Month: February 2025

So, What’s The Deal With You And WeightWatchers?

/ UsedToGuy / Leave a comment

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve made some not so subtle mentions of WeightWatchers as my main tool for weight loss. If you want to know about why I picked it in the first place go read this. Once I had committed to the plan the challenge became figuring out how to make it work for me.

There’s a lot going on in the WeightWatchers app and you can take advantage of as much or as little as you like. Want to cheer on others and to be social, they have a very active community, you can follow other people or join a group of folks with similar interests. Of course you can also go to WeightWatchers workshops. I’ve never gone but if you thrive in high contact, in-person environments then this might be for you. They now also offer weight loss medications as part of the plan. (Soapbox Moment: The whole medication for weight loss trend is not really something I’m into. If it works for you, awesome, but it’s not something I’ve done or plan on ever doing. I always see these commercials mention curbing hunger. I very rarely overate because I was hungry. I’m not sure I knew exactly what ‘hungry’ was–and that was the problem.)

I’d be confused too if I had to choose between Dofestone and Decictn, or maybe Dorices. Nope, totally going to Dofection. The one word I can read in this picture is LIFE, which seems fitting because sometimes life is just as confusing as this picture. ChatGPT, I love you…No matter what plan you pick choose one that will work for YOU. Picking the wrong plan is like wearing the wrong size pants. You might squeeze into them but they won’t be comfortable and you’ll want out of them as soon as possible.

If you’re like me at all you want to do this yourself and you want it to be simple and sustainable. I chose to just use the WeightWatchers app. Here are the basics of how it works.

PS: If WeightWatchers isn’t your thing feel free to save yourself a few minutes and go check out What’s Spinning? my completely unrelated page on my record collection. Or you can read on because most of what I say applies to any plan or program.

When you first signup you’ll be asked some questions like; your current weight, your weight goal, your activity goals. When all is said and done you’ll end up with a number of daily and weekly points that are based on your current weight. The screens will look something like these:

The daily points are set based on your current weight. As you lose weight the # of points will decrease. Also women receive fewer points than men (sorry–I guess this has to do with body mass etc). Tracking your daily points is where you will spend most of your time.

I only ever count my daily points. I utterly ignore the weekly points, they do not exist. I always found that if I ate those weekly points my weight loss stopped. So I stopped counting the weekly points. If I go over for a day I went over for the day. I get up tomorrow and try to stay right at the daily number again. Wake up each day and repeat.

Believe it or not when and how you track will make a big difference in the results you see. I find that when I wait until the end of the day to track what I ate — or start back tracking to prior days (ugh) it’s a red flag that my focus is not where it needs to be.

One of my tips is to try to track as soon after you eat as possible. This fosters immediate accountability and gives you feedback. It also lets you know what’s left for the rest of the day.

Don’t cheat. It goes without saying, but it needs to be said, that if you cheat by skipping points, not tracking food or not getting your portions right, you’re just sabotaging your results.

Your ultimate success depends on you being honest with yourself. It means above all else that you have to really count everything you eat. Cutting little corners, “I’ll just grab a handful of these chips, it doesn’t really count,” will lead to bigger corner cutting and ultimately sabotage your plans. I still face this challenge every day, even after over 5 years. Right before bed at night is the worst, “It’s just a handful of tortilla chips or pretzels or whatever is in the front of the snack cabinet,” that little voice in my head says. Some nights I win the battle and some nights I don’t.

WeightWatchers offers a lot of what they call ‘Zero Points’ foods. You can have as much of these as you want and they count as 0 points for the day, thus the name. Most of the list is made up of veggies and fruits but you get some lean proteins on the list as well. Ask anyone who knows me and they know I’m probably eating chicken breast for at least one meal a day.

Take advantage of what the plan gives you. Being hungry every day is not sustainable so make sure you are actually eating. Zero point foods can help you eat enough volume to feel full. You can’t starve your way thin.

Plan out your day when possible. Knowing what you are going to eat for each meal can help you adjust ahead of time. Planning a big dinner, lighten up lunch. Want a piece of pizza, it’s probably all of your points for the day but you can do it.

