Saturday, February 17, 2007

Weighty topics

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm attending WW meetings with a co-worker, Tom. He is a scientist, first and foremost, and is very opinionated. While it can be difficult to have a conversation with him (he knows everything about everything - just ask him), he is also a very kind person. He is very serious about losing weight, and is a good accountability buddy for me.

Last week he started talking about the fact that he bought a juicer over the holidays, and wanted to start using it. Evidently, his brother comes over regularly and juices up various vegetables. Lately, his brother has been buying and juicing organic carrots. So much so, he's turning a bit orange! Tom thinks this may be a good idea - he has dark Italian coloring, so he thinks it will look like he has a tan! This should be interesting...

Anyway, on Thursday, Tom was asking me how many points are in 5 large carrots (the number he wanted to juice up for the day). I looked it up, and told him they would be about 3 points - not bad (if you like carrot juice). Later that day, while I was on the computer in his class taking attendance while he got the class started, he walked over and opened his desk drawer next to me. In that drawer was the biggest carrot I've ever seen. It was ginormous! I started laughing, and had to make up a phony story to explain what I was laughing at for the students. Explaining to a class of ninth graders why Mr. D had a huge carrot in his desk was just too problematic.

Today, while at our WW meeting, we were both pretty happy with our losses for the week. While we were sitting, waiting for the meeting to start, Tom exclaims "Look! I'm crossing my legs!" I almost fell out of my chair laughing at him. He was so excited because he was able to cross his legs again. I guess you take your pleasure where you find it.

We've been trying to get a couple other teachers to join us at our weekly WW meetings - so far with no success. One teacher in particular has some health issues that make it important that she lose about 50 pounds. She has excuses every week about meeting us at WW. I told Tom this morning that I thought the real reason may be the cost of the program. While it's very reasonable (about $10 a week if you do a monthly pass), she's going through a nasty divorce, and has to be very careful with her finances right now. Tom wasn't aware of this, and decided to do something about it. Before the meeting started, he snuck (hard for a 280-lb man to sneak) up the front of the room and picked up a 'start-up' booklet. This book basically explains the program - giving food plan options and 'how to get started' tips, as well as a points calculator. I think the leader would have given it to him, if he asked, but he just got it for himself. With this book, you can (if you have the willpower) do WW on your own. He said he's going to give it to this teacher, as well as other material we get weekly. Is it wrong? Maybe - but either one of us could give her the material we have if we wanted to do so - this is my 2nd time with WW, so I have all the material from the last time. I'm making up a WW package for her this weekend of all my extra stuff. Maybe it will get her motivated to start losing the weight.

My totals so far this time around? 12 pounds in one month! Not too shabby.

No comments: