Fun & Fitness over 50

Yes, Weight Watcher's, that bastion of tacky, bourgeois, middle class, 50's style dieting and weight loss. I did it. I signed up.

I'm on my 5th week now and have lost about 5 lbs. One week as much as 3.6 lbs and one only .4 lbs.

The main appeal to me was the accountability. I do well if I have a measurable goal. Especially if there's somebody else monitoring that goal. You weigh in once a week and you don't want the weigher-inner to tell you "sorry, you gained." Plus I'm paying good money to participate in this, $39 a month and I don't like throwing my money away.

It's a pretty good plan, really. They assign points to food. The higher the point value, the less you want to eat it because you are only allotted so many points a week. It just makes you pay attention to what you are eating. Nothing is forbidden, you just have to account for the points. So if I want to eat that 14 point piece of chocolate cake, I can. Only, if I'm allotted 36 points for the day, that doesn't leave a lot of room for meals.

You can pretty much eat all the fruit and veggies you want within reason. They don't dock you any points for those in an effort to encourage you to eat good stuff. So I just stuffed myself after dinner on 2 cups of watermelon ... zero points.

I started out at 207 lbs and I'm now down to 199 and change. My first goal is to lose 5% of my weight, about 10 lbs. I'm close. I'll keep you posted.