Realizing Harmony

I was just reminded of Weight Watchers yesterday.  My Mom went through their program years ago.  I think it worked for a while, but she “fell off” as I recall and gained all the weight back.  Then she found another program – that included spirituality in it – and by working on not only her body but her mind and spirit as well, she finally got all the weight off… over the course of quite a few months.

She would post a graph of her falling weight on the refrigerator showing only a 10-20 pound range, and not the real weight – so as to avoid broadcasting her real weight to the family, and anyone else who came into her kitchen.  (I think she used some sort of a “big” mark at the 10s, a smaller mark at the 5s, and hash-marks for the individual lbs.   So, instead of reading: 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, etc. her chart might read: X, -, -, -, -, x, etc. down the left side of the graph.)  Sometimes it would get discouraging as she’d hit plateaus or even move back up a pound or two.  But by looking at the overall downward trend, she was able to get encouragement.

But I digress…

Weight Watchers.  Yeah, that’s what I wanted to write briefly about.

Weight Watchers, as far as I know, looks to be a good program for a lot of people.  Clearly, they’ve helped many many people lose a lot of weight.

Two things I really like about it:

1) It encourages personal discipline and growth in terms of learning how to eat in a more healthy manner – both quantity and quality/type of foods.

2) It includes weekly encouragement from others.  Losing weight is soooo much harder when you’re working alone.  You can easily get discouraged.  But with someone (or a whole group of people) encouraging you on, and giving tips and tricks to overcome challenges, you’re far more likely to succeed.

There is one danger, though, that I’ve heard about WW.  That is, with their point system and the freedom to choose anything that fits in point-wise, there can be a temptation, if not tendency, to fall into the trap of eating less of the really healthy and metabolism-stoking foods, and more of one’s comfort foods.

With a good coach/mentor/group, and brutal honesty about what you’re putting in your mouth, you should be able to avoid this trap.

We are (physically) what we eat.  And, as Zig Ziglar says, “I never accidentally ate anything.”

When we eat the right kinds of food, in the right quantities, we’ll have the body-shapes we were meant to have.  And programs like HealthPointe, and Weight Watchers are great for getting us re-aligned to what is right for us.