Planning your day can really help you avoid making poor decisions. This is especially true if you will be eating out. WeightWatchers has a great list of food points for virtually every menu item at all major restaurants. You’ll see pretty quickly what fits your plan and what doesn’t. Please note: planning your day does not = tracking your whole day in the morning and then just going along. Don’t actually track what you eat until you do.

You can create and save meals that you eat often. This makes tracking those meals a single click.

Along with saving frequent meals I’m a big fan of having ‘go to’ meals to take the guesswork out of things. My eating is probably pretty boring. I work from home so most days I eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch. My breakfast is 5 points and my lunch is 8. That leaves me with around 16 points for the rest of the day. I rely on this consistency to stay on track.

A few last points. I know WeightWatchers costs money each month (heck you’d think after all of the money I’ve given these guys and all of the times I’ve mentioned their name in this post they’d get me free lifetime access, but whatever I’m not bitter or anything). If their monthly fees are not something you can budget you can always count calories. Some Google searching will get you some decent free plans. Also know that WeightWatchers changes plans from time to time. If you are really cooking along on your plan this can be super annoying. Your daily points might change, the foods on the zero points list might change etc. I’ve been at this for almost 6 years and I’ve worked through at least 4 different plans. The core principles don’t change so I just ride the wave from plan to plan.

All criticism and snark aside, if it weren’t for WeightWatchers making things easy I would not have lost the weight I did. Whatever I have paid them is a small price compared to what I have gained.

P.S. If you have specific questions you don’t want to share publicly you can always message me on FB .

Where Have All The Good Times Gone?

/ UsedToGuy / Leave a comment

Weight loss is a journey, it is full of unknowns, unforseen challenges, and amazing discoveries. Sometimes the going is slow and sometimes we can be astounded by our progress. We can fear what we encounter in both the world and ourselves, or we can see the unknown as something exciting which should be embraced instead of feared.

Let’s take a look at how our friendly AI assistant portrays someone embarking on a long journey who is filled with both fear and joy. At least that’s what I asked ChatGPT to create. His head is held high, he’s well-equipped for his journey, his path is clear and the sun is rising. He’s left some baggage behind at the start of his journey (Granted it looks like this goof has double packed and he’s leaving his stuff in the dirt on the side of a trail which is nuts. If you’ve been to REI in the last 10 years to buy the stuff this guy is probably carrying you would not leave $2K worth of camping gear behind).

As I stepped into my own journey I moved forward with hope and I actually looked forward to the long path ahead. I told myself I had nothing to lose (except a bunch of weight) and to just take it slow and easy. As people found out what I was doing (mostly because my eating habits changed a lot pretty quickly) they started to ask me questions–lots of questions. The most common one I got in the early days was, “Don’t you miss eating ______ (fill in the blank).” The short answer is I didn’t and haven’t. Part of it is because I didn’t feel like I was punishing or denying myself. I ate things I liked, avoided the really bad stuff and because I made progress pretty quickly it gave me the confidence to believe in what I was doing and realize that the tradeoffs were worth it.

I didn’t miss eating all the crap I did before because I missed basic things like:

  • Being able to sit comfortably in a booth at a restaurant, not needing a belt extender on an airplane.
  • Not being the only person sitting in a row on my weekly bus ride into NYC for work because I effectively took up two seats.
  • I missed not needing blood pressure and cholesterol pills.
  • I missed not being the fattest person in the room. Yes, I would often look around to see if there was someone bigger than me–often there was not.

In my mind the tradeoff I was making was worth it. I did’t wonder, “Where Have All the Good Times Gone?” I thought about the good times ahead and kept my eyes forward.

I found this picture of me at a company event on a beach in the Hamptons. I can remember how uncomfortable I felt at events like this.

Here’s another of me going to an event at Mount Vernon. Going to get that tuxedo fitted was not a fun task. I’m smiling on the outside but I know how I felt on the inside didn’t match.

Making changes to help me really live my life seemed easy compared to how hard it was becoming to navigate my day to day life. The day I took the belt extender out of my travel bag and threw it in the trash gave me way more joy than any amount of food. The day I no longer needed blood pressure and cholesterol pills gave me joy. Being able to stand with my family in pictures and not cringe at the guy staring back was a bigger reward than than anything I could have imagined.

