Scoring Points and Gaining Stars at Fat Class
At some point in my life I have been called, alternately – fat, chubby, overweight, big boned, and/or meaty. A lady friend and her equally thin friends once decided that I was indeed “beefy”, and I took that as some sort of complement, though looking back on it I should have probably done something about it, up to and including running as far away from her as I could get to, which would have served dual purpose.
Once, I actually did do something about “it”. In 1991, fed up with my generally stagnant status as “good friends” with a cadre of really beautiful college women who I just knew were having the times of their lives with everyone else but me, I started a regiment of exercise and diet (basketball and rice, and low grade amphetamines) and lost seventy-five pounds in six months. My weight dropped from a (truly) gross of 245 all the way down to 175 pounds, to the point of actually getting too skinny for my own six-foot, one-inch (and a half) good. For the supercharged decade that spanned my twenties, my metabolism laid waste to any indiscretions that I threw at it, and my lifestyle as a terminally broke ski bum took care of the rest.
But time has a way of working on your waistline and your better judgment, and work and stress and general lack of self-discipline tacked on more than one winters coat, and one endless buffet just leads to the next, and damned if I didn’t find myself back up in the low to mid-200’s again once my birthday cakes started requiring a large #3 candle every year.
Recently, I decided to attack myself once more. There is no good reason to remain unhappy with your condition unless you can’t physically do anything about it, and luckily, I still can. So the War on Re-Beefy began.
I joined the organization known as Weight Watchers about three weeks ago after a long run of failed attempts at exercising my way out of a torso full of bad habits. WW promotes their program with a near religious zeal, and bases it’s success on the theory that weight loss will come to even the most disheartened of souls so long as they stick to the Points System that has been calibrated for each set of personal demographics. For each food item, there is a point total given, and you add up all of your daily noshing using a simple online tabulation system, which, if you exercise and commit to your target, should produce results.
For the first two weeks I decided to ease into the new deal, making a personal compact to do my best to eat well and run like hell as much as I could, but in the least to keep track of it all in an honest way. The first week, I lost a pound, maybe two. Then it all went to hell after a series of ill-timed road adventures tied to coverage of several beer festivals and a music fest, which included more actual beer drinking than either the Boonville Beer Fest or the Monterey Beer Fest put together. But I stayed true to my self-promise and kept track of it all, and even though I shattered my daily limits, at times doubling the recommended daily intake, I faithfully ticked it all off into the digital daily diary.
One of the tenets of the program is that you attend a weekly thirty-minute meeting, where you are compelled to weight yourself on the official scale. I skipped a week due to unforeseen forgetfulness, and found myself wandering into today’s meeting slightly late and feeling a bit meek about the whole scene.
Of course I didn’t have the correct WW materials with me. There is a small glossy book that you are supposed to keep with you, but God knows where that is, and anyways I have a whole manila folder filled with other pamphlets and mailers and printouts that I have collected in my short time as a WW contestant. I handed the dog-eared folder to the older lady who runs the front desk with the fervent dedication of a no-nonsense drill instructor. Nothing gets past Doris. Weight Watchers is a business after all, which means that it requires regular payment and proof thereof. No pay, no weigh.
With a technical smile that sent shivers down my reinvigorated spine, she rifled through the pile of paraphernalia and produced a single, rumpled laser-jetted page confirming my obligation and ushered me to the scale. The meeting was already going on in the room adjacent, and I could hear the instructor discussing breakfast options as I flipped off my sandals and took my place on The Scale. “You’ve lost three pounds this week!” she said excitedly, which gave me a temporary boost until I remembered that I had done the weighing in the week prior, when I had missed the meeting, at the local gym.
The readout on the scales at the Monterey Recreation Center (“Where good sportsman ship doesn’t cost a dime”, but membership is $71 a month family rate) told me that I was now at 230, which meant that I had lost a total of five pounds since getting with the program. I was quite thrilled about this statistic at the time, but after the WW weigh-in, I was left to console myself with the knowledge that though I had actually still lost several more pounds, the total was several pounds less than I had assumed that it would be.
