I Got This (12 page)

By the time I met Liz, I had lost a fair amount of weight on my own, but as it usually did, my weight hit the familiar plateau around 193 pounds. It seemed that no matter what I tried, I couldn’t break through. Liz spent a great deal of time talking to me about small healthy changes I could make that would get me there.

Although I was already a pretty healthy eater for the most part, and had a lot of firsthand knowledge about losing weight, Liz helped me see that I was making tiny mistakes that were throwing me off and keeping my weight loss stagnant. For example, I knew I was eating good snack choices, such as trail mix with nuts and dried fruit. What I didn’t realize was the amount I was eating was actually detrimental. Liz asked me how much trail mix I’d eat in a sitting and the truth is, I didn’t know. I ate my snack without paying any attention to the amount. I was aware that I was eating several handfuls at a time—if not more—but I had no idea how much that really added up to. Liz suggested trying a quarter cup at a sitting instead of eating as much as I wanted. That seemed reasonable enough, although at the time, I wasn’t sure what a quarter of a cup actually looked like. I shared with Liz that I also loved
eating Greek yogurt with peanut butter. Once again, Liz asked me how much peanut butter I was eating with that serving of yogurt.

Again, I didn’t know.

She explained that one tablespoon of peanut butter is a great choice for a snack, but adding a giant dollop into the yogurt can throw me out of my weight-loss zone. When Liz pointed out that the food choice was right but the amount was the problem, I realized that
portion control
and
lack of awareness
were my two biggest challenges to weight loss.

Liz gave me a visual demonstration on what amounts of food were doable in the Weight Watchers program and what amounts would set me back. Next, she reintroduced me to all the foods I could eat—as long as they were measured in the right amounts. It was interesting to see, but the fact remained that I was still in my “diet” mentality, so I thought she was crazy as she told me that I could have ice cream, chocolate, popcorn, pizza, and sushi. Sushi! It’s one of my most favorite meals on the planet and I hadn’t eaten it for two years because of the high carbohydrates in the rice and because I was avoiding it while pregnant. The promise was enticing, but the reality seemed a little suspect.

“What do I do when I get a craving for chicken wings?” I asked, knowing damn well those would never be a choice on a healthy weight-loss program.

“You can eat wings, but eat six instead of twelve. Have a green
salad first so you’re not as hungry by the time you get to the wings,” Liz said. “If you don’t branch outside of what you know, you will break down, which means you will fall away from the program, and we don’t want that to happen.”

Hold on.

She was insistent that I could eat whatever I wanted and all I had to do was track the Points and I would lose weight?

Was she serious?

She was. For the first time ever, that is exactly what someone was telling me. I could not believe it, so I did what I always do when I can’t wrap my brain around an idea.

I said, “Whatever.”

Uh huh. I did. I said it. I said, “Whatever,” and by now we all know how that movie ends.

Sensing my doubt, Liz insisted that as long as I stayed within my allotted-Points-per-day budget, I would definitely lose weight. At the end of the day, the Weight Watchers program is an education in sidestepping the misinformation out there about dieting, and breaking the negative diet mentality that predominates the world we all live in. Weight Watchers hands you the tools to make the right choices. But you still have to make those choices or the program, like any program, won’t work.

I found that out the hard way.

I still had my doubts, but as I said, out of courtesy I agreed to give Weight Watchers a try. I figured I would give it a week to see
what happened. Honestly, I had nothing to lose—except a few pounds. But of course, I wasn’t expecting that to happen. If I wasn’t satisfied with the results, then I could just as easily go back to my old way of dieting. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The first week on the program I created my own version of the Weight Watchers program. I mostly stuck to what I had already been doing and combined it with some of the food choices Liz said I could have. Nice try, but I didn’t lose a pound. It turned out that Jenny Kate’s way didn’t quite meet the criteria set for me by Weight Watchers. When I saw Liz a week later, she wasn’t shocked by my lack of results, because she immediately knew I hadn’t stuck with the program. Then Liz shared that I was like a lot of her other members. I didn’t
trust
the program. She was absolutely right about that.

