A woman joined Weight Watchers in October with the goal of losing weight before the holidays as the beginning of a long term weight loss program. She had been on multiple diets in the past, but was more determined than ever to really make it work this time.
She enrolled and even paid extra money for the variety of tools that weight watchers offers to help people in their efforts to lose weight. She attended the first meeting available to her and religiously attended at least 1 meeting per week for the next month.
She lost 7 pounds of her 30 pound weight loss goal over the first 4 weeks, which ended just before Thanksgiving. She felt uplifted. Over a pound a week lost, her clothes began to fit again, a few people had begun to notice. She was getting great praise and support at the weekly meetings. Weight watchers had also spent a lot of time preparing her with strategies to deal with the eating temptations that come with Thanksgiving so she felt confident her weight loss could continue well past the holiday.
And the diet had become easier to follow. Some of her cravings for fattening foods had lessened, which made the thought of controlling her eating and maintaining her weight over Thanksgiving seem even easier. She had not felt this good about herself in a long time.
Thanksgiving Day arrived and she was hosting a large group of friends and family, so the cooking began early. As she pulled the stuffing out of the oven, she couldn't resist stealing a little bit. "Not even a point on the weight watcher's plan" she thought. Man, that tasted good. A little later the apple pie came out of the oven and she was able to flake off a piece of the crust to take a taste. Sweet.
As the preparations continued, things began to deteriorate. Slowly at first, but the more little tastes she had of the great foods that she loved, the more she wanted of them. As she at an entire brownie off the tray she had just gotten ready, she started to panic. She realized here diet plans were falling apart and the thanksgiving meals hadn't even started yet.
She pulled out all her notes and materials and tried to read them over. Instead of helping, they felt like restrictions that were making her feel like she was missing out on the best part of thanksgiving. She quickly put them away and decided that for today she was "off" weight watchers and was going to eat whatever she wanted.
That moment represented the end of her diet. There were a couple of feeble efforts after Thanksgiving to track points again, but they were quickly lost in Thanksgiving leftovers. Within three weeks as Christmas approached, her weight was 2 pounds above where she started and she had never felt worse about herself. She hid all the materials and journals from weight watchers and never attended another meeting.
After the holidays, saw an advertisement for an eating and exercise plan that seemed truly different and interested her greatly. She sent for the free information and really liked what she saw, but never took any further action on that or any other weight loss program. She felt like none of them could ever work for her since she "failed" again on Weight Watchers.
6 months later, now 10 pounds heavier than she had ever been, she was desperate and felt worse than ever. A friend had lost 20 pounds recently using Weight Watchers. Maybe she should try it again? She really wanted to do SOMETHING, but was actually now afraid to act.
None of the problems she experienced ever really needed to happen. It all started with her definitions of failure and success.
Did she ever truly fail? Or did she decide in a moment of weakness that all of the great effort she had made up to that point meant nothing and that any mistake while following her diet plan could not be tolerated and MEANT failure.
What if she had established before starting Weight Watchers this time that she would stay on the plan for 90 days no matter what happened on any given day?
What if she had set the plan up to consider Thanksgiving weekend as "off the plan" and had a written schedule to start up again the following week ahead of time?
What if she realized that even if you are not actively working on weight loss and fitness, you are still on a plan for life because your body does not go away. So trying something is less of a failure than trying nothing-- no matter what the outcome.
What would she tell a friend to do in the same situation? Is failure different for her than it would be for a friend who went through the same experience?
The challenge for all of us is to be objective and accept weaknesses in our efforts by learning how to do better and committing to at least try to improve, rather than becoming defensive and making excuses or worse yet, giving up your efforts because you were not successful in your prior efforts at weight loss and fitness.
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