My sister-in-law joined Weight Watchers and is having great success on the program. In six weeks, she's lost 26 pounds. How do I know this? She told me. Every five seconds. For three days straight.
My sister-in-law is diabetic, so losing weight is a big deal for her. She's been able to avoid insulin, and reduced the amount of medications signficantly. I'm very happy for her, and I told her that. I thought that would be the end of the conversation.
Oh how wrong I was.
At dinner, she told me the news. Later on in the dinner, she told me she was cold because she's lost 26 pounds. Still later, for no reason that I can ascertain, she told me again. Later, after we'd made our plans for the following day, she realized she had to change the plans because she had a meeting she'd forgotten about - she was doing Weight Watchers and she had to go to a meeting, and her normal meeting fell on Christmas so she had to find a new meeting. And she had to go to the meeting because she's lost 26 pounds already and reduced her medications.
In case she hadn't already mentioned it.
The next day, we had to scrap our original plans to accomodate her meeting (I was fine with that). We had drama to deal with trying to coordinate everyone's schedules and preferences, namely from my mother-in-law, and made a new plan and then headed out to lunch together. And then came the menu selection and determination of number of points of each entree - because my sister-in-law was doing Weight Watchers, the new plan that Jennifer Hudson followed to lose her weight, and she'd already lost 26 pounds in six weeks. Then we went shopping, and she was trying to find new clothes because nothing fit because guess what? She lost 26 pounds in six weeks doing Weight Watchers.
I think Weight Watchers is a cult.
I don't know if it's the commercials or the meetings, but this seems to be a common thread for anybody I've known who has done Weight Watchers (or really followed any specific weight loss plan that is working). They talk about it constantly, and want everybody around them to know that A) they've joined Weight Watchers, and B) how much weight they've lost as a result of their participation in the cult. The constant need to share and talk about food and exercise and points and their program concerns me. Being conscious of what you're eating is one thing - obsessing about it is completely different.
Plus, I really don't care.
I don't tell people I don't care - at least not to their faces. I'm happy for people who set a goal and obtain it, I really am, and I will tell them that I am. But I won't ask for details, and I generally won't reciprocate with my own story. I will occassionally share if I think it's important to a story I'm going to tell, such as stories of gym whores knocking out the power on my treadmill or, more likely, because I want to complain. But generally speaking, I don't like to talk about exercising (because I hate it) or a weight loss journey (because I'm not on one). To me, asking about that stuff is like asking if I shaved my legs today (no, I didn't and they're very hairy. Aren't you glad you asked?). It's a task to be checked off, but does not need to be discussed regularly. And it's none of anyone else's business to ask. I'll share if I want. Otherwise, back off.
I'm pretty sure I feel this way because of my social work background, and the time I've spent around people with eating disorders and addictions. I'm sensitive to the relationships people have with food and exercise and counting calories, and I worry about people who display obsessive thought patterns about the topic. It's not healthy to think about food and exercise constantly - it's not healthy to think about any one thing constantly. And I distinctly remember that group therapy for eating disorders can be dangerous, especially for young women, because the group members sometimes try to one-up each other on who consumed the fewest calories or exercised the longest. It's a slippery slope from support to competition, which only exacerbates the overwhelming desire for control and perfection that is commonly exhibited by people with eating disorders. So the more someone wants to talk about exercise or food or weight loss, the more I suspect all is not well.
I am the opposite of what most health and fitness experts (or just random people who write about health and fitness) say: I don't want your support. I don't want to share my goals. I don't want to be held accountable. The more you ask, the less motivated I become. In fact, I'll think you're nosy. And I'll assume you're projecting your own issues on me, and I'll probably diagnose you with an eating disorder.
So I highly doubt you'll ever see me at a Weight Watchers meeting. But congratulations if it's working for you. Just please don't tell me about it.
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