My Alli shipment arrived last week just before we left on a long car drive up north. Given the description of the “unwanted treatment effects” (the oily discharge, uncontrollable bowel movements, etc.) that have a lot of people frightened — including me — I decided to wait until we returned home to take my first Alli.
Needless to say, I savored each and every meal over the weekend. High fat? No problem: I’m going on Alli next week! Oversized portions? No worries: my Alli is waiting at home. Salty nachos dripping with cheese, sizzling steak served with a fat buttery baked potato, gooey cheese-topped bread floating in savory French onion soup… I ate it all. Oh, baby, I enjoyed it, too!
We arrived home last night and I immediately stepped on my scale. I weigh myself a lot… as in, first thing when I wake up and again after I pee, every time thereafter I go to the bathroom (sometimes both before and afterward), every time change clothes, every time I walk by the bathroom where I keep the scale and again right before bed.
Yes, I know that Weight Watchers encourages people to weigh themselves just once a week. I can’t do that. The last time I tried I wound up practically starving myself the day before weigh-in only to find that I’d neither lost nor gained a pound. Hate to think what would’ve happened if I hadn’t limited myself to carrot sticks and water the previous day.
A lot of (skinny) women also say they never weigh themselves. Good for them, I suppose. Personally, I think they’re just trying to keep all the cute clothes for themselves, because one month when my bathroom scale was broken and I hadn’t gone to buy a new one, well, I packed on fifteen pounds in thirty days. Fifteen. So I figure those skinny, non-weighing women are either liars or they’re so caloric deficient they can’t muster the energy to step on the scale.
But back to my food fest over the weekend: I ate like I wanted, stopped when I was full, and refused to feel guilty about doing it. My Alli was waiting, after all. Why deprive myself now when I know I’m going to have to make big changes next week? Yes, I realize I probably should not put all of my hopes on a magic blue pill (no, not that one but one which pretty much has the power to improve my sex life, no doubt). Still, if I’m going to have to limit myself to low-fat foods while on Alli, I figured I needed to say “so long” to each and every one of my favorite high-fat foods first.
So I did. And I lost two pounds. Two!
Does this mean I’m going to continue eating like that? Of course not. I’m going to try Alli and I’m going to focus on eating low-fat. But I’m also going to remember that the best way to avoid the “unwanted treatment effects” is to either not take Alli or keep fat intake quite low. I’ll be going for the latter option on most days, but I’m not going to think twice about skipping my pill when I know there’s a good reason to splurge.
And that, too, might be part of the “mental re-training” involved with taking Alli: learning to look at a splurge as a splurge, something to be earned ahead of time and enjoyed without guilt… just like that ribeye steak I intend to have this weekend (without first taking a pill) when I’ll celebrate five days of eating right.