As you take the steps on your own journey think about how the tradeoffs you are making will enable you to achieve your goals. Write them down, when the going gets tough having a list of your goals to refer to can be just enough to keep you on track and to keep you in the ‘light’ when you want to go ‘dark.’

Managing Life’s Curveballs: A Guide to Staying on Track

/ UsedToGuy / Leave a comment

Even with all of the best planning, steadfast commitment and unbreakable will, life can start throwing you junk.

Take our little friend in this ‘awesome’ AI generated image. He could not have seen that ball coming (because it looks like it came from behind him). Nor could he have known it would be the size of a beachball–heck even the crowd, catcher (who has part of his mask growing out of his chin), and the umpire look stunned. I’m not exactly sure what AI gibberish is coming out of the batter’s mouth but I can imagine it’s some form of computer swearing.


We may not have giant baseballs thrown at our face every day but we do face challenges of all shapes and sizes. Sometimes the curveballs come from outside forces like work and family and sometimes they come from inside in the form of illness, anxiety, self-doubt etc. For me, not only did I regularly let those unavoidable stressors sabotage my weight loss efforts, but the anxiety and sense of being completely overwhelmed I regularly felt were very real contributors to my overeating in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle; you feel stressed, so you eat to ‘feel better,’ you gain weight so you feel like a failure which adds to the stress, so you eat to ‘feel better,’ and so the cycle goes. Add in daily challenges like, “Well I blew it at lunch I guess I’ll just start tomorrow.” Or the one I commonly used, “Today was really stressful. I ‘deserve’ those 4 pieces of pizza!” and you end with death by a thousand cuts.

One of the first mountains I had to climb was staying steady and on plan NO MATTER WHAT. This did not mean being perfect, far from it. What it meant was that even when life was difficult, and my focus was elsewhere, I doubled down on the basics and leaned into the plan. I didn’t get obsessed with outcomes, or winning and losing, instead I really dug in on the NOW. I could NOT control all the challenges of life, but I could control myself and my plan.

In fact, being able to focus on the small things within my control became a sort of safe place. Some of the darkest days (for all of us) were during the pandemic. The stress from all of the unknowns in the world along with just being at home with nowhere to go made sticking to the plan especially challenging. Adding to my external stresses, about three months into the pandemic the company I was working for did a major layoff which impacted me. Needless to say, dealing with all of that plus looking for a new job in the middle of a global pandemic would be enough to knock most plans off the rails–in past efforts that certainly would have been the end of things for me. This time though was different because I was learning to trust myself, to believe in the plan, which at this point was just tracking what I ate and sticking to my daily points total in WeightWatchers. Most importantly I was beginning to trust myself and value the progress I was making despite all odds.

Some key techinques I use to help manage the relentless curveballs life can throw our way:

  • Focus on what you can control. Working your plan (whatever it may be) can actually turn into a safe haven from the chaos of life.
  • When you go off track get back on track immediately. Blew your day at a work lunch? Adjust your dinner the best you can and just move on. The sooner to get back on track the more likely you are to stay on track.
  • Don’t focus on lofty goals and super long-term planning. Taking on any large project (and losing significant weight is certainly that) can turn into a cause of stress. You are on a journey, not running a race. By working small and focusing on what you can control you’ll be surprised what you can achieve.
  • Always be kind and forgiving to yourself. Things go wrong, mistakes happen, we can’t control the world around us but we can begin to silence that little voice that tells us we’re not good enough, don’t have what it takes and won’t achieve our goals. Learning to silence that negative voice with incremental victories (a good tracking day, a great workout, losing a pound or two) you can begin to retrain your brain and even see changes in other areas of your life .

Just a heads-up for anyone who has been following along and getting some value out of all this. I’m going to be publishing new posts every Monday and Thursday from now on. Typically the posts should show up around 8 AM Eastern time US. They’ll be cross-posted on FB and Medium.

Pro-tip: if you don’t want to have to check the site, or hunt things down elsewhere, just add your email on the righthand side of the page and click Follow and you’ll get every post in your inbox automatically as soon as they publish.

For those who find this whole reading thing a bit outdated, I’m also planning on recording a weekly podcast so stay-tuned for more info about that!

How Do You Eat An Elephant?

