Cotton, Wills Point Historical Society Museum, Wills Point, Texas
My May 8, 2005 entry into this weblog included the following material:
I managed to "break even" on my vacation, as the increased exercise offset the increased food intake to result in no weight gain. I am taking more material steps to watch what I eat, though, and even trying to bring formal structure to it. I've been able to maintain but not lose for some months, but I want to meet my "12 pounds lost by year end" goal. I find that "will to do things" is something I have, when I apply myself, and something I don't have when I only talk about it. So I took the odd and humiliating step of going to a Weight Watchers meeting today. It was a kind of admission that I am, after all, merely a suburbanite who eats too much, and hence can swallow my pride and do a simple structured thing since self-study has not sufficed.
I was grateful that nobody made me hug anyone or eat freeze-dried apples. There was talk of "needing a motivating factor" for losing weight. I hope that good health will suffice to motivate me, as I am really indifferent to fitting into any given article of clothing, and lack the need to be thin enough to play with my toddler (as I lack a toddler) which are apparently popular reasons to live. But I liked the idea that something would revulse me as much as the idea of going to a Weight Watchers meeting, and hence took myself there forthwith. I will make it a habit, and see if I lose weight that way. Maybe my motivation can be to be thin enough not to have to go to such a place, but that's really cynical thinking. I notice that I am the first, though, to prescribe that others do distasteful things for health, and so the pot now will be as black as the kettle. I have decided, by the way, that lettuce is the new bread. Further, anything that makes raw baby carrots a no-points transaction is fine with me.
During the past two years, I found that, far from being humiliating, Weight Watchers featured a brass-tacks, choices-made, positive, goal-oriented approach.
I began the program weighing a bit over 291 pounds.
Today I reached my goal weight, 210 pounds, losing just over eighty one pounds in
just over two years.
If I maintain this weight for six weeks, I become a "lifetime member" of the Weight Watchers program, who may attend the meetings for free.
I must see if I might find the picture taken of me during an April 2005 trip to Sanibel Island in Florida, which prompted me to enter Weight Watchers. Then I could be before and after.
In other news, a kind man from Australia asked if I wish to release a new musical album on his netlabel, which pleases me no end. I am also working on a ccmixter collaboration with a kind fellow from India who loves Nine Inch Nails, so I am trying to figure out if I have an inner Reznor. Thus far, I am pretty sure I have some inner Bauhaus and any number of early free verse poets who write about destiny and doom, not to mention a deep affection for dissonance, but I am afraid even the WW goal weight does not make one necessarily Trent. It's been great fun to add atmospherics to a rock song.