start doing the calculations in my head..."ok I am 280 now...If I keep loosing at this rate I will be 260 in 4 weeks, then I'll be 240 in 8 weeks, then 220 in 12 weeks, then 200 in 16 weeks, then 180 in 20 weeks, then 160 in 24 weeks, then 140 in 28 weeks, then I shoould make my goal of 137 in 28 and a half weeks...whooo hooooo!! Then reality sets in and I go, Ok theres no way in hell that I will keep up a 5 pound per week weight loss....Ok lets figure it this way. I am sooo fat that I can probably keep up the 5 pound per week loss for like 8 weeks...that'll bring me to 240, then I can probably looses 3 lbs per week til I get to 200...umm lets see, that'll be like 13 weeks, so in 21 weeks I can be at 200. Ok then I'll probably slow to about 2.5 pounds per week til I hit 175, so lets see...that'll be like 10 more weeks so in 31 weeks I can be 175, so then it'll probly slow down to 2 pounds per week till I hit 150, so that outta take another 12 weeks so in 43 weeks I will be 150. So It'll probly slow down to 1.5 lbs per week til I hit 137 so in a total of 51 weeks I will be at goal!!! So I can comfortably say that in 1 year I will be at my goal weight!" This talk has taken up hours and hours of my thought processes over the past 20 years...I can't even estimate how muc time I have wasted on these pathetic calculations...over and over again like an obsession I do this. I should have lost 700,000 pounds by now if all of these strategizing sessions produced the desired results. I estimate that I have given ww somewhere in the neighborhood of 1200.00 over the years...now thats nothing compared to some women friends I have. Some of them just keep paying and paying and paying for years even when they don't go or follow the plan for months and months at a time. I bet I know women who have spent 5000.00 at weight watchers, just for attending not for products and they all loose some weight and put it back plus a few then loose some more...blah blah blah. I do know this. Weight Watchers is the BEST, Healthiest, most effective eating plan known to womankind. I say this as a dietician and as a woman who looses lots of weight on the flex or point plan AS LONG AS I DO IT! AND AS LONG AS I JOURNALIZE. You loose the battle when you stop writing I do know this. Anyhow, my current dilemma is that i wonder what I will do when I loose 35 pounds, I worry that if I loose more that I will not be eligible for the surgery even if med mutual ever coughs up the cash. So I ask myself....what will I do then? Should I loose as much as I am allowed and then try to maintain at 245? I keep thinking in my head about statistics...the statistic that only 7% of women who loose a significant amount of weight kepp it off for more than 2 years. I then wonder what percentage of ww women have lost 140 pounds. Then I try to apply that 7% number to the number of ww women and I come out to like 2....No just joking...I really don't know what the actual statistic is for ww over time. I drive myself crazy with thse number things. I can use numebrs to justify anything and I do it all the time. My quest for weight loss started this craziness and it has never stopped, not since after the birth of my daughter when I had gained 20 lbs...from 131 to 151 after birth when she was about 3 months old and I hit my first plateau...at 151....God what a gift and I thought it was such a curse! I remember my frustration at not being able to get that weight off...If I had a crystal ball then I would have only needed one bullet. Anyway, I was proud of my 4.4 lb weight loss at my weekly ww meeting yesterday, but I was even more proud of the man who was sitting behind me. He probably weighs about 350 or 375 and is about 5'10" and I would guess he's about 35 years old. He's a black man and I can tell he is a successful classy business man...he doesn't have spinners on the wheels of his late model beige colored Chrysler 300 nor does it have curb finders or any of the other paraphanelia that many black guys feel that they need to show how proud they are of their blackness. These men always come off as so pathetic to me...aspiring to be a pimp...anyway, this man is comfortable with his success and does not feel the need to prove any thing to any one. He is real. I know it sounds like I am attracted to him but I am not. I am proud of him because last week ( he joined the same day I did) he was talking about how he was looking into weight loss surgery and that he heard about someones great success at ww and he thought he should give it one last ditch effort. He came in yesterday and beat my 4.4 pound loss into the dirt with his 9.6 pound loss in one week. He was so happy and amazed that I was happy with him and for him. It was as though he got a new lease on HOPE. That's when I realized it...I had lost all HOPE of ever loosing this weight and this lapband procedure has given it back to me. I know that I will not be 280 pounds a year from now. I know that I will have lost a great majority, if not all of this burden of carrying around a whole extra person. This gives me such happiness, it's like a drug...a really good drug. I am not touting wls to this black man in my ww class. I am a dietician, I am supposed to believe that if you eat right and eat less nd move more you will loose weight. I will continue to g to ww even after I have had the surgery, and I will try to keep tabs on this man and I will tell him someday if he is struggling about this wls. But not yet. He might be one of the ones who makes it on his own...I wish I was because I feel like somewhat of a fraud doing this, but I don't care enough to continue to live fat.

Well that's enough of that!

Love,

Me:kiss2: