I’ve lost 17. 3 kilo’s (38.6 pounds) now. Every single week I look forward to Thursday. Well, not every week. There have been two weeks in my 19 of doing weight watcher’s where I would rather have not gone to see what was happening on the scales.

Last week when I showed up I was told that I am their most loyal customer. That surprised me somewhat. They say people don’t go a lot during winter. Because winter is the time for warm and rich foods. They stay away because they know they’ve done badly and don’t want to know.

Well, I go regardless. If I have a good week I go because I LOVE the satisfaction I get from getting told how much I have lost in the last week. Where I can say “YEAH! My hard work and persistence has paid off”

If I know I’ve been a little bad, maybe snacked on too many of Jaxon’s food (that is now on my banned list) I still go. Because I NEED that disappointment to keep me motivated for the week ahead of me.

It is sometimes really hard to stay away from those things I really like. I thought coke would be my downfall but it’s actually pizza! I miss pizza and…pizza with extra cheese. No matter how you spin it, a pizza with cheese on it is a big no no. But it’s always much easier to resist it when I can say to myself “Remember how you felt when you put on 500 grams” It is easier to look for my own kind of snacks while giving Jaxon’s his if I can remember that I am NOT eating those things for a very good reason.

If I didn’t go during those bad weeks to find out what had happened then I wouldn’t learn the things that really make a difference. I wouldn’t know just how badly eating one or two oily chicken meat ball’s without counting them in my points can affect my weekly weigh in. Going to meetings to accept the bad news is just as important to me as going each week for the good news.

Up or down, the weigh in gives me what I need to continue on each week. It either tells me that I was doing the right things, and eating the right foods, or it tells me that I need to reevaluate how much I really REALLY want that pizza. Right now, I want the scales to show a decrease. And I want THAT more than I want the pizza.

If you’re doing weight watcher’s and you tend to miss weigh in during the weeks where you know you’ve stuffed up then I highly recommend that you go anyway. Suck it up and stand on the scales and face whatever it is they have to tell you. Use what the scales tell you each week to learn from your mistakes. Use the feeling you get when you have a gain to kick your ass in to gear for the following week. Use the disappointment to motivate yourself to stick to it.

The most important thing I have learned is that Weight Watcher’s is not a diet. Or shouldn’t be considered a diet. It’s a lifestyle change. A huge change that will require a life time commitment in order to maintain your healthy weight. The only way to make those changes is to learn what you can and can’t eat in order to lose weight. If you don’t learn from your bad weeks by weighing in and facing the scales, then you’re not learning anything.