Maintenance Weigh-In 1

As I've been trumpeting non-stop, today was my one-year anniversary of rejoining Weight Watchers, as well as my first monthly weigh-in since reclaiming my Lifetime status.

As a Lifetime member, I have to weigh-in once a month to ensure I've stayed within 2 lbs of my Goal weight, 175. As long as I didn't weigh more than 177 lbs, I would be able to continue to attend meetings for free.

A quick aside, I've had people ask, "Why do you still go to the meetings every week?" Valid question. For me, it's a case of "Check yourself before you wreck yourself." Get a little success and it's easy to think you've got in all covered: "Eh, I don't need meetings anymore. I know everything!"

Um, no. At least not for me. The key to continued success for me is weekly meeting attendance. If I'm cruising right along, I need to remember how hard it can be by listening to those who are struggling and trying to offer them help. If I'm having a problem, I need help from my leader and fellow members.

Getting to still attend meetings every week - for free - is truly an honor and a privilege, and it keeps my head on straight. When I made Lifetime in 2003, I stopped going to meetings. And we know how that turned out.

Anyway, I got to the meeting early for a multitude of reasons:

I was dying to know what the official WW scale said. This morning my home scale had me at 169.2. I needed to know the Rosetta Stone differential between the two so I would have a good idea of how I am progressing week to week when I do unofficial Tuesday morning WIs at home.

With summer unofficially over, meeting attendance skyrockets, everyone wants to get back on track, which means longer lines at the scale.

It was the first week of the month, so many Lifetimers would be returning to get their monthly WI out of the way.

I was starving. Since I was weighing in, I didn't eat or drink anything all morning, and by 10 am I am fading and cranky bigtime.

Getting to the meetings early is rarely a good idea because it means that much more time my children have to keep it together in the Center. However, I was willing to endure that because, dammit, I needed an official weight, a Luna bar and a Diet Coke, in that order.

When I walked in, only one person was ahead of me. Literally 2 minutes later, 5 people were behind me, and it was 20 minutes before the meeting start.

My Weight Watchers Center was just refurbished this summer, so new scales and pretty much everything else. I like these new scales because I can read the monitor display and get my number without waiting for the receptionist to tell me, and sometimes it takes them a while to share it.

I stepped on and, seriously, I thought my heart would beat out of my chest. I wish I was wearing a heart-rate monitor because it must have gone through the roof. Even after 52 weigh-ins, I still get nervous.

Trying not to move a muscle I craned my eyes toward the display: 168.8.

Excellent! My August weigh-in was 174.6, which means I lost 5.8 lbs over the month and, even better, met my end-of-summer goal by dropping into the 160s. Now I'm just 8.8 lbs away from my personal goal of 160.

Last week I went through my closet, purging any remaining clothes that no longer fit. Way back in the closet I found an old pair of 3x pants I used to wear last summer. I held onto them and thought it would be fun to play Show and Tell at the meeting.

I checked with Jackie, my leader, (above right in the picture, click to biggify) and she was psyched. She called me up and I got to unfurl (and that is the right verb) the giant pants and fit in one pant leg.

That's the weight-loss equivalent of popping a wheelie. And a pretty fun way to celebrate an anniversary, to boot.