Current Weight: 212.3 lbs

Total Weight Loss: 22.1 lbs

You know what’s hard?  Losing weight.

It’s hard explaining to people how difficult losing weight is.  Not just the not eating part.  Everything about it.  It takes up your life.  It’s all you think about (and often talk about).  ”When am I going to work out?” “Do I have snacks for the week?” “Do I have my meals planned?”  You sort of have to turn into a VERY organized person during the process (even if you aren’t an overly organized person).

And I think this past week’s Mad Men encapsulated these struggles perfectly.

WARNING:  A few spoilers…except not really, but if you get upset reading anything about a Mad Men episode, then maybe you should stop here?

“It’s so easy to blame our problems on others, but really we’re in charge of ourselves.” – Betty Draper Francis

Honestly, that quote says it all.

If you don’t watch Mad Men, this week’s episode saw Betty (Don Draper’s ex-wife), who has gained weight since last season, join Weight Watchers.  The episode starts out with Betty weighing out each part of her breakfast (cheese cubes and a grapefruit) before eating.  As a person who measures everything I eat, it was pretty dead on.  I don’t necessarily weigh everything, but I do have a kitchen scale, and I do use it quite often.

The show ends with Betty and her family enjoying their Thanksgiving dinner.  Betty’s plate?  A brussel sprout, a small bit of cherry pie, a small bit of green bean casserole, something brown (sweet potato casserole?) and a single slice of turkey.

So. Depressing.

Can I express how thankful I am for activity points?  To slave over a stove ALL day and not be able to eat any of it is just terrible.  Terrible.

The scene that hit home the most for me was the whipped cream scene.  After seeing Don’s new wife’s skinny body, Betty comes home and immediately goes to the fridge and squirts a big dollop of whipped cream in her mouth.  She then realizes how much she’d regret this, and immediately spits it out.

Man, have I been there.  Oh, and I’ve been there recently.  Unlike Betty, my weakness isn’t sweets, it’s salty foods, namely potato chips.  Thankfully, nothing is really triggering these binge eating sprees, just the fact that there is a bag of potato chips sitting in front of me and I can’t seem to make myself stop eating them…even if they belong to someone else.

I never bring chips into my house.  I know better.  However, I now have a roommate and it seems silly to tell her “hey, you can’t have that in the house because I will eat it.”  Surely, I have more self-control?

Wrong.  Instead, I have now asked that she keep the chips in her room.  Like a hoarder.  I wish I could have them in the kitchen, but I’m just not ready for that yet.  Oh well.  Thankfully, I didn’t really do much damage, and just delayed weight loss another week.  OK, back to Mad Men…

One big difference in Betty’s WW experience than my own:  The WW Meeting.  Being weighed in  of everyone and having the lady say your weight out loud?  Horrifying.  Obviously, that’s not much different than me writing this blog, but still.  They also got a little deeper in their struggles at the meetings than what I’ve seen (Betty went into a lot of personal stuff at the meeting).

In the meetings I’ve attended, it’s usually the group leader going over a few tips and providing motivation for the week.  Occasionally, someone would talk about their struggles that week, but it was pretty rare…and it was more of an “I can’t stop eating potato chips”-type of confession.  Not “I’m jealous of my ex-husband’s new skinny wife”.  Maybe my meetings had non-talkative people?  Who knows, but I could see how the support group aspect would be helpful.

Small rant:  Anybody else get upset that everyone refers to this version of Betty as “Fat Betty”?  She’s not fat.  Yeah, she’s heavier than she usually is, but she most definitely isn’t fat.  Let’s laugh and poke fun at the pretty girl who gained weight!  I’ll freely admit that Betty is bat sh*t crazy, but I still won’t mock her for gaining weight.

Overall, I loved how the show portrayed dieting.  It’s tough.  It’s consuming.  And, it’s slightly depressing at times.