the answer

So I just discovered Lifehacker.  Great, yet another way to mindlessly wile away the hours on the internet, just what I needed, haha. On the front page the other day was an article called Guilt, Shame and Weight Loss, so I thought, alright, sure, I'll take the bait. Lately I'm loving reading a bunch of different health, fitness, weight loss stuff, just to see if I pick up any little tidbits, you know? The article was pretty cool, the author Tim Grahl talked about how he lost about 50 lbs in 5 months. Before this weight loss he said he'd tried many different diets (WW included) to no avail. His method was to pick a diet (his was basically whole foods, no meat except fish and some other stipulations), a time frame (as opposed to a lbs goal) and then proceed to tell the whole world about it. His theory was, if everyone knows I'm doing this, then it's going to be pretty embarrassing if I screw up, so maybe that will keep me in line. Obviously it worked. He ends with:

I had tried all the diets and none of them worked for me. I used to think it was because I was lazy and lacked willpower. What I realized is that everyone is lazy and lacks willpower. The trick is to leverage things like guilt and shame to keep you focused on the end goal and lose that weight.

While I totally agree with him (obviously- hello weight loss blog.) the article got me thinking. I've read many magazine articles, blog posts and so on and so forth before finding weight watchers and since, and  the point a lot of them are trying to make is that they've found THE ANSWER. And not even in a self-righteous kind of way. Heck, I'm kind of proclaiming that myself with my undying love for Weight Watchers, right? It's because I'm so excited something is working and I want to share it with whoever will listen. But I'm kind of thinking that Weight Watchers isn't 'the answer', just like Atkins isn't, or nutrisystem, or any other diets that have worked for so many people. I'm discovering that the answer is finally being ready. Ready to change, commit, work hard. Weight Watchers is definitely making the process a lot easier for me than say, counting calories on my own would be. But for most people, myself included, it's not so much the type of vehicle that gets us there, but the fact that we finally got in, ready for a long ride.

What about you, are you ready?