'sA-dE . com

I'm coming out

Hello, my name is Saedigh, and on Tuesday, January 29th, I joined Weight Watchers. There, I've outed myself. I am not sure why I wrestled with the decision to blog about it, or why I felt sort of embarassed about admitting it, but there you go.

For the past few years, I have noticed that my weight has increased gradually, culminating in a 13-lb difference between what I weighed when I graduated from University, to what I weigh now. This has been the result of several ups and downs, but the overall trend has been up. It's been subtle, but it's definitely been up. So, I've decided to do something about it.

I chose Weight Watchers because I like their overall message of learning to eat responsibly and making wise choices. I am using their Points system, and although it's only been three days, I have learned something: I was eating healthy, well-balanced meals, but my portion sizes were slightly larger than they should have been. This was, for the most part, counteracted by my high level of activity (after 3 days, the number of "activity points" I have accumulated is more than half the number of "weekly points" I am allotted above my daily total), but not entirely. Thus, over the course of 6.5 years, I have gotten slightly larger.

It's actually a pretty neat little system they have set up. Every day, I am alloted 22 points, and every week I have 35 points "banked" should I need them. And, every activity I do also gives me points that I can "swap" for food, if I need to. Their web site has an extremely user-friendly calculator that lets you use the information on food labels to calculate points, as well as a list of different foods and activities and their corresponding point values. For example, 45 minutes at high-intesity on the elliptical will earn me 6 points; a homemade barbecued hamburger, sans bun, is 6 points (I plugged the recipe into their calculator to get that result). So far, I have not tapped into my 35-point weekly reserve, and like I said, have been racking up the activity points (18 in 3 days). Supposedly, by following this program, I could expect to start losing 1-2 lbs per week after the first 3 weeks. Of course, the success depends on my honesty when inputting my consumption and activity levels into the daily tracker (also on their web site). So far, I have been very faithful, even saving the label from the chocolate bar I ate yesterday when I was famished before my guitar lesson, and plugging the nutritional values into the calculator when I got home. On-going success depends on my ability not to fall back into "portion distortion" once I've achieved my goal.

My only complaint about the system is that it doesn't appear to account for a difference between fat and lean body mass or waist circumference, both of which have been repeatedly proven to have an impact on overall health. I can understand it's not easy to calculate one's body fat percentage reliably at home, but I think measuring waist circumference would also be a helpful added measure to incorporate into their method.

So, why am I telling you this? Because I figured it's a good way to keep me honest, and to develop a support network should I need it. Also, I think it could be helpful to others, whether they know me or not.