Day 19: Better!

My knee is feeling better! Still not 100% yet, so I took another long walk this morning. I really enjoy walking, especially when I have something good to listen to. I love my neighborhood and it's nice to walk around on a Saturday morning and see what everybody's doing. The only bummer about walking instead of jumping rope is that walking takes a lot longer -- I can do my jumps in 20 minutes but I spend an hour walking, then I still have to do my strength training exercises. I hope I'm back to jumping rope soon!

I've mentioned before that I've done Weight Watchers several times before, but I'm finding many ways in which the PCP is better than WW. Let me say first that I think WW is a pretty sane program -- the main focus is portion control of regular food, not special food that they provide -- and for the right person I think it can be great. It worked for me for a while, but I never got to my goal weight. I would always wind up having a "bad" week, which would turn into two bad weeks, which would turn into not going back because I was embarrassed to step on the scale. Here is how the PCP is better than WW:

Diet
There are no forbidden foods on WW, which is kind of a relief at first. If you want to have some cake at a birthday party, you just have to plan for it and then eat only the amount you've planned for. You can easily go out to a restaurant and just try to make good choices. So it's not so shocking as all the PCP diet rules. But even then I had trouble sticking to what I was supposed to do. I would buy those 100-calorie packs of cookies or mini cupcakes or whatever, to stash in my pantry as a daily treat, which is totally permissible by WW standards. But then I would eat the whole damn box at once, blasting past my self-imposed limits, therefore making me feel like I had already failed so I might as well see what's in the fridge. I don't plan to live the rest of my life without sugar, alcohol, or salt, but for right now, it's actually easier to just stay away from those things as much as possible rather than try to consume them in moderation.

Exercise
WW doesn't talk too much about exercise. You're supposed to get so many minutes of "activity" every day, and they leave it open so you can choose whatever you like. If you do extra activity, you can literally translate that back into more food you can eat. I found that to be kind of crazy-making, like how exercise bulimics get started. I mean, I know that the more active you are, the more you can eat -- I just didn't like the incentive process of exercising in order to eat more. It wasn't healthy for me, at least. I also really appreciate the very specific exercise instruction we're getting. WW says "just get moving," which is really good if you have to lose 100 pounds and you have no clue about exercise at all. I like having my daily exercise sheet and all I have to do is complete what's there, and I know that I will get good results if I do it all to the best of my ability.

Social support
This is where WW has been a pioneer in commercial weight loss, because the meeting is a huge part of the program. In a lot of ways, I think it's like an AA meeting: the leader has been successful on the program too, and it's a time to talk about your struggles and celebrate your successes. Sometimes everything clicks and a WW meeting can really help. But like so many other things, if you don't have the right leader, or the group dynamic is unhealthy, the meeting can also drag you down. I've also seen meetings where everybody really enables each other's neurosis -- they're having such a good time together, they don't want to tell the truth. These are often people who can quote you the calorie content of anything in the grocery store, but have been coming to WW meetings every week for a year and are losing the same 5 pounds over and over. The PCP group is working so much better for me because it's finite, and because we're all at the same point in our journey. I like making everything as transparent as possible. I don't want to just hang out here forever in a holding pattern.

I will credit WW with helping me to think about food differently, especially the idea of portion control, and for helping me to avoid being 20 pounds heavier than I am now. I don't think it's all bad by any means, and I know that a lot of people have had success there. I also know that a lot of people have joined and rejoined over and over, spending lots of money and essentially spinning their wheels. WW touts its successes but really, those re-joiners are the company's bread & butter (so to speak) so it's not really in their interest to see people succeed. (Once you reach your goal weight, you don't have to pay for meetings anymore, as long as you stay at that weight.) The last time I went back, about a year ago, I was so half-hearted about it that I only stayed about 4 weeks. I plan on never going back.

Yay for day 19!