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Monday, January 01, 2001
Dear Dotti,
I have been using your website as a source of encouragement for the last year and half. I decided to submit my "Weight Watcher Success" story even though I am not at goal yet. My initial thought was to wait until I was at goal weight and submit it. After thinking about sharing my success I thought, why "weight"? When I look over the last 18 months I have been experiencing great success. Initially my goal was to get to the specified weight. My new goal is continue with Weight Watchers for the rest of my life and practice eating healthy daily. Getting to the "suggested weight" is simply a bonus of my goal.
I remember going to the pediatrician at thirteen years of age for my first round of diet pills and have struggled with my weight since. I was chubby. I put on a tremendous amount of weight during the last twenty years. I am a licensed addiction counselor and have taught about addiction for the last ten years. I was not able to apply most of what I knew to my own "addiction" with food until now. I tried every diet I can think of, and every diet worked... until it didn't. I went on the diet and off the diet, the end result was always gaining all I lost plus an additional 5-10 pounds.
First and foremost, God has been the biggest part of my success. I see how his loving guidance led me to all the places I needed to go, to get me to this place, where I am teachable. One of my most favorite sayings is "when the student is ready the teacher appears". I have been guided and directed for a very long time to the "teachers" that I needed to hear. Some of the things I was guided to is key to my success. In 1991 I checked into an exclusive 30-day treatment center for weight loss. The woman assigned as my counselor was the first person to help me see how I was using food as love. In 1996 I went on a "Cruise to Lose" with Richard Simmons; Richard stressed move, groove, and loose and offered so much encouragement telling me "you can do it"! I think one of my turning points was while I was on the cruise with Richard. He recommended a designer jewelry shop in Mexico and said, "make sure you go". I went to the jewelry store and saw the most beautiful pendant of a woman in a shell; part of her appears to be coming out of the shell. It dawned on me the self-imposed shell I had been in for years and I then knew it was time for me to get out. I bought that pendant and have worn it most every day since. The other piece of my puzzle to success was taking a job as a counselor with a juvenile correctional facility four years ago. The interesting thing about this job is for one; I have to walk over a thirty three-acre campus daily. That was a chore when I initially weighed probably 300 lbs. The other piece is the youth are incarcerated for a variety of crimes and must go through the State Of Texas "ResocializationT" program. One of the things we teach them is the "Offense CycleT". In the offense cycle, the youth are to determine how their offensive behavior is a cycle of repetitive negative behaviors that result in offending behavior. It dawned on me my eating was a repetitive negative behavior cycle I had been in for twenty years and the person I was offending was me! As I was teaching the kids to look at how they could break this cycle, I myself learned how to break mine.
The last 18 months on the Weight Watchers program has been the most significant life changing thing I have done in my life. I am not new to Weight Watchers; I have a shoebox full of old Weight Watcher member books that date all the way back to the 70's. What is new is my faith in the program, the long term success I am experiencing and the joy I feel. I have lost 92 lbs, down six dress sizes and have 50 pounds to the weight goal suggested, however I see it is not only possible, but also highly probable.
Twenty years ago I thought I needed to loose weight (15-20 lbs), which was the beginning of my life long "yo-yo diet" syndrome. For every "diet" I went on, I lost weight. As soon as I went off the "diet" the weight was back..plus, I could not believe I had gone that far up the scale. My health was not great and I was fearful at my highest weight I'd have a heart attack. My days involved going to work, home to the couch and watching life pass me by. I was miserable. I couldn't get dressed for work without breaking into a sweat and the physical stress of dressing made me look as if my blood pressure was stroke level. I didn't have energy to prepare a meal, so I drove to fast food places all the time. For years I struggled and fought with my weight, on June 16, 1999 I finally surrendered to it. I decided that day quitting was NOT an option. The only thing that made my decision a reality was the action I took, I weighed in at my first meeting at 292 lbs.
What I have learned the last year and half has really confirmed, diets don't work for me. I needed to make a permanent lifestyle change that would work for the rest of my life. Weight Watchers has assisted me with that. The Weight Watchers 1-2-3 Program has taught me the basics of good nutrition. It has helped fill my personal toolbox with healthy options for enjoying food and not being obsessed with it. For years much of my life revolved around my unhealthy use of food to comfort myself. One day, at a local gas station while filling my car, it dawned on me "food is fuel". I noticed my car didn't leave the pump wait 30 minutes and think, "I need fuel again". My car does rather well and can go a great distance on a single fill up. It has a warning light that alerts me when it is on low fuel. Well, guess what? I have indicators too. I simply had fueled so often for fear of running on empty, or fueled just because, I never looked for my internal indicator light! I once believed food was love, fun, connection, and comfort. My relationship with food was unhealthy; I had come to rely on food for many of the wrong reasons. Don't misunderstand, I find food enjoyable, I simply do not allow food to have the powerful voice it once had. Weight Watchers has taught me to be a wise shopper for fueling my body. I choose today to fill up with premium, what I used before made me run sluggish. Food is fuel for me today, I am moving fast from the BIG four-door sedan to the sleek fast sporty version of me! I'll keep you posted when the new model is out!
Thanks,
God, Weight Watchers, Dotti, Richard Simmons, and Vicki O'Grady &
All the other angels, you have changed my life!
DiAnne Craig- Beaumont, Texas
Photos
- L-R: taken with Richard Simmons; taken with
my shell pendant;
taken 11/2000 in my formal; taken 11/2000 on my anniversary cruise
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