I quit Weight Watchers this weekend.

I hate to admit that, but I have to be honest on my blog. I quit. When looking over my weight record from the past 2 months, I realized I had been paying $40 a month (ended up around $120 total) to gain weight. In the past two months, I’ve gained around 2 pounds. Is it terrible? No, not at all. But it is when you forked over $120 to lose weight.

My heart hasn’t been in it. I’ve been searching long and hard for reasons why. Am I just not cut out for weight loss? Do I just not have the motivation within me to do this? What is missing in me that is found in others who can lose weight?

On Saturday, it felt like a light bulb went off in my head. It’s not that I have no motivation or the right stuff to lose weight. It’s that I’ve been approaching my health in the wrong way. It’s been more about being skinny than being healthy and satisfied with who I am. For as long as I can remember, I have had body image issues. I have never liked the way I looked, even when I was younger and had a normal, healthy body. I didn’t start gaining weight until high school, but I have always felt awkward in my body. My body image issues have gotten worse as I’ve grown older. At 23, I want to believe I am done with worrying about how others perceive me and feeling as if I don’t measure up to others’ standards because I have 30 extra pounds sitting on my midsection, but I’m not. If anything, my body image issues are worse now than they were 10 years ago.

For the past few years that I’ve tried to lose weight, I’ve been approaching it more from the perspective of being skinny and feeling more comfortable in my body. And I think most people who have lost weight or are trying to lose it approach it, at least in the beginning, from that same perspective. We want to lose weight because we are unhappy with the way we look and feel. I don’t feel like I have ever crossed the line to more intrinsic rewards found in healthy eating and weight loss.

Ever since I joined Weight Watchers, I’ve been approaching the program from the wrong angle. I think it is the best weight-loss program there is and you can find success with it – as long as you do it right. If you don’t follow the plan, you’re not going to lose weight. Simple. As. That. But for me, Weight Watchers was about being “good” for 6 days of the week and then having one day of cheating. But why can’t being “good” be my normal?

The truth is that I need to take a step back and reevaluate. Weight Watchers isn’t working for me right now. (Because of me, not because there are flaws in the program.) I need to start learning to love my body for what it can do for me. I need to stop seeing my size as a detriment to my character. The size of my body has nothing to do with who I am as a person. I am a smart, funny, driven, pretty amazing individual. Being overweight does not take any of that away from me. Being skinny does not make me a better person. Change has to start on the inside.

Changing your entire lifestyle is hard. Heck, any change is hard. Changing how you approach food and health involves more than just what you put on your plate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s about how you deal with your happy moods and your sad moods. Holidays and special events. Those days when you feel like doing nothing but sitting on the couch but know getting your butt to the gym will make you feel 1,000 times better. It’s about throwing away the scale and deciding that your health is more important than your waistline.

I don’t have a firm plan in place on how I’m going about this. I do know that it doesn’t involve tying up my success in what the scale is telling me. Whether or not that means throwing out the scale (or at least my weekly weigh-ins) remains to be seen. Sometimes, it’s nice to have that as a way to track how I’m doing but it only gives a small piece of the puzzle yet I have a tendency to make it the biggest piece. I do know that I will still be tracking what I eat but in a completely different way. And I also know I need to learn to appreciate the body I have now. I have to stop hating the way I look, just because it’s not as slim and trim as I want it to be. While I intend to work hard to change it, I also need to really work through my body image issues and discover how to love who I am because of who I am, not because of the size of my jeans. The truth is, if I don’t work on loving my body as it is right now, it’s probably not going to get much better once I have lost the weight. Change can happen on the outside, but it means nothing if change also does not occur on the inside.

So, yes, I’m overweight. It doesn’t make me any less capable, any less beautiful, any less remarkable. It just means my stomach curves out more than I would like it to.

I hate feeling like a failure. I hate sitting here, eight months after I promised myself I would make big changes to find that I’m no different than I was then. I find this in all areas of my life but the biggest area is my health. It’s the most noticeable part, so it’s not surprising that it gets the most attention. Or lack thereof.

Weight loss is hard. It’s a long and arduous journey of ups and downs, highs and lows. It’s a complete transformation of yourself, both inside and out. It’s reforming what your brain has been ingrained to tell you to do and eat and say for the past 20-something years of your life.

Yet I know it’s possible. I have seen others do it and I have had firsthand knowledge of the power it can have in the transformation of my mom. She went from a woman who could only shop in plus-size stores, who was winded from walking up one flight of stairs, and who was afraid the next time she went to an amusement park, she wouldn’t be able to fit in the rollercoaster to someone who doesn’t even resemble that person. She’s lost 80 pounds and kept it off. She’s run a marathon and is training for her second. And while she still struggles with being healthy, she makes better choices more often than not.

I live with this woman. I have all the inspiration, motivation, and support behind me. So why is it still so hard? Why am I still struggling? Why can’t I get this right?

