Weight Watchers has irrevocably changed my life.

I do not look at anything the same way that I used to…….. especially food.

Some things just have the power to take over your mindset, and permanently replace a former way of thinking.

Once I became a Weight Watcher, and food turned into points, the game had begun. It was a challenge that every day, I wholeheartedly accepted. An invisible contract with myself, to eat within the confines of my given points, and to strive to meet all of my daily goals. It was official. I now had a Weight Watchers brain.

When I go to the grocery store, I am like a highly trained scanning ninja.

A smooth criminal.

I have mad skills, and I pull out all the stops.

I spin and scan-

under the leg scan-

over the shoulder scan-

the half twist scan-

the backward scan-

the double turn scan.

The quick draw McGraw, the secret agent swoop, and the Cincinnati special (if you have to ask, you’re not ready to know) *wink

I cannot be stopped.

If scanning bar codes ever becomes an Olympic event, I’m going for the Gold medal, people!

I am an elite athlete.

A rebel with a cause,

armed with a smartphone, and I know how to use it.

I AM a stealthy ninja……..

and I scan…….. it’s what I do.

Thanks to my new found Weight Watchers routine, even my calculation of a week has changed.

Instead of measuring my time from Monday to Sunday, I now plan my week from a Thursday (my meeting day) through Wednesday (my last chance crunch before the moment of truth!) And every day is referred to by its relationship to weigh in day.

“Oh, sorry, I can’t go out to eat today because I have to weigh in tomorrow……”

I even have a special weigh in outfit that is the least possible amount of clothing that a person could wear on the scale, without actually being indecent.

I have weighed myself at home in the buff, and I have weighed myself with my “lucky clothes” on before making it WW official.

I have washed and dried my hair the night before, because I had some cockamamie idea that wet hair might make you heavier. I have even subtracted earrings from my ensemble in order to see if that made a difference. At home, I have weighed myself while holding my dog, in a purposeful attempt to see an inflated number, so that once on the scale for real, the lower number would give me much-needed perspective. I may have once or twice (ever so slightly), leaned on the bathroom counter while on the scale, so that the number would read a bit lower than what I actually weighed- just to see what it would look like if I weighed that much less……just to have the visual.

I have done some pretty nutty things in the name of progress, including waiting until after nature’s call to get on the scale, and then dancing around my bathroom in my underwear high-fiving  myself in celebration of the result.

I now remember things in reference to pounds.

“Yes, I remember your birthday party, I had just made it into the 160’s, and I was afraid that if I ate any of the cake, I would go back up into the 170’s”.

Meal preparations suddenly became a series of complicated math problems when I had to begin adding up all the points for an entire meal, then divide by the number of portions, while factoring in the gravitational pull of the Earth, and multiplying by quantum physics, to get the differential equation of how hungry to the power of infinity I was STILL going to be, even after eating all the points I had hoarded like a squirrel saving nuts for the winter.

I learned the importance of checks and balances, and nothing ever went into my mouth unnoticed or un-tracked.

I discovered that peanut butter gives me crazy eyes.

And after having several disturbing late night conversations with a dubious jar of Skippy (that left me wondering if someone might find me crouched on the kitchen floor, gripping the jar, snarling and hissing while devouring its entire contents with my bare hands), I had to give it the heave ho. Just one casualty of many.

And PS- almond butter is peanut butter’s evil doppelgänger and must be treated accordingly……..

Nowadays, I can spot another Weight Watcher from a mile away. As if somehow we can sense one another from across the grocery aisle like Jedi using The Force, in search of the last remaining container of PB2.

I am forever altered…….

and I have loved every minute of it.

Because it worked.

Because now, not only has my thinking changed, but my body has changed.

The way I see myself has changed.

And most of all, my relationship with food has changed.

And let me tell you, that one changes everything.

So now, I am a ninja.

A super bad ass, point counting, veggie eating, crafty, resourceful, fearlessly determined, weight loss ninja.

And I scan……..it’s what I do.

*wink