E-TOOLS

Okay, so after my first full year as a WW leader, I'm fed up with passing off questions about E-Tools with the statement that I don't actually use them.

Now, you have to realize that when I studied computer programing in high school, it centered around punching holes in long rolls of paper and then feeding said rolls into a machine that would have totally filled the den of an average-sized home.

However, I am reasonably computer literate nowadays - for a relic from a bygone era! I even own an iPod touch and can check flight arrivals, the weather forecast and my emails on my cell phone.

I just never got into E-Tools - or to be honest, I did once and did something that appeared to mess it up.

I re-registered today and am amazed at the wealth of stuff that is available there. I'm tracking on-line, calculating points on-line (though I can also do that on my cell phone using mobile e-tools) and keeping an eye on my activity points too.

It's fun.

So here's the deal, if you're a WW monthly using a monthly pass, check out these incredible tools. They're yours for free as part of the monthly pass package.

I love it! And hopefully in a few weeks I will be able to answer questions on how this great program feature works.

SILVER LINING

Arriving at the gym while it was still dark this morning, through what to me is a perfectly plausible sequence of events, I locked my keys in my car. Having done that, my focus was no longer on exercise, especially since this was the only set of keys I possessed to that vehicle.

I couldn't call AAA as my cell phone was also locked inside the car, so I decidced to get a little exercise in by running home - a distance I later discovered (www.mapmyrun.com ) to be 2.53 miles.

The car issue was resolved quite easily, but what gave me an encouraging boost was thinking back four years to a time when I would not even have considered walking home in that predicament, let alone running.

The year is ending and I'm still very thankful for my new lifestyle!

THE DIET SEASON COMETH

The end of the holiday season marks the dawn of new year aspirations for millions of people and the #1 resolution is to lose weight and get healthy.

So it's not surprising that the first few weeks of January see a surge of new enrolments at Weight Watchers.

It's easy to be cynical about New Years resolutions that don't last into February, but I love the challenge of continuing to engage every new or returning member until they reach their goal. So I relish the thought of the packed meeting rooms and new faces that the next few weeks will offer and I'm determined to do all I can to ensure they're all there into the Spring and beyond.

Whether you're a former member, or someone contemplating checking out WW for the first time, I hope you'll come and visit - check out meeting times and locations at www.weightwatchers.com

You can find me at Miller Place on Wednesdays at 5.30 and 7.00
I'm in Selden on Saturdays at 7.30, 8.30, 9.45, 11.00 & 12.15

MAKE THAT FIVE

The beginning of a new year is probably the most popular time for people to focus on a healthier lifestyle and determine to lose weight. That's why there's always a surge of new members at Weight Watchers in January and the challenge for me is to keep them focused, so that their good intentions are translated into life change, rather than being a passing whim that falls to the ground.

Last January we saw a huge increase in members and I calculated that if we have anything remotely near that at the start of 2009, it would be impossible to cope with the crowd in our Selden Center.

It seems that the company's policy is generally to be reactive rather than proactive about adding meetings, but having presented our Territory Manager with facts and figures, carefully collated over the past 15 months, she has agreed to introduce a fifth Saturday morning meeting in anticipation of growth.

So starting next week, January 3rd, our Saturday groups will be at 7.30am; 8.30am; 9.45am; 11.00am and 12.15pm.

We've added the new meeting right at the start of the day to ease some of the pressure during the most popular timeslots.

Whatever your business is, you always have to make room for growth - otherwise there is only one thing you can guarantee, there will be none!

CHRISTMAS

Merry Christmas and don't forget, the best way to survive the next 24 hours or so without serious disappointment is to keep doing what you normally do -

Exercise

Journal

Weigh and measure

But above all, enjoy! There's a whole year ahead to continue the journey!

IT DOESN''T ALWAYS WORK

Around noon today, my wife and I got back from a mini-vacation - 24 hours on the Gold Coast - to celebrate our 39th wedding anniversary.

Last night we ate at an Indian restaurant in Huntington, which turned out to be an excellent place to eat my favorite kind of food. It was one of those occasions when I decided, I'm here, I love this food, it's a special evening and so I decided to throw caution to the wind.

When I got up this morning, I drank my water and got back on track straight away. Well, I almost did. We slept late, left the B & B and had a walk around the streets of Northport, deciding on a late breakfast at the old downtown diner.

Refocuising on my program, I simply ordered oatmeal and coffee with skimmed milk. The oatmeal turned out to be quite delicious, but altogether not what I was expecting. It seems they made it with milk, because the consistency was nothing like what I make most mornings at home.

