Should I blame it on Movie Club…or thank them. I’m going to thank them, but you need to know how and why this idea to chronicle my next 50 weeks came about in order to understand how my Movie Club got me off my *** and into a Weight Watchers meeting.
In early September, my husband and I went to Mexico. I figured out that if I lived there, with a chef and no access to a refrigerator, I could probably lose weight. It was all about the fish…fresh, plentiful and grilled to perfection. It was enough to make me not want junk food. But then I came home and met the enemy in my kitchen. My refrigerator was calling to me as I re-entered reality. And I knew that my fresh fish “pipe dream” had come to an end.
You see how I blamed the refrigerator. It’s a handy way to circumvent the obvious problem of my relationship with this appliance. We have been in love with each other for so long that we have developed a mutually satisfying existence. I fill it full of junk and it lets me remove whatever I want, whenever I want, and eat it.
And then there is the fact that I don’t exercise. I never did. I was the kid who was picked last for all sports teams and dreaded P.E. class because I hated to be out of breath, which I frequently was because I was the “overweight one. “ I come from a long line of non-athletes. My father and mother prided themselves in the fact that they hated P.E. class, and I wanted to be just like them. They turned out just fine and not overweight, so if I waited long enough, I would be just like them…or so I thought.
Even though I am 5'10", I must have gotten the genes of some of my other “bigger” relatives who didn’t exercise. So, before I go any further with this weight loss idea, let me just say that after 57 years of not sweating, being out of breath and avoiding “spinning classes”, which I thought had something to do with yarn, for now, I’m not changing a thing in that department.
Which gets back to Movie Club. Every other month, my club of six couples, meets and discusses a movie over a potluck dinner. This month’s pick was Julie & Julia. If you don’t know about this movie, Julie is the young woman who decided to make 524 recipes in 365 days using Julia Childs’s cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
By writing a blog, Julie was forced to be accountable and finish all of the recipes in the allotted time. I know that I operate the best if I am forced to be accountable, so it makes perfect sense to me that if I write a blog, something I have never tackled before, I am more likely to succeed with my goal of losing 50 pounds in 50 weeks.
Now, it’s not going to be a “slam dunk” for me because I love to eat. I don’t have any other excuses than that. It’s interesting that my two Labrador retrievers are slim and fit and never get table food because I want them to live FOREVER. But when it comes to me, I don’t seem to have the same motivation. I don’t want to live forever, but I do want to be around a lot longer, so I know I have to treat myself as well as I treat my dogs.
So, join me and see how my shopping for food, preparing my meals, attending Weight Watcher meetings, going out to eat and going on vacation, one of which is a seven day cruise, is working for me.
Whether you are an armchair follower or a partner in my weight loss journey, let me know how you are doing. You’ll find me, almost every day, writing my blog, “Fifty Pounds in Fifty Weeks,” at fiftypoundsinfiftyweeks.blogspot.com