16th
February 2014
We have all known the long loneliness, and we have
found that the answer is community. Dorothy Day
I have
more than my weight to thank Weight Watchers for, so why have I been a continued
Weight Watchers member since I was 18?
Because
it was a place I felt like I was understood and I met people (some of whom
became best friends) who had the same problems as me. It was somewhere I learnt that it was okay to
adore food, to not feel bad about wanting to overindulge and also to find out
how to still do this yet lose weight (and eventually maintain) at the same
time. Over the years I’ve followed all
the different plans that Weight Watchers has introduced - why did they change
them? To improve them of course, society
changes, science progresses, they find out new things and adapt accordingly
which means we end up with the best of the best plan there is and not forgetting
that we like something new and different to focus on. I can’t imagine trying to live on a 500
calorie a day diet now, yet I know I have done a very long time ago because I
didn’t know no different, I didn’t realise it was unhealthy to do that and also
that my body was clever enough to tell my brain it needed to eat which
ultimately led to me overeating and doing the yo-yo diet thing! Yeah I’m 44 now and just like the WW plans, I
too have changed, I’ve matured, I’ve grown up, it’d be silly to expect myself
to be the same person I was at 18 – heck I wouldn’t want to be, she was hard
work!
The
same goes for our activity levels, they’ve changed, we talked about moving more
in meetings this week, discussed how many hours we spend sitting, when we were
kids my mom had to walk us to school every day, that was a good 6 mile round
trip twice a day – no car in our house, then she’d walk us all to town on a
Saturday to get her weekly shopping, that’d be another 10 mile round trip
pulling her trolley (which was always a Scottish tartan one, not pretty like
these new ones!) and carrying her bags – we couldn’t afford the bus fare so
walking it was. Washing for mom was a
day’s event in a twin tub; I even remember the mangle in the garden before the
twin tub arrived! No dishwashers, no
mobile phones – the phone was in a red box at the end of the street! And as for the television, it was black and
white, 3 channels and I was the remote control, my dad would give me a kick and
say which channel to put on! Yes we were
active in our day to day lives because we had no choice whereas now we can get
everything done for us, there’s a person, machine or gadget for everything from
turning the tv over to having your shopping delivered, no wonder we spend so
much time sitting around!
We’d
spend hours at the shops with mom because she’d chat to people, there was a
real sense of community, these days with internet shopping – that’s
disappearing and it’s really quite sad.
We’re social creatures, it is our nature to be so and our lives depend
on other humans. We need to interact and
sitting at a pc on facebook isn’t the same as real face to face contact. I had a lovely lunch with a friend yesterday
and it was great to catch up with her, you can’t beat sitting catching up with
each other’s lives and just chatting.
We had
a delicious meal too, I like to try things I haven’t had before or for a long
time, and yesterday I ordered,
Starter
– pigeon breast, haggis potato cake & red wine jus
Main –
braised rabbit leg, bacon, mushroom & onion cream sauce
Desert –
panacotta and shortbread biscuit.
If I
had to guess the ProPoints, the starter would be 10pp, the main 15pp and the
desert 15pp – worth blowing the weeklies on that’s for sure! Also I didn’t have anything else to eat after
that.
My aim
is to sit less, move more and socialise more, if you enjoy the day to dayness
of life, it doesn’t seem such a rush all the time. No I shan’t be buying a twin tub but I will
start standing more in the kitchen and making my own food from scratch, if I want
a cake or a nice crusty loaf instead of buying it I’ll make it – that’s not
only moving more, it means I’m only using fresh, healthy ingredients.
I’m
lucky that I get to socialise in my work, however I will be making more effort
to get together with those great gang of friends I have too.
Happy
Sunday BeYOUtiful, what are your plans today?
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