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A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from Marley who is an editor at
viewpoints.com She asked me to write about about my Weight Watchers
story---in about 500 words!! After I stopped laughing I said I would
give it a shot. I once wrote and posted an 8 part series here and now I had to do an abbreviated--very abbreviated--version of my fighting fat (which you can find here starting with part 1 Fighting Fat: The Victories And The Defeats I was the sort of baby whose cheeks you wanted to
pinch--all 4 cheeks--including the 2 on the butt. I was the kid who
had"--such a handsome face if onl... Read More)
I did send Marley an article---well a little over 500 words--and she replied with
Hi Martin!
Here is the link to your article:
http://www.viewpoints.com/thegoods/My-Weight-Watchers-Story
I am so glad you’re going to share it on your site as well – it really is a great story, and I’m sure our readers will love it.
Thanks again, and have a great weekend!
Marly
There is a story of 14 years and it starts here:
It was the last Wednesday in March of 1967 in New York City a little
after midnight and I had eaten a large pizza with everything on it and a
‘Hymie’s Special’--a three layered deli sandwich---from the Stage Deli
on 7th Avenue when I made the decision that I didn’t want to spend
another minute being a fat man! I was 31 and all I could recall was
being on one diet after another since I was a teen.
Name the diet and I had been on it from the ice cream diet (yes, I lost 3
pounds eating nothing but ice cream for a week) to enlisting in the
Marine Corps to lose weight. Do I have to tell you that they made a cook
out of me? The worst diet of all was the one the doctor put me on with a
‘diet aid’ of pills. After a week of taking 3 pills a day I lost 6
pounds. I was 16 and my logic told me that if I increased the pills I
could lose twice the amount of weight. Long story short is that I landed
in the hospital a couple of weeks later having my stomach pumped and
being labeled a drug addict!
Like the weight the diets came and went with the results that if I lost 7
pounds as soon as I went off the diet I gained 10. I couldn’t stand
another minute of being a fat man and I knew if I stayed in my
apartment, where I was disgusted with who I was and what I looked like, I
wouldn’t make it through the night. I ran out and went into the first
phone booth I came to and dialed a number that I had found in a magazine
and had in my pocket. I stayed in that phone booth for over 7 hours
until someone answered the phone with, “Good morning, Weight Watchers.
My name is Marilyn. Can I help you?”
I walked into a hotel on 72nd Street to a room filled with women. I was
ready to turn around, walk out and get something to eat! Someone took my
hand, started to talk to me and before I knew it I had paid $5---$3 to
register and $2 for the meeting. Remember this was almost 44 years ago.
There is so much to remember: like all the women--about 30-40 of
them--mothering me but at the same time hating (not really--maybe
envious) me as the weight came off so fast and I didn’t have ‘that week’
to contend with. At the end of 16 weeks we got a pin with ‘diamond
chips’ that represented each 10 pounds of weight we lost and I had lost
64 pounds in that 4 months.
I continued eating ‘5 fish, 3 beef, 1 liver, 5 fruit, 2 glasses of
powdered milk, 4 ounces of a #4 vegetable and all the #3’s I wanted’
which became my mantra. When I finally got down to my goal I went to
work as a WW lecturer--a very successful one, he says modestly--and then
went with my partner to open the Weight Watchers of Memphis, Eastern
Arkansas, Western Tennessee and Chattanooga franchise.
The story doesn’t end there of course but I still have my ‘Lifetime
Membership’ where the most I would have to pay is $2 if I missed a
monthly weigh in or weighed over my goal---wonder if 44 years later they
would still honor that membership!
I left the weight reduction field in 1979 but not the fight against fat or helping others--and I have written the complete story of my involvement with Weight Watchers traveling the world and also the company I founded called Our Weigh. I might just rewrite it again or, if I can find the original posts, repost the blogs. There is a lot of information both for and about food, fat and diets.
By the way viewpoints.com is an excellent consumers web
site with reviews by people like you and me rating all sorts of
products.
