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Pandemic pounds or quarantine 15

I have the great privilege of working for WW (y'all know it as Weight Watchers). It's a program that worked for me and for the past three years I've been fortunate to be alongside others on their journeys to weight loss or healthier living. 

It is an amazing experience, with each and every workshop, to share in the challenges and successes of so many people. I've been brought to tears, felt incredible joy, experienced awe and hugged a gazillion WW members in support. Because it's not just about losing a couple pounds or sitting around sharing recipes - these workshops dive into some mighty personal, long-standing crap that has kept us from feeling worthy/attractive/successful/healthy/capable/sexy/confident and likely a bunch of other emotions. It's real and it matters.

So this company, that has been around for 57 years and started in the living room of Jean Neiditch was gobsmacked with by coronavirus (like the rest of the country) largely because the success of and format for the program are centered around the Workshops. In person and personal, members gather and a discussion is facilitated by a coach (leader) after members have weighed in and checked in with a guide (receptionist). When the novel coronavirus shut down much of our world, we could no longer gather in a workshop. In less than a week, however, this company transformed how we could conduct the workshop by moving them to Zoom. (Do you remember when zoom was merely a verb? Now if you Google it, you get info on the videoconferencing company/platform).

I'm grateful for these workshops too, because I know that I'd likely be gaining a lot of the weight back. I've heard about Pandemic pounds and the quarantine 15 - and I believe that it will be a reality because for those of us with lifelong weight struggles the combination of stress + inactivity + routine change + quarantine at home = weight gain. And I have gained some, initially adding 7, but have stopped the trajectory because I've been able to reset.

Comments

It's not a popularity contest, but ...

When an ass is so much more

  Body image. Body positivity.  Or about coming to an appreciation for a previously much maligned back end.  In junior high (that's middle school for all of you non boomers), I was given the nickname "big butt Bowen". It was a nickname that stung because I did indeed have a large ass. I tried to mask it, a difficult endeavor since the current fashion (and remember this is junior high when fitting in was paramount) was wearing hip hugger jeans with midriff tops and my disguise of choice were peasant blouses or dresses. That style choice earned an additional nickname, Mama Cass. For those of you that don't know who Mama Cass was, she was part of the Mamas and Papas and known for her beautiful voice but also for her large body.  All about Mama Cass I was cruelly nicknamed at a time when nicknames can really mess with a girl's psyche. And I spent a lifetime as that girl with the messed up psyche. I'm sure there are more than one of you out there that can relate. B

Peter Pan no more

                          It's time. Peter Pan had to grow up.  For nearly 18 months of his life, Matthew dressed in this costume. In this picture it's new, just out of the box. He picked the costume out of a catalog and when it arrived, two weeks prior to Halloween, he asked daily if today was the day he could finally wear his Peter Pan costume. He didn't like the hat and only wore it on Halloween, but the rest of the costume he wore daily! You read that correctly - DAILY. He wore it to Meijer (for those of you unfamiliar with Meijer, it's a cleaner, friendlier, more 'upscale' version of WalMart), to church, to play dates and preschool ... Heck, he was three and adorable and it worked for him!  (Yes you read that correctly, he even wore it to church on one or two occasions when it seemed arguing with a three year old about not wearing a costume to church was not a battle worth waging. He once mentioned the priests wore dresses . . . I don't think Joh

Cabin fever made me do it!

Like nearly ever person in West Michigan, I have a serious case of cabin fever.  I won't waste your time however, complaining about the two-hundred feet of snow that's fallen in the last two hours. I won't share about the twenty or thirty times I've had to shovel my walk today as gusts blew it right back in my face. And I certainly will not lament about the temperatures that hover around negative double digits making your nostrils freeze together within moments of stepping outside. To bore you with tales of how we have to shovel areas in our yard so that our large dog and can do his 'duty' because the snow is deeper than he is tall and dogs for whatever reason cannot poop in the same place twice, is not what I will share. You will not hear about how when I open the slider to let aforementioned dog outside, gusts of wind blow drifts of snow inside and require a shovel to once again close the door.  Nor will I share how some roads around here are drifted shut be