Kathy joined Weight Watchers. Shut up. Because it apparently breaks some weight loss commandment to display even a scintilla of cynicism at meetings, Waisted is where she bitches about eating, not eating, oversharing weight watchers, and probably you.

By Kathy Cacace [Archives]

The old lady who weighs me in and sometimes offers me free pretzels (which is sort of sadistic, when you think about it) was chirping her “support” so loudly that I put my boot back on the wrong foot. When I stepped down on it I kind of tripped because all my toes were going the wrong way, and, since my lucky weigh-in outfit always includes the one dress I own, I accidentally flashed my underwear to everyone perusing the shelf of one point snacks.

“You made it! You beat it, actually! Amazing! You should be so proud! Ricardo! Come look at this!” Ricardo, meeting leader extraordinaire, catwalked his way over to my scale.

“Ten percenn! Congrass! Ha you thought abow a new goal?”

This was the point at which, if my life were an actual situation comedy instead of just resembling one, they’d do that simultaneous zoom in/zoom out that instantly reads as shock and terror. I got through three and three-quarters years of high school gym class without ever having to kick the ball during kickball. I am the queen of avoidance. But last Wednesday there was no getting around speaking to Ricardo, despite eight consecutive weeks of sitting in the back, muttering things like “Heroin has no points, how about you try that?” and avoiding all human eye contact.

I made my ten percent goal last week, which means you cannot leave without discussing your future with your meeting leader, like that dreaded guidance counselor meeting in high school where they tell you you’re far too dumb for Yale. I knew it was coming though, because I’ve lost every week since I started. Recently, as a matter of fact, I have lost weirdly large amounts of weight per week considering just how much drinking I’ve been doing.

It may be that I am just not enough of a grownup to take this program seriously, but when I total up a Monday and more than half of my daily points are allotted to Southern Comfort, my response should probably not be to chuckle and feel kind of accomplished.

But that’s kind of my whole point about this. I’m tired of listening to asshole moron after asshole moron be like, “I found a cake with one point less than this other cake and now I can have two bites more cake than before! Applause! Give me a star sticker like this is first grade and I’m working towards something useful, like literacy!” It’s not that complicated a system. Do what they tell you. Lose weight. The end. Epilogue: shut your fat mouth. That’s the story.

When Ricardo called me out at the end of the meeting and handed me my extraordinarily ugly commemorative 10% keychain, he asked me what’s been a high point of making my goal—my response was that I’ve managed to figure out how to get drunk without exceeding my points. This earned me a few appalled looks, a few laughs, and the inability to ever hide at the back of this meeting again. I’m the drunk girl now. Who flashed half the meeting putting her boots on the wrong feet. Maybe she’s drunk now! Who knows! What a hooker!

I guess that’s kind of the theme of my life right now, though. You can’t really hide from much when you’re starting to look a little different and people occasionally say things to you about it. And I can’t hide at the meeting, where people are now addressing their muttered comments to me instead of the floor. Although how I thought I could hide from anything by putting all my shit up on the internet is beyond me…I don’t know, maybe I was drunk.