Taking back accountability

I glance at the clock on my bedside table. It's 5:09. My kitty senses that I’m awake, meows as he saunters to my side for a cuddle, hoping to get me out of bed as soon as possible. It’s a weekday, so the little fur-ball is in luck. I shuffle out of bed quietly as to not to disturb hubby. In the kitchen, I turn on the coffee maker and head to the basement. I feed the kitty and his friend fishy, fix my hair and apply makeup. I hear that hubby is in the shower.

It is 5:47 when I emerge from the basement into the kitchen.

“Morning how was your sleep? Did anything interesting happen?” I ask a freshly showered hubby. He mumbles a “morning” and confirms that nothing interesting happened during his sleep. We continue the morning routine to assemble lunches, breakfast, coffee (him), peppermint tea (me) and snacks (little bears) for the car.

It is 6:03 when I return to the bedroom to get dressed. It’s Wednesday, so I strip down to my socks and hop on the scale. I’m down (yay) less than a pound, but that’s fine by me.

I’m amazed how much simpler it is to step on the scale at home than to do so TOPS, or at Weight Watchers. Why the heck did I put so much stock into accountability?

To lose weight, I always thought that I absolutely needed to be accountable to someone.  Typically, I went to Weight Watchers or made some sort of an arrangement with a friend. But, WW is expensive and checking in with a friend is inconvenient.

So in March 2010 and six months into therapy I still wanted/needed accountability. I decided that TOPS was a good place to get accountability. It’s inexpensive and local. I attended a meeting (LONG) and signed up. Most of the members of TOPS were women, and they were all lovely, positive and supportive. I can see why so many of them are long term members.

I planned to weigh in at TOPS each week, skip most, but attend some of the meetings and to follow my own eating program. I was in it for the long term (years), however long it would take to lose the weight.

The first weigh in was semi-shocking. Looking back, the results weren’t surprising, only ten pounds less than my last weigh in at the obstetrician’s office. Of course, my number lead to feelings of guilt and shame and I went into a short-lived funk. (My therapist wanted me to weigh myself so my weight wouldn’t be so shocking to me creating such a funk.)

For the second weigh in, I gained and the lady recording my weight expressed her concern by asking me about the foods I ate, did I drink enough water? Did I exercise? I explained to her that it’s fine that I gained, I’m here to weigh myself and I’m not actually following the TOPS program or lose weight.

 The third weigh in was another gain. With it, more questions that came from the heart, but left me a little freaked out. I was fine with the gain but I was beginning to worry about how to handle reactions from everyone else. So, I explained the situation again (I’m just here to use the scale, I’m not trying to lose weight, etc.) and I wondered if joining TOPS was such a great idea after all.

In therapy, I learned to not react to the scale – either way – not to get upset over a gain or overly excited over a loss. It’s just a number. Of course, handling everyone else’s reactions was another story altogether. It was impossible to avoid the standard question, “how did you do?” or the silent equivalent; thumbs up, big smile, head turned slightly and eye brows lifted. And the inevitable analyzing to figure out what went wrong and what I can do to make sure that I don’t gain the following week.

This improved after I spoke to the group about my journey and discoveries in therapy, but the stress was still there. In August I questioned why I needed third party accountability. That’s when I realized, never in my life had I been accountable to myself. I always thought that that I needed to give that responsibility to someone else; be it Weight Watchers, TOPS or a friend.

In October I took the responsibility of accountability back and I have been my own weight recorder since.

The bonus is that I can weigh myself for free when it works for me: on Wednesday mornings at 6 am, wearing nothing except for socks to keep my feet warm… 

NOTE: Blogger has flagged me as spammer. I noticed that comments that I make on blogger blogs disappear. Munchberry confirmed this and she is finding my comments in spam. So I've been making comments, they just may appear in your SPAM folder, please check. 

Funny: while testing the commenting widget on my blog, I noticed that I'm flagged as spam on my own blog when I'm not signed into blogger itself. That's when I discovered the "I'm not a robot" widget. Fellow Blogger bloggers, how do you turn off the "I'm not a robot" comment gatekeeper? It must be standard now as I don't remember adding this tool.