Weight Watchers

In the spring of 2021, I met with my doctor about unexplained weight gain.  She went through my daily food menus and exercise habits.  She suggested several ideas to my routine, but admitted that they probably wouldn't help much.  The most important one to her was that I commit to 150 minutes zones minutes a week.  That would mean two and a half hours of exercising with my heart rate about 100 beats per minute each week.  I said that I could definitely do that, but wasn't sure that it would make a difference.  She didn't argue with that and decided instead to draw blood to see if there was a medical reason why I couldn't lose weight.  I had had a thyroid issue when I was pregnant, I wondered if maybe that had returned.  She was more interested in my glucose levels.

The nurse called me as soon as they received those tests almost two years ago to let me know that I was glucose intolerant and would need to take medication for it.  The medicine would cause severe intestinal issues, but it would help me to lose weight.  I honestly thought that glucose intolerance was a made up term by people who were overweight.  I didn't realize that it was a medical diagnosis.  I asked the nurse if I could do anything else besides medication.  She said that the only other option was to cut down on the amount of sugar and carbohydrates that I ate.  I chose that option, joined Weight Watchers, and soon found myself losing weight.  By the fall of 2021, I was back to a weight that the doctor and I both felt comfortable with and my glucose levels were down to a normal level.

Doug and I talked at the start of this year about taking a break from Weight Watchers.  I had grown tired of all of the chicken and cauliflower meals, so it sounded good to me.  To maintain my weight loss, we decided to try his routine. We would eat healthy, low carb foods every meal of the week except for Friday nights and all day Saturday.  We would also commit to exercising the 150 minutes a week that my doctor had recommended.  This had worked well for Doug in the past and we hoped that it would for me as well.

Fast forward to this January and unfortunately, our well thought out plan to maintain my weight loss did not work.  I was not as heavy as I was in the spring of 2021, but had gained enough weight that I knew it was time to rejoin Weight Watchers.  I was bummed at first about the weight gain, but not really sad about returning to eating healthier.  I hadn't really felt well for the past few weeks after I ate and knew that following a healthy diet plan would help with that.  Cameron had told me that he was interested in eating healthier at the start of the year as well, so Monday I spent the afternoon shopping at various grocery stores filling my cart with low carb foods.

Doug was on board with the healthy eating plan as well.  He preferred the chicken and vegetable dishes anyway, so it didn't bother him at all to change our menu.  In fact, he really had fun looking through recipes finding low point soups and meals that he could make.  I appreciated his enthusiasm as I knew that he had weighed in on Monday as well and was pretty much the same weight that he was a year ago.  The plan that he had come up with worked well for him, but was disastrous for me.  In years past, I would have resented him for that.  For the first time ever, I didn't get mad or frustrated that losing and keeping off weight was easier for him.  Instead I came to realize that for whatever reason, genetics or environment, my body could not handle eating sugar or carbohydrates like his could.  I was not going to beat myself up for it as there is nothing that I could do to change that fact.  Thus, Weight Watchers it is and hopefully by Cameron's graduation, I will be back to my weight of the fall of 2021.  If I am not, I know that I have tried my best .  Either way I do understand now that this truly is a lifestyle change, not a diet.