/ UsedToGuy / Leave a comment

One Bite At A Time…Losing weight is the same. You lose weight one pound at a time and you replace old patterns one day at a time.

It’s a common notion that it takes at least 3 weeks to develop a new habit (the actual process can take much longer: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-does-it-really-take-to-form-a-habit/). As I marched forward on my journey (the elephant), after the newness had worn off I needed to keep recommitting to my efforts. If you read yesterday’s post I talked about keeping things simple. Within that simple plan was realizing I needed to keep my goals small (the bites). Each week weight in was a form of validation that I was doing something right. My clothes began to fit differently and I moved down notches in my belt. Even though nobody outside of my immediate family knew what I was doing (so no external validation yet) I was still seeing some progress.

Daily AI Image Note: As always I ‘love’ AI image generation. When I asked ChatGPT to create an image of someone eating an elephant, and so it didn’t end up too disturbing, I asked for it to be cartoonish. Here’s what I got…Did it make the elephant look like food? Yep! Did it add a knife standing on end for no reason, render a table with the weirdest legs and tablecloth ever and create something as part of the elephant that looks like ‘breadfish?” Also yep! Not sure if the little dude sitting at the end of the table is going to eat the elephant or is sharing a drink (two straws) while somehow offering him the fork as some kind of offering.

Also, it goes without saying that you should not try to eat an elephant. No matter how many calories per day you are used to consuming you simply can’t do it. Not to mention it’s probably against the law and really just not nice for the elephant.

By re-committing in small ‘bites’ each day I kept my expectations closely aligned with my progress. This helped me avoid frustration and gave time for new habits to take hold.

Some key takeaways:

  • Track each meal as soon as you eat it.
  • Have a game plan. Plot out what you’re going to eat for each meal if possible. This is especially true if I am traveling or eating out.
  • Have a go-to meal for each point in the day. I have a standard set of meals I eat almost every day for breakfast and lunch. I know the WeightWatchers points of these meals and can make them quickly. Not to mention I don’t mind eating them every day. I know this sounds a bit monotonous but taking the guesswork out of eating has helped me ensure consistency.
  • No is ok. I’ll have a lot more to say on this in a future post but I had to learn to say no to food offers. When you’re overweight everyone assumes you want whatever is being served. It’s not anyone’s fault, at least for me, it is just what everyone came to expect from me. Learning to stick to my boundaries with a polite ‘no’ has been critical to helping those around me to begin to understand something has changed. At first I didn’t tell people I was on a diet, I just said no or chose better food options–if available.
  • At the end of each day I take a few minutes to do a small self-assessment. No day is perfect so I remind myself what I did well and where I could have done better.

For everyone who has been following along the past few days–thank you! If I can help even one person by sharing my story this is all worthwhile. If anyone reading this has questions or needs help please just reach out. I am always happy to talk about this stuff. I am not a professional and I certainly don’t have all the answers but when it comes to losing weight and sustaining that loss I have probably faced almost all of the challenges that can get thrown at you.

Keep It Simple Stupid

/ UsedToGuy / 1 Comment

Our world is filled with things that are complex and difficult to fully understand. Look around the room you are sitting in, could you even begin to describe in detail how many of the things that surround us every day work? Technology, and the complexity that comes with it, provide great opportunities but also come with a fair dose of frustration, confusion and loss of control. Taking on, or any hard, large or difficult problem can feel the same way. And, for me, the first steps on this journey were filled with far more questions than answers. I quite unknowingly made some decisions early on that I believe made all the difference. Here’s what happened…

Joining WeightWatchers was a good first step and that ‘magical’ day certainly set me on a path. But, to be honest, in my life there had been dozens of those days where I would commit to action. Sometimes I would sustain that excitement for a week or even a few months but inevitably the newness wore off, the progress slowed and I fell back into old patterns. Any weight I had lost returned (and then some). Adding to the mix is that each ‘failure’ made the mountain a little higher and seemed to put my goals a little further out of reach. My belief in myself would diminish, and I’d feel a little more broken and like a failure.

The question I’ve asked myself over and over in the years since then is, why did it work this time? What did I do differently? Over the last six years I have asked those questions a lot. The answers, like the plan, is that I kept things simple.

