The Wait Game

The real lessons of dieting.

-Melina Gerosa Bellows

In June I made a full commitment to make the summer’s focus weight loss. After I failed to find happiness two sizes larger, I defaulted to my usual way of dealing with not being happy with my body: dieting. My plan was weekly meetings with my friend Nina and our Weight Watchers leader Kim (who’s also a life coach). We’d stick to the WW diet, mindset and weekly weigh-ins, plus have Kim all to ourselves for a half hour each week.

“If you follow the program perfectly, you can expect to lose a pound per week,” said Kim.

“Only a pound?” Nina and I both complained loudly, for we each had about 14 to lose.

“Would you rather lose weight quickly and then be back in this position again and again in your life?” said Kim, standing firm. “Or would you rather lose it slowly and really learn how to eat to keep it off?”

Shackled to a diet since high school, what I really wanted was both. I wanted the weight off NOW, during bikini and sundress season, and I never want to see it again. And again and again, which is definitely my pattern.

Secretly I decided to do everything right and lose more than a pound a week. I’ll show her, I thought.

The process was excruciatingly slow despite dramatic changes in my diet. No more bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal before bed. No more baked goods, even my own son’s birthday cake. I stocked my office fridge with low-cal snacks, like Greek yogurt and fiber bars. Faithfully, I worked out six days a week, alternating 90-minute yoga classes with running and weight lifting.

Not that I was always perfect. I spent a weekend in the Hamptons with my friends Rebecca and Chuck, both wonderful chefs. There was beaucoup vino and homemade flatbread pizzas and chocolate cookies. The weekend was as delicious as it was devastating to my diet. I gained 2 of the four pounds I had worked eight weeks to lose.

“It’s not fair, can’t I live a little?” I cried at my weekly meeting with Kim and Nina. “This is too hard. A month of dieting out the window! If I worked at anything else this hard in my life, I’d be rich. Or famous.”

Gently they encouraged me to get back on the program.

“Keep going,” Kim said. “Take the long view.”

“You can do it,” said Nina. “You look great already.”

They did not let me quit, and we made a new plan: no refined foods for a week. Nina and I were to skip all white bread, pasta, rice, crackers, cookies, anything in the flour family for one week only.

By the following week I had lost 3 pounds, the two I had momentarily gained from the Hamptons, plus another. I felt exhilarated. Five pounds gone. And by the time I finished the diet, I’d lost two more – seven pounds in all!