By the second week, I had actually gained weight. I think I tried that first week five different times before I realized I had two roads I could walk down on this journey. I could keep doing things my way and keep getting the same dismal results, or I could finally give in and try Weight Watchers for real, and see what happened.

I decided to give the plan a try. I fully committed. Here’s what I discovered: Weight Watchers is not a painful program. I was like most people, believing that weight loss has to be a struggle and a painful experience. It
can
be that, but it doesn’t have to be. Through Weight Watchers, you can learn to take weight off in a healthy
manner without giving up all the foods that make you feel good. After my first real week, I lost five pounds. With that result, I actually wanted to stick to their program.

“Walter! I don’t know what they did, but this plan works!” I was excited by my progress. I thought I had found the weight-loss miracle. “This is it. This is all I need.” From that moment on, I was hooked. “You got me,” I said to Liz. And they did. I even agreed to sign on as a spokeswoman for the company—an ambassador of sorts, and I haven’t looked back since.

My contract to be an ambassador for Weight Watchers only called for me to lose 10 percent of my body weight. That’s it. No more, no less. Needless to say, that goal was met pretty early on. After that, I didn’t stick with the plan out of some contractual obligation. No way. It became a healthy lifestyle choice for me—one that helped me discover a program that was not only doable but also realistic for sustained weight loss.

My relationship with Liz became one of the most important in my journey to regain my health. I connected with her from the start. She was easy to talk to and understood me from the beginning. When we first met, Liz explained that all Weight Watchers leaders were once members, and to become a leader, she had to have been on the program. Knowing that helped me because she could relate to everything I was going through. Liz told me that before joining the company, she had lost and gained the same thirty pounds several times over the years. Frustrated after many failed diets, she decided
to join Weight Watchers as her last hope. She eventually lost fifty pounds and has kept it off, which gave me a tremendous amount of comfort and confidence in her. She knew what it was like to lose that much weight, so I could really open up to her along the way. Liz knew where I was coming from and was able to answer all my questions, and address my concerns and challenges as we forged ahead.

I was lucky to have the relationship I developed with Liz, but it’s important to know that my experience was very much like anyone who is a member of the program. Every Weight Watchers meeting has a leader there to support you through your own journey. And while your schedule and challenges may not be the same as mine, we are all busy just living our lives—doing the best we can. I can promise you that if you trust in the program and trust your leader, you will see positive results. In doing my own research, there was no other plan out there that offered the healthy Weight Watchers message or support and, more so, delivered with the results.

I
t’s important to me that you all know that the hard work I’ve done to take control of my health, I have done completely on my own. I don’t live in a mansion with a private chef or personal trainer at my beck and call. Oh no. I get so frustrated when people make that imaginary leap that I live like a princess in a castle with all of my needs met by others. I cook my own meals, and when I can’t because I’m on a movie set all day or in the recording studio, Walter takes care of making sure my meals are fixed as if I made them myself.

Whenever people ask me how they can lose weight, too, the first thing I tell them is that they have to make up their mind that they really want to do it and do it for themselves. I suppose that way of thinking is true for breaking any addiction, but for me, that was
the difference in losing the weight and keeping it off.
If you can’t take responsibility for your own well-being, you will never take control over it
. That is the truth.

Look, change is scary. If you aren’t completely ready to make adjustments that will ultimately alter the course of your life, you are not ready to embrace change. My fiancé is the type of man who likes things to be the way they’ve always been. He doesn’t like change, but he’s been very supportive. He understands I did this for me and for me alone. You can’t make a life-altering decision for someone else and expect it to stick. Gaining control over your health and well-being is one of those times in your life that you get to be completely selfish and not feel bad about it. If you want to meet your goals, you have to make it about you. You have to make it work for you and you alone. Anything less is a setup for failure.

