Losing weight is hard.  Being fat is harder.

That’s what I tell myself whenever I want to throw in the towel, when I get sick of watching what I eat, when I want to make a ton of comfort food (and eat it too).

I’ve had a lot of activity on my blog and in the interwebs this week since hitting my goal weight.  I have had such a huge amount of support and love thrown my way that I am seriously overwhelmed.  In a good way of course!

My Facebook Page has been seriously active and I’ve gotten hundreds of messages about what I’ve done.  I think I’ve finally answered them all, and thanked all the people that commented on the posts going around the ‘net this weekend.  It was important to me to say thank you or at least love their comment if they took the time to say “wtg girl!”.

A bunch of you also said you were going to try Weight Watchers, and this post is for you.  I imagine some of the things I am going to talk about will help with other weight loss/lifestyle plans too.  So here are some of the most asked questions I received and some sage advice from someone who’s been there, left, been there again and finally bought the damn T-Shirt.

Do you follow the Weight Watcher plan everyday, or do you do a cheat day?

I once had a girl in my WW meeting ask me how I was losing weight.  Ummm I do Weight Watchers…lol  Seriously though, this whole do I totally follow the program question came up over and over and over.

Yes, I follow the program.  Completely.  Does that mean I have always stayed within my points and done everything perfectly?  Hell no.

As human beings we are designed to not be perfect.  Did I have days that I went over my 30 points?  Yes.  Did I track every single one of those points?  Yes.  Did I get right back on the wagon the next day?  Yes.

Don’t sweat messing up.  It happens.  You just need to start sweating when you not only fall off the wagon, but are drug behind if for miles until it crashes into a fiery heap.

That all or nothing attitude will do you in.  I know it’s what got me in the past, so this time around I wasn’t so hard on myself.  Those 50 some odd point days were put in the past where they belong and I got right back to My 30 Point Life the next day.

Since mid February I have tracked every single thing.  If I wasn’t sure of the points I did my best to figure them out in the app.  That includes things like coffee creamer, which in the past I refused to track.  The program says we should track, and it is so incredibly easy with the new technology, so I do it.

Every. single. thing.  Guess what?  It works!

I’m telling you….In the beginning, especially if you have a significant amount of weight to lose like I did….You can get away with not counting that coffee creamer or that occasional treat.

Once you get in those bad habits it’s hard to break, and you will find yourself wondering why you are at a standstill as you get closer to goal and you stop losing.

It will catch up to you so trust me when I say it’s best not to start those behaviors.

Let me fill you in on a little secret called the Kelly Plan.  The Kelly Plan is what I did when I did the program (and others) previously.  This is how it works:

When I first started I wondered how I was going to eat all those points because I was being so strict and stingy that everything I ate was low calorie/low points.  I dropped weight rapidly.

Because most people cannot live that way I’d have a real bad weekend after a few weeks of that.  Something miraculous happened, and I’d still lose weight.  Whoo hooo, right?

Wrong.  I’d continue with the Kelly Plan of having horrible weekends and awesome weekdays.  Then those weekends would start to go over into Monday or Tuesday.

I’d freak because hey, I’m paying WW to lose weight, so I’d be damned if I was going to gain.  So then I would just survive on veggies, or sad to say not much at all for Thursday and Friday to make up for my mistakes.

And I’d still lose!  Whoo Hooo, right?

Nope, because that only works for so long.  Of course I didn’t do that every week, but trust me I had plenty of them.  Once I went from obese to overweight that doesn’t work anymore.

So I’d look for excuses.  Oh I’m another year older or oh my metabolism is slowing down or oh I’m in starvation mode.

Nope.  It has taken me a long time to learn that The Kelly Plan is not better than The Weight Watcher Plan, and that Kelly is not smarter than all the scientists at Weight Watchers who come up with this stuff.

If you do have a bad week, even in the beginning, go to your meeting/weigh in at home.

I think this is the most important thing you can do.  Every single time I’ve quit Weight Watchers it was because I was going to have a gain at the scale so I would “skip” that week to make up for it the next.

Only I didn’t.

Let me tell you a story about a girl who got about 10 pounds to her goal.  Picture this:  the year is 2006.  She goes to her parents house in Mississippi for Thanksgiving with the best intentions of staying on plan.

Her Mother is known for cooking enough food for an army, and it is damn good cook too.  She slips a bit.  Well, she slips a whole lot, so she says what the hell and eats her way through the south for four days.

