The holidays are typically the hardest time for people to maintain their weight let alone lose it. I thought about the holidays a lot when I decided to re-commit to Weight Watchers in October. I thought about Halloween and all the candy Autumn would bring home and Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing and Christmas fudge and all the things that were normally staples of my holiday diet.
Oddly enough, it was to my benefit that I decided to get my ass in gear so late in the year because I was enjoying the honeymoon stages of my weight loss journey. I was diligently counting everything I ate and was losing weight every week. I hadn’t yet gotten to the point where I felt like hurling my kitchen scale across the room and had even adopted an attitude of forgiveness whenever I slipped up and ate too much Chex Mix.
That damn Chex Mix.
Since I was feeling so empowered, I decided to participate in the university’s “Hold It for the Holidays” challenge. Every year HR sets up the challenge as a way to encourage faculty and staff to maintain healthy habits from Thanksgiving to the New Year, the period where most of us wind up being rolled away from the dinner table by Oompa Loompas. All you had to do was weigh in before Thanksgiving and again after the New Year. There was a $20 deposit required at weigh-in, which would be refunded if you managed to stay within two pounds of your initial weight and tracked a set of pre-determined healthy habits for six weeks.
A no brainer seeing as I was doing those things already.
Weigh-in was on my birthday, of all days, and I woke up feeling wonderful. Thirty-eight can suck it, I thought. I had a coupon for a free coffee from Biggby and another for free spaghetti from Fazolis and the entire day in front of me to spend as I wished. All that freedom made me giddy as I left the house with $20 in my pocket and my daughter in the back seat of the car.
But since this story features yours truly, you can probably guess things did not go as planned.
I dropped Autumn off at school and headed over to the HR office on campus. The receptionist was not at all prepared for the weigh-in when I told her why I was there. Then another lady showed up wanting to weigh in, which flustered the receptionist even more, but finally she got her shit together and was ready to take my name and my money. “We’ll be all set as soon as I find out where they put the scale,” she said.
Excuse me?
Finding the scale meant it was a small scale and not the scale I had imagine I’d be stepping on. I thought I’d be weighing in on a fairly accurate doctor-type scale that involved moving weights from one side to the other and maybe even a ruler thingy to measure height. But why would HR need a scale like that for a once-a-year challenge? They didn’t. And apparently somebody somewhere stowed the scale in a cupboard and I had a good idea it wasn’t the kind of scale I wanted to step on.
Sure enough, I was ushered into a back room and introduced to the most wretched-looking run-of-the-mill horrible little bathroom scale I’d ever seen. It was flat and it was dirty and worst of all I knew it would not register my weight. Most wretched run-of-the mill horrible little bathroom scales only register up to a certain weight and I had surpassed that threshold by many pounds.
“Um, I don’t think this is going to work,” I said to the receptionist.
She shot me a puzzled glance and I explained my situation. “Well let’s give it a try anyway,” she said.
And so I stepped on and was not at all surprised when the scale displayed an obnoxious ERROR message in all caps, bolded and underlined with an asterisk at the end, the corresponding footnote for which was displayed on my face. FUUUUCK!
“I didn’t think so,” I said.
I was embarrassed and the receptionist was embarrassed, but God bless her she suggested I try again. And God bless me I did.
Scale fail.
We went back out to the front desk where the receptionist refunded my money. As I walked back to my car, I put in a call to Nathan to tell him how humiliated I was. Happy birthday to me, indeed. There were no tears, just a burning indignation which, fueled by my free cup of coffee, prompted me to send an email to the HR wellness director. She sent me an apologetic reply and suggested I send her my weight in an e-mail since many others who couldn’t make the weigh-in were doing the same.
Screw that. I spent my $20 at Barnes and Noble and had a fabulous birthday anyway.
But you know what? I still lost nine pounds between Thanksgiving and the New Year. That’s with turkey and stuffing and making bon bons and cookies for Santa and more turkey and more stuffing at Meg’s house and four whole slices of Chicago deep dish pizza from Savastano’s in Tulsa, two of which I ate for lunch the next day, mind you.
No one was as surprised as I was to see such a loss. I wasn’t perfect by any means, but I must have made some good choices along the line, the most significant of which was turning my back on that wretched-looking run-of-the-mill horrible little bathroom scale and not looking back.
But I’ll be seeing you again next year, bub.
{ 1 comment }
I’m failing miserably at my weight loss challenge. After four weeks I’m right back where I started. So go me.
.-= doahleigh´s last blog ..Quatre ans =-.
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