I tried to get back on track, but it doesn't always work. However, by lunchtime life was back to normal!

GOING ALL THE WAY

It made my day at WW yesterday to have a new receptionist training with us.

Why? - Because this was a woman who had come in to one of our Saturday groups as a new member in January of this year and went on to become a Lifetime member a number of weeks ago, after losing in excesss of 80lb.

Having played a small part in what she has accomplished, I celebrate with her, because after all helping members get to goal is why I do what I do.

CHOICES

Today I had a working lunch at what is arguably the best Pizzeria in the county - of course I don't know that for sure, but once I have completed my research by checking out all the others, I'll let you know if I was right!

Coming to Long Island from the UK, I used to think that Domino's made good pies, followed closely by Pizza Hut. However I soon came to realize that living in an area where there are more Italians than live within a 500 miles radius of the Vatican, those are only fast food joints and if you want the real thing you have to go to individually owned pizzerias.

I am grateful for that education - I enjoyed it!

Lunch was ordered for the four of us today by the host - a Sicilian Pie, the biggest and tastiest of all pizzas.

And I ate a slice.

My three friends cleaned up the rest. When I was asked how I could resist eating more (and I easily could have done), I replied that I remembered what it was like being over 330lb and I had no intention of going back there.

Measuring a slice of pie against staying in the shape I'm in now was a no-brainer. The pie lost.

Life is about choices. You can't have it all.

Make good choices today.

SOOOODIUM

I lost around 1lb last week, which I was happy enough with. The scale did not reflect that when I weighed in on Monday morning, but I'm happy enough with that too.

You see, according to the WW scale I was up a whopping 4lb in just seven days.

So I guess you want to know how many Big Macs I consumed over the weekend or whether I dug my way through a whole dozen Dunkin Donuts? The fact is I did neither.

Here's what I did - on Saturday evening I ate a high sodium dinner. It was perfectly within my points range for the day, but the salt made my body start retaining fluid. Then to make things worse, on Sunday I had a Greek salad in my favorite diner (The Metropolis on Rte 112 in Medord) and all that Feta cheese is so full of sodium you wouldn't believe it.

The upside was that I could watch the football games without jumping up and heading for the bathroom during every single commercial break, but the downside was that the scale didn't give me the reading I had earned.

To be honest, all that was okay with me, but you can be sure I'll watch the content of my meals better this weekend and not just the points!

Sodium is not your friend.

YES!

I was out all evening, so had to record the finale of The Biggest Loser.
Just finished watching it and Michelle won - so I'm off to bed happy!!!

MOMENTUM

Okay, so that's it. In Miller Place on Wednesday and Selden today, I rolled out the new WW program for members to get a handle on, as we head into the holiday season.

It's called Momentum, which aptly defines the most significant part of succesful weight loss - keeping going.

The equation for losing weight is simple. You have to burn more calories than you take in. But it's how you do it that matters and WW has been at the forefront of the battle for health for 45 years now.

Momentum combines the best features of the two programs that have been offered to date, the Core Plan and the Flex Plan, and it's winner in my eyes. I love it. I want members to get to goal and believe this will help more to achieve that ambition.

What's it all about? Check it out at www.weightwatchers.com or come visit me at a center next week!

BURNING CHRISTMAS CALORIES

Okay, so as a consolation for Christmas preparation driving you out of your mind and into the poor house, the good news is you can burn calories doing good holiday stuff!

Here's how many -

85 Standing on line to see Santa
150 Wrapping gifts/ writing cards
160 Building a snowman
160 Dressing for a party - from shower to shoes
160 Trimming a Christmas Tree
170 Preparing a Christmas meal
175 Christmas shopping
180 Christmas caroling
180 Cleaning house - dusting, mopping, vacuuming
215 Putting up outdoor lights
240 Grocery shopping
270 Dancing at a party
545 Carrying groceries upstairs

NOTE: Just when you thought it was getting easy - these are estimates for one hour of activity!

WHY PEOPLE DON'T LOSE BIG

While I enjoy watching The Biggest Loser - have I admitted I don't like Vicky? - I do get frustrated at the unrealistic expectations it creates in the minds of those trying to lose weight in the real world.

Average weight loss with WW is 0.5 to 2.0lb per week. That is healthy, normal and reasonable.

