WATCHING MY WEIGHT

Oh my god I just ate Macdonald’s.

There are 264 days until Sexy Halloween 2016, do I have the willpower to take on a challenge like this? Let's take a look at some cold fat facts: 

I have struggled with my weight my entire life.

Struggle, I guess, is a strong word. I've been fat, but it's not necessarily a struggle, it's more like a very heavy shirt that you never take off. It's literally just another part of me. For a lot of my life I've been complacent with my weight. It certainly makes me appear to be funnier and more relatable than I actually am. And for that I'm even a little grateful. My shape has shaped me.

I'm genetically predisposed to be fat.

My father, mother and younger sister are all overweight. We've all had out yo-yo weight loss moments, but we're bread people, we love to eat bread. There's really nothing more to it than that.

Eating is my compulsion. 

Along with hoarding and pulling my hair out, eating is just something to do frequently and en masse.

I’m the kind of person that will continue to eat as long as there is food in front of me. Sitting in front of a bowl of kettle corn is my worst nightmare because I won’t be able to get up until I’ve done a pass around the bowl with a wet finger for crumbs and kernels.

If I’m really going to lose weight, I’m going to completely change the way I relate to food. As of now, I relate to it by putting as much of it into my mouth as I can before I feel like hell.

I have relatively strong self-destruction streak. I fight it for the most part, but it tells me that I deserve to be overweight, it tells me to ignore the direct connection between my weight and the melange of ailments I deal with on a daily basis (joint pain, back pain, sleep apnea, celibacy etc.). I don’t eat as a means to an end, I eat in the moment, based solely on my emotions. Food is a reward or a punishment, but never just sustenance.

There have been times when I’ve been successful in losing significant amounts of weight.

During my two year stint at grad school, I lost about 30 pounds.

I looked great, I felt great, and then I experienced that swift descent from the paradise that is school, down into the 7th circle of the inferno that is real life.

I turned back to stress eating, I stopped going to the gym, and I gained the weight back almost faster than I lost it. NOW LOOK AT ME.

There’s one program that has worked time and time again for me, and that’s Weight Watchers.

Weight Watcher assigns a point value to every food, based on its nutritional value, and I truly believe that system changes the way people relate to food. There’s no punishment, no deprivation, just setting easy goals and meeting them. So I’m joined back up.

Watch this vid to see Oprah say the word "bread" six times.

That's my kind of program. Bread, bread, bread!

Now that Oprah has hitched her caboose to this train, it’s never been clearer: Weight Watchers is top-of-mind and requires the least research. That’s what I’m down with.

Bad news: advertising works, folks.

So yes, I ate Macdonald’s for breakfast. One sausage egg and cheese McGriddle cost me 20 points. Which means I have 27 points to spread out over the rest of my day. Which isn’t so hard!

Weight Watchers makes everything seem more manageable, and doesn't demonize lapses in judgement. Plus you can eat three whole bags of baby carrots for ZERO POINTS!!!!!

Next week I will give a weight loss update after my first full week of weight watching. When I started this blog, I weighed 245. Next week, hopefully..... 185? God, I wish.

I’m gonna go and eat a goddamn vegetable. Thanks for reading!

(P.S. Weight Watchers is not sponsoring these posts, but if you, dear reader, work for Weight Watchers and would like to put this blog in front of Oprah, be my guest. I love money and strong Black women.)