I’ve shifted my focus when it comes to food these days, looking more to slowing down and being IN the food moment when I eat. I am trying to be more aware of why I eat, to recognize emotional triggers and be honest about the difference between what my head wants and what my body wants.

(Also, this walrus doing situps is PRICELESS)

I don’t know if this will surprise anyone, but thanks to the change in focus, I’m sitting in a pretty stagnant place when it comes to weight loss. I’m actually fine with it… most of the time. That being said, I’ve spent SO MANY YEARS thinking about the scale, worrying about my weight, and trying to lose more… that I feel a little weird and untethered when weight loss is not my main (or only) focus. So this means that every commercial for every weight loss aid, pill, supplement, or diet plan is twinging a little with me right now.

The pitches that catch my attention the most come from Weight Watchers. After all, I lost 50 pounds before my wedding by doing WW. When I follow their program, I really do lose weight and I do so pretty consistently without feeling deprived. So why don’t I go back to what I know works?

WW works SO well for so many people. I know people, good friends, who are currently having tremendous success with the program and they’re happily reaching their goals. So my disclaimer, then, is that BY NO MEANS do I think it’s a bad program. But for me? For me, it’s a really bad thing.

When I’m following WW, it becomes all about the points for me. I come up with ridiculous ways to eat the lowest possible point value foods. My diet becomes 100% processed, fake, sugar free, fat free, prepackaged specialty foods that have no nutritional value beyond keeping me full as long as possible. I became totally obsessed with food. My fridge and pantry were stocked with fake foods full of chemicals and colorings and fake sugars. Everything was too sweet, too salty, too spicy because with all the fat and natural sugar removed it had no taste of its own.

Weight Watchers, for me, turns my food relationship into a terrible fight against what I want, a constant push to prove my worth through my ability to stick to a plan no matter how it makes me feel because it helps me reach an outward appearance goal.

I know it’s not that way for everyone. I know some people are great at turning WW into a tool that backs up their efforts. In fact, one of the reasons I’ve hesitated to talk about this stuff before now was because I do know so many people who know and love the program, and I’ve never wanted to make them feel like I thought what worked for them was bad. If WW (or anything else) works for you, please stick with it. Finding a path to health is such an individual thing, and ALL about what works best for each person.

In the end, the reason I wrote out any of this was because I met the first person I’ve ever talked to who felt the same way I did about it. One friend who agreed that WW worked wonders for her in terms of weight loss, but brought out all of her worst food tendencies when it comes to nutrition. It did the same thing for me. It brought out every competitive, perfectionist, controlling aspect of my personality and turned it into a constant fight to eat the fewest points regardless of their worth.

In the end, it says A LOT more about me than it does about the program… but that’s the whole deal. This is about figuring out what works for me, what works with my tendencies instead of against them.