My 96-Pound Weight Loss Journey

I remember the tipping point for me. It was 20 years ago this year. I was obese, well past the overweight category on the BMI chart. I had started a new job six months before. The office was small and to get to the bathroom, you had to exit our suite and go down the hall. The hallway was short, but I remember feeling my butt walking in back of me. I even remember the khaki pants I had on. I had decided I was joining Weight Watchers®. That week, I went to the local WW®, got a membership and never looked back. I went every Tuesday night without fail. I wore the exact same outfit, so that my weigh-ins would be comparing apples to apples as much as possible. There were weeks I lost and there were weeks I gained. The weeks that I gained, I cried. My WW® leader would review my food journal and tell me that I didn't eat enough, which seemed counter-intuitive, but I listened and heeded her advice. Or weeks that I lost .2, she would try to instill pride by saying "That's losing a stick of butter!".

Over the course of maybe 18 months, the weight came off. At my lowest weight, I had lost 96 pounds. I weighed 114 pounds. I heard things like "You're too skinny" and after some friendly banter with a girl I ran into a party that I hadn't seen in years, when I asked another friend's husband to declare who was skinnier (convinced he'd say her), when he pointed to me, I was stunned. I heard people say "You're not going to eat that are you?" because they were so used to me eating like a bird. I was very influenced by these comments. I started to worry that people were judging me for the wrong reasons. Was I too skinny? Did I look unhealthy? So, I started to eat more, but in private. I'd go out to eat with friends, eat lettuce, and then at home eat my real dinner. I gained weight. And the cycle of yo-yo dieting began. I'd go on diet after diet. I've been on diets you've heard of and ones you probably have never heard of…Jenny Craig®, NutriSystem®, Health Emmie's Slim on Starch, My Body Tudor, Dr. McDougall's Maximum Weight Loss Diet, the cabbage soup diet, juice fasts, SlimFast®, over-the-counter pills, like Alli®, and Dexatrim®, and Hydroxycut®, Phentermine, and the list goes on and on and on. There was a point in time where I considered being a consultant for diets. Tell me about your lifestyle and I'll tell you the best diet for you, but that seemed like a lot of work because diets are always changing, though they are not ineffective, which is a curiosity (I think Weight Watchers® changes their programs annually, or at last they used to), and new diets are constantly emerging, some with opposing strategies, but promise the same outcome (e.g. Intermittent Fasting vs. eating first thing in the morning to jumpstart your metabolism, Keto and Atkins® vs. Dr. McDougall's Maximum Weight Loss).

That said, I'm not down on diets. I would've been heavier a lot longer had I not started one. Let me be clear – I am in support of whatever my clients want to do that is in alignment with their goals. What I do promote is to listen to your body. If you're hungry, you should eat! If you're full, you should stop! Below is a barometer for when to prepare for eating (at a 2), when to eat (at a 5), and when to stop (at an 8). But that's just the beginning; as I wrote about last week, the HOW is where the focus should be and THAT'S what I work on with my clients.

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