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Sunday, August 19th, 2007
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12:14 pm
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Ha, you thought I'd given up, didn't you?
...well, ok, I did. It didn't work for me. But I'm going to post my observations about it prior to talking about what I'm doing now, which does. Feel free to comment or not, although I'm happy to discuss any of it.
This was a 13 week, weekly meeting course.
Things I brought away from this:
-- the sense of positively-focused community/weekly meetings. (Liked)
Being able to talk about the the temptations and the successes in a supportive group setting. It seems to me that so much of the time when women talk about their weight/diet/habits in a casual setting, it's focused on the negative - "I hate my thighs/belly/hips" "I just don't have the willpower" "I knew I shouldn't eat the whole thing, but it was so good, I couldn't help myself."
In the WW meetings, it was always about not just what we'd felt badly about doing/not doing the prior week(exercise, eating, etc), but recognizing where we got offtrack and planning for dealing with it next week. Having a regular schedule was very reassuring, because it gave me external milestones.
-- the accountability. (This was a like and a dislike.)
Every week -- no more, no less -- you weigh. Nobody else at the meeting other than you and the coordinator sees your scale, although you write it down in a little booklet. This is at least partly to 'average out' your week's weight fluctuations. They also use tenths of a pound, which to me is somewhat misleading especially as you're (obviously!) weighing fully clothed.
I really liked the non-judgmental measuring "This is your data-point for the week" but felt that it was a little skewed by the variations in clothing/jewelry/etc from week to week. Also, I felt that premenstrual water weight should have been considered -- Not, 'Oh, I have PMS, I'll deduct five pounds' but a recognition that when one's weight goes up 3 pounds in the week prior/of one's period, it's entirely possible that it's not all gluttony. OTOH, maybe they just consider that it balances out in the weeks post-period.
-- using points instead of calories. (Disliked)
This is done by using a WW chart where you match the calories, fat, and fiber in a food and that generates the points for you. (example: 1 serving of Triscuits is 6 crackers, 120 calories, 4.5 grams fat, 3 grams fiber and 3 grams protein. In WW, this would be 2 points.)
Based on your age, activity level, and weight you're allowed a certain number of points per week. I found this to be less than useless for me, because it was so much of a hassle to calculate points for various foods not mentioned directly in the booklets that I just gave up and never measured anything. Some people, using points really works for them, but I guess I'm just too used to calories and never could get the hang of estimating to a different scale.
-- the emphasis on recognizing portion sizes. (Liked)
It's been noted, over and over, that Americans (especially) do not produce, consume, or recognize what an appropriate portion size of food is. Even with the best intentions in the world, it's so easy to underestimate both size and calories in foods. One of the things that I felt was most useful in the booklets that were handed out each week was one which showed pictures of portion sizes of healthy and unhealthy snacks, with a common object (tennis ball, etc) comparison.
-- the specialized food products. (Again, a like and a dislike)
I've always been fairly skeptical about prepackaged foods. This is twofold; One, I think they're a ripoff (Consumers Pay Hefty Premium for Air, Packaging in 100-Calorie Packs) and Two, the Weight Watchers snacks especially were so chock-full of unpronounceable chemicals -- and high fructose corn syrup -- that I couldn't see them as being a 'healthier' choice.
I can see the point that for some people who are starting out on transitioning their diet to a healthier one, it's dammned hard to go from potato chips (my especial vice) to carrot sticks, and no amount of willpower is ever going to make low-fat yogurt taste as good as ranch dressing, but it was a big stumbling block for me because I felt that I had gotten far enough along in my taste-bud realignment that it was a step backwards to eat the cupcakes/chips/etc. from the WW brand.
Additionally, I am *very* anti-HFCS; I feel that it's a root cause of a significant portion of the obesity in the US today, and damn stuff is in practically everything. Even now, after purging so much of my pantry, I discovered the other day that my whole wheat bread had HFCS in it as the third ingredient. (The closer to the start of the ingredient list on the nutritional info, the higher the proportion, fyi.)
