September Update: Goals 2009

So, Stephanie. It's October. How are you doing on those goals you set at the beginning of the year?

Well, if you must know, I've spent the past nine months basically circling around them. Well, okay, I drink a lot less diet soda than I used to. But the weight loss? I've not really done so well, if I'm honest. In fact, I weigh a couple pounds more now than I did at the start of January.

So what gives? What have I been doing with all these months? I don't really know, but it wasn't what really needed to happen.

About a week and a half ago, I decided something needed to change. I went to a website that I'd heard about for helping people lose weight. Obviously, I'm not talking about the Weight Watchers website - this time I'm talking about SparkPeople. I'd heard it was a great tool for tracking what you eat.

Yes, I know Weight Watchers has a tool that does exactly that. And I've used it for many years. But I needed something...different.

I've been tracking with it for about a week and a half, and so far it has been helpful at keeping my eating in check. Does it give me anything I didn't know before? No. Although now I actually know how many calories I eat, rather than Points. But it's not a huge revolution in the diet industry. It was just a change. I needed to use a new, shiny tool, or see things in a slightly different manner.

Don't get me wrong - I am still looking at Points values. I am still following the Good Health Guidelines. In fact, I'm going to be fiddling around with the new eTools application on my husband's iPod Touch because we'll be traveling in a few weeks and I want to be able to look up Points while we're eating away from home.

To please the Weight Watchers gods, I would like to state for the record that SparkPeople's database of foods cannot hold a candle to Weight Watchers'. I tried building a recipe at SparkPeople...and couldn't find scallions. The whole process took much longer than it takes me on eTools, and is sometimes an exercise in frustration.

What I hope to distill from all of this (and what I hope you'll take away from this) is not that Weight Watchers is lacking in anything. It's that sometimes you need to make a change. Sometimes you need to shake things up. Sometimes you need to look at things differently. Sometimes using the same tool gets boring.

Coincidentally, this week's topic is going to be about fighting boredom when it comes to following the program. Obviously that can extend beyond just food choices and exercise options. If you've been craving a change, I hope you'll consider a change that still involves our Weight Watcher meetings and can still fit within what I believe is one of the smartest weight loss programs out there. Let's light this fire together.