There are weeks when it doesn’t feel like such a struggle. Healthy eating and gym time feel normal. But then there are those weeks when everything I do feels like a battle. Cravings crop up when I least expect them and my ability to withstand temptation is at an all-time low. I don’t want to give in, but it’s just easier than dealing with the tempting thoughts 24/7.

It’s not that I don’t know what I need to do to lose weight. I do. Drink lots of water. Eat lots of fruits, veggies, and lean protein. Indulge every so often. Exercise. Track what you’re eating, plan out your meals. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I know what to do, but it’s the implementation and seeing it through to the end where my brain gets trippy.

I read a quote a while back in one of the fitness magazines I read:

Don’t trade what you want most for what you want at this moment.

What an incredible statement. I need this to be the mantra for my life. I need my focus to be on weight loss and leading a healthier lifestyle. I need to stop looking at what’s going to satisfy me in the here and now and start imagining how much better I will feel when I hit my happy weight. And remember how much better I feel when I’m following the plan and working out consistently.

I’ve noticed how a lot of people seem to have a problem with letting their eating habits become obsessive and controlling when they track what they eat. Everything revolves around what they are eating. In a way, I need to embrace an obsessive tendency toward tracking and what I’m putting into my body. What I’m doing right now is not working. I’m letting my past control my future. One of my Weight Watcher Leader’s favorite sayings is “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.” I’m the poster child for that statement.

Changing your lifestyle is scary stuff. It’s not for the faint of heart and takes more grit and determination than I feel I possess. I see how others have transformed and just wonder how they maintain motivation over the long haul. How they don’t let things like vacations and celebrations get in the way of their lifestyle. The answer is easy, of course. It is their lifestyle. It is their normal.

I don’t know where I’m going with this post. I just know I’ve been on the program since early January and I’ve lost 6 pounds. Six freaking pounds. It defeats me when I see a sentence like that. I know that it’s good that I’m still trying and still at a loss, but it still defeats me. To hear of people who have been losing weight for the same time and have lost three or four times the weight I have is defeating. I know I have my own journey to go through and I knew it would take a lot of kicking and screaming before I finally submit to being healthy and losing weight. I’m a stubborn individual and I don’t like change.

The truth is, I need to take a long, hard look at my eating habits and change what doesn’t fit. What isn’t helping me towards my goal. What is losing the battle for me. I can tell you easily that it involves not drinking enough water, not eating enough in the morning, snacking on things that don’t fill me up, and allowing little things to trip me up like bad news or big celebrations. Plain and simple. Bottom line. I need to start thinking skinny and remembering my number one goal. I want to be healthy and I want to look at my body and be proud of it.

Right now? I’m just defeated.

Happy Independence Day! Honestly, with the Fourth falling on a Monday and having to go to work the next day, I don’t have many plans. But that’s kinda OK with me.

The last time I was successful with Weight Watchers was in the summer of 2007. Since then, I’ve been on and off the program, never fully embracing it for the long term. I’ve always done good for a few weeks but then would fall off track easily.

As I mentioned last week, exercise is not a problem for me. Even when I fell off track with Weight Watchers, I still managed to keep exercising at least a few times a week. Of course, I’ve never exercised as much as I am now and it’s showing in my hunger levels. My eating habits haven’t changed but I’m realizing that I need to start to look at food more as fuel to get me through my workouts rather than delightful little surprises for my mouth.

I haven’t been tracking right for the past few weeks. Mostly keeping count in my head (which never turns out accurate) or on a piece of paper the next day. Problem is, I tend to conveniently forget certain foods I ate, miscalculate the amount, etc. It’s a slippery slope when your tracking falls short. One of the biggest cornerstones of Weight Watchers is tracking what you eat and being aware of portion sizes and points values. I’m not doing that.

So, finally, I bit the bullet. For the first time since the summer of 2007, I have an eTools account. Since it costs $40 a month and charges double that first month, I’ve always put it off, saying I didn’t have that kinda money. Well, paying $12 a week (which averages out to more than $40 a month) isn’t exactly smart. Plus, there is a myriad of benefits to having eTools. A place to track, a place for community, a place to look at your weight record, goals, and exercise. I’m so flipping excited that I finally have eTools and finally a place to get back on, um, track with my tracking. I think it’s going to do wonders for the way I eat and use my points.

I know my eating habits are the biggest hurdle I need to accomplish to live healthier. As in, eating more Power Foods, getting in my fruits and veggies servings, and drinking water. Drinking a lot more water. But I know what happens when you follow the Plan as it should be – weight loss happens. I know that I have a lot of work to do and a lot to change about my eating habits. But I’m willing to learn and willing to change my life. And that’s the biggest part of it all.

Stats
Starting Weight: 159.2 lbs
Current Weight: 150.8 lbs
Net Difference: -8.4 lbs (-1.2 this week)