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 last vestige of my Catholic childhood that hangs around my adult life (besides the inability to steal anything due to crushing guilt) is the concept of purgatory. A universal waiting room of judgment is an idea that has a certain resonance when you learn about it as a kid, because then, everything is purgatory: K-Mart, the dentist’s office, math class, being stuck in the car with your mom. Being stuck in the Tae Kwon Do lobby waiting for your brothers to break their stupid boards. Being stuck in the vestibule after church while your mom talks to other moms and you jump from floor tile to floor tile on one foot because there is nothing else to do and you are LITERALLY DYING, MOM. GOD. Everything is purgatory when you have no control.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the “plateau.”

Despite following my points regimen, drinking all my water, walking more, and sacrificing thin young kittens at an altar built from old Vogues and Ex-Lax boxes, I have lost approximately two pounds in the last month. I’ve heard countless stories that this will happen from time to time, and that you just have to keep on trucking and eventually your chemistry will adjust and start losing again, but come ON. It’s like my body is my personal purgatory, stuck between sizes due to some unwitting earthly sin of mine.

My meeting this week was particularly purgatorial as well. The room where I spend my Wednesday nights is exactly what you would picture if you were to conjure up an endless waiting room: peachy-beige walls, folding chairs, industrial carpeting, blinds that won’t go down when the sun is setting directly in your corneas, inspirational yet vague posters on the wall that mean nothing to you or anyone else without the accompanying lecture. Very Department of Motor Vehicular.

I went intending to peace out pretty early since I was supposed to meet a friend for coffee. It was sunny outside and fluorescent and musty in the meeting room, so there was really no excuse for sticking around and whining about staying at the same weight for another stupid week. But, because I’m paying forty dollars a month for the multitude of benefits you get by attending meetings (rage-induced sweating = exercise points!), I hung out for the first few minutes.

The Quip Rehearser, the weekly WWer rapidly becoming my archnemesis, was in rare form yesterday. When I sat down she was sucking back a Go-gurt (and please, do check out the borderline lewd illustration of the product on the Sponge Bob box) because grown people DON’T HAVE TIME FOR SPOONS. Then she chatted up the old lady next to her and, when the meeting started, chimed in every two seconds with what I can only describe as “bits.” Like comedians have bits, except the Quip Rehearser is not a comedian, she’s a freako who practices her off-the-cuff remarks in her head before she says them and it weirds me RIGHT OUT.

Then a latecomer plopped down in the chair next to me and chewed sugar free fruit gummies with her mouth open, meticulously clearing morsels stuck between her molars with her fingers for further loud, open mouth chewing.

Between the endless stream of commentary from Q.R., the gummy massacre next to me, the stagnant scale numbers, the stifling, musty heat, and some serious Edgar Allen Poe-esque ticking of someone’s fucking watch, I all but bolted from the room.

I mean, maybe it’s just the inescapable wiring of my brain, but that’s the whole thing about trying to lose weight. It’s completely purgatorial from beginning to end. My whole life up until I started this was waiting for something to change, and now my whole life is waiting to be done. Even when I’m doing well and melting like a snowman in the sun, I’m waiting to fit into the next size, waiting for the next weigh-in, waiting to just be fucking done and see if, yeah, this is right, this is what I thought I would feel like when I got here.

A few laps around Union Square and dinner at Yaffa may not necessarily be as conducive to weight loss as a support group meeting, but it made me feel way less like I was living out that scene in “Beetlejuice” with the guy with the shrunken head and the show girl sawed in half and everyone has to take a number.