Singing for a smaller me

As of yesterday, it was two weeks since I'd stepped foot in a Weight Watchers meeting.

What's this, you say? The girl who refuses to skip a weigh-in even if she knows her weight will be up didn't go to meetings twice in a row??? Say it ain't so!

Sadly, it's true.

I've been trying to decide if I was just making excuses for not going to meetings or if I genuinely couldn't go. Last week, I was sick and reasoned I probably shouldn't go and spread the love (germs) (and loopiness and driving don't exactly go hand in hand). This week, the hubby and I had tickets to Game One of the Stanley Cup Playoffs Wednesday Night (Colorado Avalanche vs. San Jose Sharks). I thought "hey, I'll run up to the meeting early, get weighed in, and head to the game" (which is not what happened).

Then came the negotiations with myself: "Oh, I'll just go next week", "I can go on Saturday", "I can stay on track without meetings", and so on and so forth.

Those thought processes struck a cord with their familiarity and I panicked: is this the start back down that well-worn path to giving up? Was I on a precipice barely hanging on to my self control? How many times had "the end" started with "breaks" from meetings? How often had I stopped tracking and gained and lost the same three pounds over the weeks following one of those "breaks"? Would I let the exercise go and continue to gain and lose those pounds? Would I finally just stop going?

My mind was screaming at me: Go to a meeting! Go to a meeting! Go to a meeting! And I was inclined to follow its advice except for this irrational feeling of cheating on *my* leader by even contemplating attending another meeting.

Fear and distress won out and prompted me to pull up the WW app on my iPhone yesterday to search for a meeting that night. It wasn't at my usual location or the location Luann (my leader) meets, but I had to get past that crazy feeling of betrayal. At 5:45 I found myself travelling to a strange location for a meeting with some unknown leader because I was desperate to get on that scale and face whatever number awaited me. The moment I walked in that almost familiar meeting room, it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. And getting on the scale wasn't as painful as I feared it might be - yes, there was a slight gain, but less than I feared.

I never fully understood how people could spend months searching for a good group leader until yesterday, and realize how lucky I was to walk into the perfect meeting for me back in October. The feeling in that other room was so strange - the meeting was sort of the same, but all wrong. Not that Michelle, their leader wasn't great, and the group seemed to really like her, but she wasn't Luann.

I'll be really happy to get back to my meetings next week, and back into the groove of going to weekly meetings.