ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

When I got up and went to my Weight Watchers meeting today, I knew that I’d eaten like shit all week when I traveled, so I was expecting a gain. I didn’t recognize the lady who weighed me in, but everyone there is fairly friendly and easy going, so I stepped up and said cheerfully, “I’m expecting a gain for this week, so no worries!”

I smiled at her, but she frowned slightly and shook her head a little bit at me. I wasn’t sure whether she thought it was bad that I’d gained, or bad that I wasn’t taking it seriously enough, or that she thought I didn’t care, or what. So I stepped down, thanked her, and collected my things to go into the other room. When I sat down I realized with faint alarm that our regular meeting leader, who is wonderful, was not there. Then the lady who had weighed me came in. I was disappointed as soon as I realized that she was going to lead our meeting, because I’d really been looking forward to seeing our regular group leader. Our regular leader has never missed a meeting before without telling us in advance.

“Who had a success this week?” the new woman asked. The room was silent. Apparently I was not the only one who hadn’t expected our regular meeting leader to be absent, and this impostor had not even acknowledged that she wasn’t the usual Saturday person. This is a problem, because fact: fat people instinctively fear and despise change. “Well?” she said. No one said anything. “Come on. Who had a success this week?” she repeated. There was a long pause. “I’m waiting,” she said.

A lady near the back raised her hand. “I lost two pounds,” she volunteered.

“Very good! I knew someone had to have a success this week!” the impostor said triumphantly. “Now, are you on the core plan?” she asked. Just for some background, core is one of the two versions of the Weight Watchers plan, where your portions aren’t limited but you can only pick from foods on a set list. Flex is the other one, where you can eat whatever you want, but only in certain portions. That’s all you need to know.

“Uh, no,” said the lady who had lost two pounds.

The impostor looked kind of annoyed. “Well, have you ever tried the core plan?” she asked.

“No,” the lady said.

“Well,” the impostor said. “Why not?”

The lady looked like she didn’t know what to say. It kind of made me mad. Our regular leader is not particularly pushy, and doesn’t mind if people don’t feel like contributing or saying anything. She’s happy enough to stand up there and talk by herself and doesn’t have to rely on other people to carry the meeting. So I didn’t really like it that this woman was standing up there demanding that we come up with things to tell her about, and then that she was attacking the one poor lady who spoke up.

The lady finally said something like she already liked the flex plan and it worked for her, so she didn’t really have any reason to try core at this time. The impostor looked perplexed. “Well, who in this room is on core plan?” she asked. One lady raised her hand. The impostor looked shocked. “I…think that most of you could learn a lot from switching to core,” she said. Then she made some comment about how we’d been “done a disservice” since our regular leader hadn’t taught us properly about the core plan, which was fairly stupid because our regular leader happens to be on core plan herself. Her basic message seemed to be, “I know why you’re all so fat, it’s because you aren’t doing things my way!”

The impostor ended up wasting most of our meeting talking about why we should really be doing the core plan, unless of course we LIKED being on flex plan and polluting our bodies by just eating WHATEVER. All in all, I thought she was kind of a bitch.