I should probably have known that gym scales are always set lower than those at any weight loss corporation, for obvious reasons, but I didn’t think that way then, and so with an equivocating mind I took my seat in the hard plastic chair with my classmates and listened quietly as the discussion ambled around within the breakfast theme.
The lecturer is a pretty, bookish thirty-something, with a high, shrill voice not unlike that of Sister Mary Elephant right before she goes ape shit ballistic on her students in the old Cheech and Chong skit.
Her attire is summery, with a long printed skirt designed much in the same manner as a picnic tablecloth complemented by a sensible blouse. She wears librarian spectacles and leads the group with the nervous disposition of an insecure beginner. But she is sweet, as are the rest of the people there (Doris notwithstanding, and even she has an air or sweetness that surrounds the capitalistic shell), and seems to really care about the subject, and I suppose that is all that you can ask of someone in this situation.
The discussion turns to depravity and my mind wanders about the room in an ADD trance. “Who here has tried to deprive themselves of food, only to eat a ton of it in the end?” asks the leader. All hands shoot northward, including both of my own, which sort of draws more attention that I was wanting at the time. “Corby, you look like you want to say something! (not really…) What foods have you denied yourself?”
“Oh, geez. Hamburgers, I guess. And hot dogs. Anything with bread and meat, pretty much,” I say awkwardly. This draws an unexpected chorus of approval. Just then the teacher remembers that I was due a small green star sticker, and rushes over to hand me the tiny award. “This is for showing up this week,” she says, reaching across the empty row of orange chairs in front of me. I blush a bit and stick it on the back of the rubber cover that protects my cell phone. The word “bravo” is printed on it. “Bravo!” she says happily. “Yeah for me!” I reply.
Out of the spotlight, I resume my note taking and observation, skills honed years ago during six and one half years of college, and now coming back into usage as my journalism career sputters on. For the second week out of the three that I have actually attended the mandatory meetings, I notice that people actually tend to snack during these meetings. Not just one solitary nibbler, but like the majority of the class keep plastic baggies full of this cracker or that nugget at the ready. During my first meeting, a man sat directly behind me, leaning in to the point that I could smell the variety, and noisily chomped on an apple, which I deemed to be a Jona Gold without even looking, he was that close.
Perhaps it is self-obvious, for most of the rest of the world actually have jobs to go to on Wednesday afternoons, but I spend much of this weeks meeting trying to understand why exactly a person would want to eat at a meeting that’s soul purpose is to compel a reduction of said practice. Also, meetings consist of a disproportionate block of time being dedicated to talking about food, which I guess makes sense too, given that we all need to know what to eat if we want to improve our lot, but which at this point usually serves to only make me hungry.
When all possible low-point breakfast options are exhausted and dutifully recorded on the ever-present 3M flip chart with a green pen that I bet smells just like a Granny Smith, including my suggestion of tuna, which draws a roomful of crooked eyebrows, the leader reads off a list of total weight lost for this calendar year by the gathered losee’s. The number is something like eight hundred and twenty three, 4.6 of which are my own. Almost seven if you go by the MRC scale.
The class gives itself a well-earned round of applause and everyone packs up their bindles of pretzels and their pamphlets and heads for the door. Slow to leave, the leader takes the opportunity to approach me and ask how I am doing in a surprisingly concerned way. I answer glowingly. All is well. I am honest, and I am making small progress. This seems to ease the wrinkles in her forehead a little, and she tells me to keep it up, and that she “will see less of me, next week!” I smile and wish her and Doris both a grand day, and make my way out of the office and into the heart of the Del Monte Shopping Center, where I am forced to run the gauntlet between Pizza My Heart and Chipoltle’s just to get back to my car. I throw my folder onto the passenger seat and head for the exit, but by then I am hungry and decide to stop at Whole Foods on the way out, where I make and eat a very sensible salad filled with lots of peas and beans and tofu and shrimp and very little dressing, chased with a water… And a coconut-chocolate chip cookie.
Corby Anderson
Marina, CA
6-17-09
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