Listen, I have been through this weight-loss roller coaster a few times over the years. I have been there and back and there and back again and again. I had everyone on the planet tell me that I needed to look a certain way or be a specific size if I wanted to make it as a singer. I have been rejected from more jobs than the ones I’ve gotten simply because of my appearance. If I had listened to all of those people, maybe I would have become a broken-down, overweight, out-of-work,
American Idol
castoff has-been. But I didn’t. I was never that insecure. I’m telling you the absolute truth when I say that I genuinely loved my body—fat, thin, and everywhere in between. If I didn’t have that confidence, though, I don’t think I
could have forged ahead and continued to pursue my dreams. Loving yourself means caring enough to make the hard decisions in your life.

I have a friend who is a personal fitness trainer. One day he came to me to say he was getting fed up with a client of his because she wouldn’t listen to him to get to a certain weight. We got to talking and I asked him if that number was what he wanted for her or what she wanted for herself. My friend looked at me like I had solved one of life’s great mysteries. All this time, he was imposing what he wanted on his client without ever asking her what her goals were. Forget what everyone else wants you to do and figure out what you want for yourself. Here’s what I know for sure: The only way you can sustain a permanent change is to create a new way of thinking, acting, and being.

When I decided to become an ambassador for Weight Watchers, I was ready to do whatever it took to get healthy and learn how to finally stay that way. My goals were to feel good, have enough energy and stamina to keep up with my son, get healthy, and not worry about my dress size anymore. And even though I was losing the weight for me, I had the greatest motivation on the planet—my brand-new baby son. Once I welcomed Munchkin into the world, I felt that I had an obligation to be the best mom I could be for him. He deserved to have a mama who could run after him, chasing him around the house without getting winded or tired. I wanted him to have a role model who could teach him to make
healthy food choices along the way so he would have the right tools as he went through life. I needed him to grow up with a mama who always would be there for him by caring enough about herself to take control of her health and eating. Everything changed on the day he was born. And now, I had a partner in Weight Watchers to help me get to my goal, for life.

The program is designed so that members can expect a one- to two-pound drop in weight per week when following the program. Of course, there can be some fluctuation in terms of the amount of weight you may lose, especially in the beginning. You tend to lose a bit more during the first couple of weeks due to mostly losses in fluid. One of the biggest challenges to continued weight loss I had was planning my meals around my very full schedule. Liz helped me to take a look at a typical week for me and see where I was making my mistakes.

Was I missing meals?

Was I overeating?

Was I starving and then bingeing?

I now knew I was making mistakes in terms of volume, so that took some time to understand and fix. Since my eating is often sporadic and done on the fly, it was important to come up with meals that were filling and able to hold me over long periods of time. It is not unreasonable for me to go eight, ten, or even twelve hours in between meals, especially when I am on a movie set or in the studio recording. While I once thought that was desirable, through Weight
Watchers I learned it was actually hurting me. So when I did sit down to eat, the question that kept coming up was, “Where and how can I make this meal better for me?” I asked myself that question before every meal—especially in the beginning.

Better awareness became a project and an exercise in discipline that I created for myself so I could study my eating habits—good and bad. Doing this forced me to evaluate what I was about to put into my body. It also gave me the chance to check my
PointsPlus
^®
so I could make sure I wasn’t using up the bulk of my daily allowance in one meal. It eventually helped me learn to use my Points wisely, something that really made a difference in my weight loss.

The real secret to my success on Weight Watchers was tracking my
PointsPlus
^®
values. I am super-strict about tracking every little thing I eat. Weight Watchers made it really easy for me to stick with the program because everything you need is available online. I even downloaded their application onto my iPhone so I can easily keep track of my Points all day long, no matter where I am. I never skip logging something in because I am only fooling myself if I don’t keep track. I want to know exactly where I am with my Points throughout the day so I can budget them wisely for future meals. I’ve gotten so disciplined that I can now tally my
PointsPlus
^®
values in my head. After a while, I began to memorize specific
Points-Plus
^®
values for the foods I regularly ate. Even so, I still use the Weight Watchers tracking system every day to keep me on the right path. If you consistently do that, you cannot fail on this program.