To shed the incredible amounts contestants lose on TV, some of them will apparently stop at nothing. Check out how season one winner Ryan Benson describes his approach to the final weigh-in -

“I wanted to win so bad that the last ten days before the final weigh-in I didn’t eat one piece of solid food! If you’ve heard of “The Master Cleanse” that’s what I did. It is basically drinking lemonade made with water, fresh squeezed lemon juice, pure maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. The rules of the show said we couldn’t use any weight-loss drugs, well I didn’t take any drugs, I just starved myself!

Twenty-four hours before the final weigh-in I stopped putting ANYTHING in my body, liquid or solid, then I started using some old high school wrestling tricks. I wore a rubber suit while jogging on the treadmill, and then spent a lot of time in the steam room. In the final 24 hours I probably dropped 10-13 lbs in just pure water weight. By the time of the final weigh-in I was peeing blood.”

That's how they pull the numbers!

2lb a week done properly has to be much better.

OPRAH

It's Tuesday night and I'm watching The Biggest Loser. I just heard Bob state that the winner of the first series has regained all the weight he lost. That was amazing.

It reminded me of the news story I heard earlier with Oprah Winfrey recognizing that she had put a lot of weight back on (which I guess her viewers had worked out already).

I'm not sitting here in self-righteous judgement on either of them - I'd rather learn from their stories. And the lesson is ...

Losing weight may be hard, but maintaining weight loss is harder still.

Unfortunately for some people their final target weight is their sole goal, whereas goal needs to be far more than a number on a scale.

Goal is healthy living.

Goal is a lifestyle you can maintain.

Goal is peacefully co-existing with food.

Goal is realizing you haven't made it at all.

Goal is acknowledging that the only way to safeguard your achievement is one wise decision at a time.

Goal is getting the point that you stay slimmer by continuing to do the things you did to get there.

If it is tough for Oprah with a personal chef and personal trainer to help her and the eyes of millions of viewers constantly on her, then it will be tough for us lesser mortals too.

But being overweight was also tough.

So I plan to stay at goal, drawing constantly on all the help that got me here.

ONE FOR THE GUYS

This has nothing whatever to do with what I normally write about here, but if you're a guy you must watch this video from my friend's blog.

If you're a woman, your significant other really needs to see this -

http://www.contenttocommerce.com/content-to-commerce/2008/12/8/the-dog-house.html

GOAL AND BEYOND

So how about this, not one but two of my members have gone the whole way from overweight member, through the program to goal, lifetime member and now staff.

These ladies who have lost 80+lb and 90+lb respectively told me today they have been through the interview process and will now be training to work for the company.

That made my day!

Welcome to the nuthouse ladies!!!

STICKABILITY

I am tremendously encouraged at the high level of commitment I'm seeing in the members of my WW groups. At a time when the feedback from leaders all around the country is that numbers are falling off significantly, our folks are staying focused as we head into the holiday season.

We had over 40% more members in this morning's meetings than the same Saturday last year, which by anyone's standards is a very significant rise.

I love it that each of these people is there for the same reason I am - to get to goal - and it's obvious they're determined to do all that it takes.

THE FAT GUY MONOLOGUE

I'm getting plenty of encouragement to go ahead with the one-man show and this morning I got clearance to use a theater at Regal Cinemas on Portion Road in Ronkonkoma. I'm looking at the end of January, which will be pushing it, but I always work better under pressure!!!!

Thanks for the feedback - keep it coming!

PLEASE HELP ME OUT

For some time now I've been thinking of doing a one man show in a neutral location - theater; hotel function room or whatever. The whole point would be to encourage people to take steps toward a healthier life and it would be a mixture of my own story and practical advice, all served up with a lot of humor.

So here are the questions -

Good idea or not?
Is it the kind of thing you yourself might come to?
If I put it on in January (prime diet season), is this the kind of thing some of your family and friends might be interested in?

Pleas email me your feedback - revrog@optonline.net

Thanks!

SUCCESS

Okay, the official number is in - I lost 1.4lb over Thanksgiving. While I weigh myself on occasions throughout the week, I let the WW scale be my official guide and I weigh-in there on Monday mornings.

One holiday down and two to go, though Christmas is by far the more significant occasion than New Year. My sister will be coming from the UK to be with us over the holidays and she will be bringing some traditional goodies from the old country, but as a WW Lifetime Member herself, she has thankfully committed to carrying only limited quantities of contraband.

The main way to survive any holiday is to realize that it is just one day - ignore the run-up, enjoy the day and then get back on track. So that's the plan.

Christmas worked well for me last year because I had a stomach virus. This year I sincerely hope to eat - and still do well.