Day 70: If You Can't Beat It, Join Them. (213.8)

I knew there was something wrong with Jackie's scale. I just didn't know how wrong.

Turns out her scale is seven pounds wrong - seven pounds in the wrong direction. Seven pounds too light. I found this out today when I went to my first Weight Watcher's meeting. After seeing my digital weight readout of 213.8 (and fighting the urge to gut myself on the spot with the pen I was holding), I said "No way!" (far too loudly) and asked perhaps the stupidest question of my life:

"Is that scale right?"

No, Karen - the scale at the fucking Weight Watchers meeting is wrong. Like the 30 or so rabidly obsessed women in the room would ever allow for that.

However, instead of laughing in my face, the woman conducting the weigh-in merely smiled. "We're monitored by the county of Los Angeles," she told me. "We're required to be correct within two ounces."

The repercussions of this are massive. It's like messing with the fabric of time or something. Bottom line? My initial Day #1 weight was totally wrong. The 219 I thought I weighed 70 days ago was probably more like 225 (harey carey, anyone?), meaning I've been deluded right from the start. I suppose I could go back and change everything - adding seven pounds to every weight recording on the blog - but those would be the actions of a disturbed woman.

No, I just have to suck this new information up and let it ride. On paper, whether I like it or not, I've only lost 5.2 pounds since this experiment began. End of story.

Okay, can I please flay myself now?

The meeting itself - once I got past the fact that I could no longer breathe - was vaguely surreal. I was the youngest person in the room (60 seemed to be the median age), and a typical exchange went something like this:

Meeting Leader: "Okay, would anyone else like to share a menu tip?"
Woman in Front: "I've been making couscous a lot. It's fast."
Meeting Leader: Yes! I love couscous!"
Another Woman: "Fast matters sometimes. Has anyone else ever tried that chicken thing at Burger King?"
Woman in Back: "I have! But I like the McDonald's chicken sandwich better. I order it without anything on it, and I never eat the bun, or course. Well, sometimes I eat the bun, but only if my cats let me. They like to nibble at the bread."

No, I'm not making this up (how could I?). That's what I get for going at 9:30 a.m. ... next week I might have to hit the 6 p.m. meeting, which I assume will be attended by people who, while owning cats, still work for a living.

But perhaps I've neglected to cover a basic point here, such as ... Why was I at a Weight Watcher's meeting to begin with? I'm not a joiner. I hate joining. And yet I joined.

Well, I've been thinking about it for a while - something had to be done. There's nothing worse than embarking on a public experiment and then forcing readers to suffer when the experiment stalls. No one wants to read about someone who isn't succeeding at something, and I don't particularly want to write about it.

Okay, and there's also the fact that I actually kind of want to succeed. Call me crazy.

And so, I decided to try Weight Watchers for a month. Just to check it out and see how I like it ("Consumer Reports" recently rated it the only diet that works long-term, if that helps any). I didn't expect the seven-pound fist to the stomach on my first day, but, what the hell ... they're only numbers.

All I know is, those numbers better be a lot different by Day #100.