Sidenote to the 'prepackaged/branded foods' -- many of the suggested recipies called for things like fat-free pudding, fat free cool whip, popcorn with artificial butter spray, etc. This would not have bothered me so much if it hadn't been promoted as a long-term dieting strategy, rather than a transitional phase. Plus, most food that is artificially fat free is augmented with high fructose corn syrup, and higher salt, sugar, and carbohydrate levels to add taste.
Human bodies need a certain amount of fat to feel satiated and stop the biochemical production of ghrelin by the stomach (the 'hungry' hormone). Admittedly, most people's sensors (including mine!) are grossly distorted as to necessary amounts, but cutting every bit of fat out of the diet and replacing it with artificial substitutes is IMO like wearing high-heeled shoes that don't fit and expecting to run a marathon in them. Sure, they cover your feet and technically they're classified as shoes, but you're going to do more harm than good by using them.
Conclusion
Overall, I think doing this session of Weight Watchers was ultimately beneficial in raising my awareness and making me realize that what I needed was more accountability for myself.
I did not lose any weight during the time I was attending the sessions, and my eating habits did not change noticeably. As a whole, the dieting schema of Weight Watches seemed too artificial, too -- clubby(?) for me. I've always been kind of a loner, and not part of social groups, and that probably affected the way I responded to the environment. I never bought in 100% to the whole solidarity thing and so never made a wholehearted commitment to changing.
The things that I did not find useful for me might work for other people, and certainly there's a wide variation in how people react to various diets. If you're curious about Weight Watchers, there's a ton of information on the internet, and one could certainly model the diet plan without joining a group, although a large part of the success appears to be the positive reinforcement behaviors.
In the end, it didn't work for me, but for reasons which I understand and which are unlikely to change. I've been through several diets (Atkins, South Beach, one that was based on blood type, etc) and I've done a *lot* of research into nutrition and health. As a result, I've moved on to what I feel is going to work better for me (short version, calorie counting with tracking, organic/low-processed foods), which I'll discuss in the next post. I'll also put up the tools and information sources that have helped me. So much of building a healthy lifestyle is based in knowing yourself and your particular needs that it's counterproductive to expect 'one size fits all' in a commercial diet plan.
Whew. Much, much longer post than I expected, but if you've made it all the way to the end, Thank You.
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, August 17th, 2007
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5:26 pm - Links
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| Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
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6:30 am - Fertility tourism
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I bought my baby on the internet
"Too old to have IVF here, Linda - like thousands of other desperate women - turned to a clinic in Eastern Europe. Now she is seven weeks' pregnant. But just how safe is this cut-price baby trade?
[...]
As women leave getting pregnant later and later (one in 90 babies in the UK is now born through IVF to older mothers), there is unprecedented demand for fertility treatments.
But the lack of egg and sperm donors in this country, coupled with the high cost of IVF and the postcode lottery of NHS provision, means that more couples are becoming "fertility tourists", grabbing the opportunity of cheap treatment abroad.
There is a chronic shortage of egg and sperm donors in Britain - largely down to changes in the law which make it possible for any child born of such donations to trace his or her parents at the age of 18.
Since then, the number of donors has plummeted. One clinic reports that while they had 27 willing sperm donors in 1992, by 2000 they had just the one. "
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(comment on this)
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5:40 am - Kill! kill!
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So, it would have been nice not to have been awakened at 5:15 this morning by the blaring of some dramatic John Wayne Western music (plus galloping horses, pistol shots, dying cries, screaming heroine, etc) from the TV that DH left on.
*grumpsnarlblearyeyedstruggletowardsthecaffeine*
The cats, of course, were thrilled.
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(comment on this)
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| Sunday, August 12th, 2007
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11:20 am - Linkies
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| Friday, August 10th, 2007
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7:17 am
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| Sunday, August 5th, 2007
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7:18 am
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Mostly a placeholder at this point. Feel free to drop me an email or friend me if you know me from LJ. I'll be trying to mirror my posts here at some point.
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(comment on this)
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