What Do You Wish You Knew Before…?

Today I went to Carter’s school for an information session about moving up to 9^th grade.  How can that be?  Carter has been at her school for ten years now, which feels like both forever and no time at all.   After getting a tour of the campus by a “student ambassador” we had a panel of students answer questions about what the transition is like from middle school to high school and what they wished they had known before they got there.

I love that question, “What do you wish you had known before…?”  You fill in the blank.  There are so many things that happen in life that we all worry about, but knowing someone who has gone before you who can answer your questions can be such a comfort.

That is the whole premise behind Weight Watcher meetings.  Long before there were points, Weight Watchers worked on the notion that someone who had followed the diet and lost weight will teach you how to do it.  Having that leader who could clue you in was a major reason to keep coming.

Here are a few of the things about losing weight I wish I had known before:

1. Everyday public people are much nicer to thin people than fat people.  This was actually a big pain in the ass the first time I lost weight and discovered that perfect strangers were much too chatty to me as a thin person than me as a fat person.  Being fat is something that, contrary to the amount of space you are taking up, makes you almost invisible.  You can get in and out of the Harris Teeter much faster if you don’t have to pretend to be interested in what the deli guy, bagger and fishmonger are all talking to you about.
2. If you lose a good amount of weight some of it will be from your hair because your hair does getter thinner while your body does too.  The good news to know is that once you have maintained your weight for a while your hair will grow back.
3. You need to buy new clothes, especially bras and jeans, often.  It may sound fun, but trying to find the right sizes as your body is changing is more tedious than fun.
4. Losing weight does not solve all your other problems.  I never thought it would, but I have had more than a handful of people say something along the line of, “If only I could lose five pounds my life would be better.”  Guess what, your life will be the same; you just weigh five pounds less.
5. Try and find a way of eating that you can live on everyday because if you aren’t going down, you might be going up.  Maintaining at a steady weight is a huge amount of work.
6. Don’t trust the “calories burned” numbers on exercise machines or the calories listed on menus.  All calorie listings are estimates.

Don’t be afraid to try something new, be it jumping out of a plane, not something I can help you with, or learning Italian, can’t help you there either.  But find someone who has gone before you and just ask them what they wished they knew before that started.  You are more likely to set yourself out on a good path with that help.