Weight Watcher's Diaries Lucky 13!
By Carol Daelemans

1 1/2 on minus 3 off equals what?

Last week I gained 1 1/2 pounds. This week I lost 3. By my calculations this means that I actually lost 1 1/2 pounds. Not by Weight Watchers'. Last week I got a nice little, "Oh well, chin up. You are doing great!" message from the web site. This week I got a warning. That's right, a warning. It seems that they were "concerned" that I was taking the weight off too fast. Perhaps even "dangerously" fast. Ooooh! Yeah, sure.

It's recommended you lose an average of 2 pounds per week after the initial, heady first few weeks when I think you get to lose 5 pounds per week maybe. I would love to lose 5 pounds a week. Frankly, if I lost 5 pounds a week I could keep it up for quite some time before it got "dangerous." If my entire block went on a hunger strike I'm sure I could outlast several of the other moms without even needing to change jean sizes. I have more fat reserves than the polar bears at the zoo. It will be a long time before I need to be warned to slow down.

Computers can only see so much of what we are really up to. They will never be able to analyze people as well as we can on our own. Part of that is because we are so good at hiding things even from ourselves. Just to see what they thought I should do about this "dangerous" new trend of one week I followed their links.

The recommendations they had were to eat more and not starve myself. Isn't that how I got into this predicament in the first place? Starving to me means being deprived of the ability to get to food within a moments impulse. I get unhappy if I run out of Chicklets in my car. I will never be able to keep food at arms length. It needs to be nearer. If I'm lucky I'll learn to keep it near but just not eat all of it.

I love food. Food loves me. I hardly ever get indigestion no matter what bizarre thing I eat and I love to try new things. If it's on the menu and really odd, I will probably order it. This is not always the best policy. I have decided that sometimes restaurants put odd things on the menu just to trap people like me. I had this confirmed to me by a nice French waiter who quietly informed me that the Fallow Deer was no where near as good as the beautifully prepared lamb. He had to be right because the lamb was one of the best meals I had ever had. It is nice to have someone help you navigate a menu.

I love eating out. You get to try odd things and not feel bad if you don't like them. If something's bad, who cares? You didn't have to put in all the time to prepare it and chances are your dining companion ordered something different so you can fork your way through their meal and not have to do without. As long as you're not dining with your mother you can simply waste all that good food and leave it on your plate. If it's really bad, you have a built in excuse for dessert.

Dessert at restaurants is not my favorite. As much as I love food, eating out and sweet things you'd think I would love eating dessert out too. But no. Too many places rely on frozen, fancy looking things they buy elsewhere and call their own. Don't tell me you haven't noticed that every cheesecake from here to Alaska is the same. The toppings all look simultaneously too perfect and too icky.

Once, while trying to penetrate "homemade" cheesecake with a fork, I asked the waitress if my dessert had been frozen, "Of course not. Everything's made fresh right here." Obviously, she hadn't noticed my failed attempt to make even a dent in the whipped cream tower of power atop my dessert and didn't feel the least bit bad about her bald-faced lie. I didn't need made-some-time-ago cheesecake thunder thighs so I begged off restaurant desserts for good. Not counting fabulously made restaurant desserts in restaurants I can't afford to frequent.

Talk of dessert does nothing for my weight loss. While I don't feel the least bit full, I still feel like I've gained a pound just talking about dessert. I also feel like eating a bit of good dark chocolate. The one thing I've learned from Weight Watchers: quality beats quantity any day of the week. I would so much rather have a 1/4 cup of Häagen Daz or Ben & Jerry's than a cup of diet ice cream. Ick! Why bother? I don't eat sweets because I'm hungry. I eat lunch because I'm hungry. I eat sweets because I like them.

As for the dark chocolate I have a new trick. I love bitter sweet chocolate but I'm not allowed to have very much if I don't want to see it reappear threefold on my rear end. After careful testing I've come up with the perfect solution for myself. I buy the very best chocolate chips available and give myself a treat in the middle of the day. A little bit of fine dark chocolate beats just about anything except a large portion of fine dark chocolate. I discovered that 1/4 ounce of chocolate is about 10-12 chips and count as only 1 Weight Watchers point. Well worth it I say! Double it by having another 1/4 ounce treat later in the day and it's only 1 1/2 points total. Not bad. Not bad at all.