She gets back to cold Chicago and feels like crap.  She knows that she has gained, Gained! when she was so close to goal and feels like a failure.  The day before weigh in she takes a peek at the scale and realized she gained FIVE pounds.

So she decides to skip the meeting because she’s embarrassed to go to Weight Watchers of all places when she has gained weight.  Since she’s not going to WW that week might as well indulge a little more, right?  She’ll have six days to take it off.

That doesn’t happen, so she doesn’t go the next week.  She promises herself that this is it – she’s going to get back on track.

Christmas comes, and she heads back to her parent’s house for the holiday.  Even though she hasn’t been the best with her eating she has learned enough that she’s managed to only gain about 7 pounds from the last time she went to her Weight Watcher meeting.

So this girl’s Grandpa, who is in his 80’s and has been healthy his whole life asks her if she’s still doing WW.  She replies, “Yes, but I haven’t been going.  I need to lose 7 pounds before I go back.”

Grandpa kind of cocks his head like a confused puppy and says, “Let me get this straight.  You need to lose weight so that you can go to Weight Watchers?”

She shakes her head yes and he replies, “I’m 88 years old and that might be the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

And how.

Of course that girl was me and I never went back.  Well, there were times when I noticed my weight creeping more than I’d like and I’d see some kind of special that I’d go back for a week or two, but never seriously.

I actually did really good with my weight, considering most people gain back all their pounds + some friends when they fall of the diet wagon.

That is until my Grandparents, Parents, and animals all died in a four year time span.

Talk about going off the rails.

I wonder how I would have done if I had followed the WW plan instead of the Kelly plan.  I’ll never know, but I’m back.

Trust me, you don’t ever want to leave so learn from my mistakes.

People are A-Holes

Listen, some people will not be happy that you are making a change to your life.  There will be people that try to sabotage your efforts, or try to make you feel bad.

If you really, truly think about this it says way more about them then it ever could about you.  I used to get mad and send off a zinger right back , but it’s different now.  I changed the way I react to something I can’t control.  I made the decision to feel differently.

Do I succeed?  Sometimes, but I at least try.  If I can’t control how people behave at least I can try to control how it affects me.

People that are happy and lead good lives do not set out to intentionally hurt others.

Let me say that again.

People that are happy and lead good lives do not set out to intentionally hurt others.

In our WW meeting last week it was all about the stigma of being overweight and the consequences that arise from it.  It was amazing the stories, from people having “move fat bitch” yelled at them while driving to teenagers actually mooing at someone when they were out running.

The bad part is that person that yelled fat bitch or that idiot teenager that moo’ed at that poor lady – I guarantee you they don’t even remember doing it.  Those women though, they will remember it until the day they die.

I’m trying not to let anyone live rent free in my head.  Notice I said try because there isn’t a switch you can just flip and not have your feelings hurt or be embarrassed, but I think if you take the time to think about the people doing it – think of what kind of life they must have to want to just outright hurt someone, well it makes it a little easier.

Harder still are those that might be related to us or are friends or partners.  You might not get support from them.  I remember someone that shares DNA with me telling me two weeks in that there was no way this would ever work and I would never lose the weight.

Showed her.

You can let it bother you, or you can try like hell to rise above it.  It’s going to happen.  Everyone has a A-Hole tucked away somewhere in their life, and those that say they don’t are lying.

It’s them, not you.  Try to remember that.

Please don’t get frustrated in the beginning

It is very easy to get frustrated.  That adorable little guy in the pic is my nephew Roman.  Now Roman is just starting to walk, but he’s not very good at it.  He falls sometimes and what I guess is he thinks “the hell with it” and crawls for awhile.

When you first start Weight Watchers, or any new lifestyle change, sometimes you are going to have to crawl until your legs are strong enough.  It is a lot to learn!

That’s part of the reason why I started this blog.  People that do online only might not see all the food finds or tools that we hear about getting together in meetings.  You might go to a dud meeting and not get the info.  I try to update with all these different things so that you don’t have to fumble around like I did at first.

I’ll leave you with two things:

Own it.  Your triumphs, your fumbles.  Own it.

You got this, and I’m here to help!

Find me on the interwebs:

You can like me on facebook.

You can follow the My 30 Point Life Pinterest Board.

Have an Instant Pot?  I have an awesome Facebook group! Everyone is so helpful!