Here are the core lessons learned:

  • I was accountable: Each day I tracked everything I ate.
  • I was focused: I did one thing–focused on my food intake.
  • I was honest: I tracked exactly what I ate and tracked my weight each week and logged it no matter what.
  • I ‘worked small’: Each day I recommitted to my plan.
  • I was mindful: Every time I ate I made myself aware of how much I was eating. In most cases I pre-measured food–not because I was super worried about how much I was eating but to try to teach myself portions.
  • I was aware: Every time I walked past the snack cabinet or thought, “I can have just one of those,” I reminded myself that I was going to have to write that down.
  • I was forgiving: I made mistakes and led with self-forgiveness and grace which made it possible to just press on.
  • I was determined: No matter what I just stuck to the plan.
  • I played the long game: I did not focus keeping score and wins/losses or working towards an end, but rather focused on establishing habits that were sustainable forever.

Even more critical than what I did was what I DID NOT do:

  • I did not try to do everything all at once: I focused just on food, exercise would have to wait.
  • I did not take a day off: I didn’t want to feel like I was punishing myself or rewarding myself. I was just learning to live my life in a new way. You don’t get to take days off from living.
  • I did not judge myself when I was less than perfect: Good enough was good enough. I accepted that I was not perfect and could not do things perfectly.
  • I didn’t ‘game things out’: In prior attempts I would try to make sure I lost some weight every week so I would do stupid things like trying to sweat off weight the day before a weigh in. Each week would turn into a challenge to beat the last week until I couldn’t win and would quickly become exhausted from trying.

In retrospect, while I applied these concepts I don’t think I could have written them down like I did above. In the early days of my journey I didn’t really have a perspective. I just clung to those few simple things and they started to work.

The Right Time is NOW

/ UsedToGuy / 2 Comments

It was just a random workday like any other. At the time I worked out of my dining room, sitting at the end of a long table we only used twice a year. Little by little I had taken over the room to such a degree that when any holiday came I had to load our bedroom with all of the stuff that made up my ‘office’ so the room could be used for its intended use for a few hours before turning it back into my office. I remember I was the only one at home that day, usually Janet is home, writing at the kitchen table while I work in the room right next to her, but I remember on this day there was nobody around.

I don’t know where I first saw or read about it but on this particular day I saw something about the director Kevin Smith losing a bunch of weight on WeightWatchers. For some reason his story resonated with me. Maybe it’s because we are about the same age, both from New Jersey, like Star Wars, who knows…but for some reason I decided, really decided, in that moment that I was going to sign up for WeightWatchers right away and I was going to work the plan whatever that meant. I broke out my credit card, signed up and told myself all I was going to do was track everything I ate. I would do this every day for every meal no matter what–that was it. I didn’t have a weight loss goal, I didn’t know where things would lead but I knew I was tired of feeling like I did and knew I wanted to change.

Note: I really ‘love’ the way AI generates images. So great at some things and so bad at others. It is kinda fitting that ChatGPT thinks this person beginning their journey has two middle toes on their right foot, apparently hops on one foot for two steps then jumps 360 degrees and lands on their left foot (on which this person is wearing a shoe).

When I first saw these mistakes in the image I had ‘created’ my first instinct was to go fix them, but the more I looked at the picture the more it seemed appropriate. Most times when we take on a seemingly insurmountable task we aren’t ever fully up to it, we are flawed, we lack the tools we need to accomplish our goals, we are scared, we make mistakes, go in the wrong direction and sometimes have to start over.

I always had that little voice in my head giving me good reasons to put things off, now wasn’t quite, if only things were more ideal I could start, I’m too busy to make it a priority. The truth is the stars will never align, the time will never be perfect and all I know is that on this particular day I came to that realization. I took my first step and was determined to keep stepping no matter what…

My Weight Loss Journey: From Failure to Success

/ UsedToGuy / Leave a comment

Back in 2017 I started this blog as a way to hold myself accountable. This was me then…

Needless to say I did not stick with my grand plans at that time. It took several more years and various fits and starts to finally find a path towards weight loss that I could sustain. When all was said and done gaining control of things was so much simpler and so much harder than I could have imagined. I decided to dust off this blog again to share what I have learned, talk about where I’ve failed and to create a place where you can travel along with me on this journey…I look forward to it…

This is me now…