Four Pounds

So Michelle, my best friend from my college days, calls a few weeks ago to tell me that she needs a heart transplant.  Are you on a list, I ask.  No, she says.  Her doctor wants her to lose weight first.  She has to lose 12 lbs by her next appointment in January.  A pound a week, I say, encouraging--you can do that.  She says she wants to have lap band surgery.  What??? I exclaim.  You have a bad heart and you want to have surgery?  That sounds awful.  Surely no doctor would approve such an action.  Yes, her doctor did approve it, since the weight is more of a threat to her weak heart than surgery would be.  I'm not buying it, but luckily, Michelle needs $800 to be able to get the surgery and she hasn't saved it up yet.  Nononononono, I tell her.  Join Weight Watchers.  Exercise.  Lose your one pound a week the old fashion way--diet and exercise.  Slow and steady wins the race. 

So she hems and haws, but later she texts me that she will join weight watchers if I do.  So I do.  Now it would be great if we lived next door to each other and we could go walking (except she walks really slow and she always preferred running and I like to walk fast, but I'm not much into running) and go to weight watcher's meetings together (except I would know if she was cheating and I'd get in her face and vice versa and let's face it, we want to look good in public), but (sadly) we live on opposite sides of Los Angeles. 

But she joined her weight watchers and I joined mine.  I actually drank tomato juice last week and texted her and she texted back that she was drinking water with lemon (yuck).  I stayed within my points (for a whole week, sarcastic woo hoo) and lost 1.4 lbs (the particular weight in day was a go to the dentist day, so I hadn't eaten all day, which is why my woo hoo is sarcastic).  Michelle lost 1.5 lbs.

Now I have to try to figure out if I should let her win or become super competitive.  I mean if I don't take it seriously, then she won't.  But I am a super competitive person.  She beat me (and since I had weighted in on a very unusual day, she probably beat me soundly). 

And then there are the personal benefits of losing weight.  A whole week on the plan and I'm sleeping better.  The weight watcher cheer leader said that for every pound you lose, that's four pounds of pressure off your knees.  My knees kill me and yet this morning I did not struggle as much (still struggled--four pounds off when I need over a hundred pounds off is not that much) going up the stairs.

So I have hit upon a plan of attack.  I'm not going to go crazy.  I'll do my best to stay within my points, but I know from experience the real way to lose weight is to sprinkle in some starvation.  I won't do that.  And I'll take my little losses and multiply them by four in my head, because my real goal is to take pressure off my knees.  On paper I'll be slow and steady (and hopefully Michelle will beat me, because she needs to lose a bit more than me), but in my head I'll be slaughtering the competition.  My little diet handicap.

By the way, tiny bags of m&m's are only 1 point, right?  They're so little.  I certainly don't need to check out something so tiny.  I'm going with 1 point.   The cheerleader said sugar is evil, but I'm not drinking that koolaid.