Excess Weight Is a Weighty Issue

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How long will people keep theirresolution of lose the excess weight they are carrying around? Thisis a problem for many people. The New Year starts out with goodintentions, but by the end of the month, the intentions are gone andpeople are back to old habits. Yes, it is the beginning of February,and in contacting the local Weight Watchers and Curves offices, thenumbers in attendance has declined almost as expected.
Curves is slightly up over normal andthey are working to keep people coming. What has helped this year? Mainly it is grouping people into similar weight groups so that thereis not the cross comparison and put-downs from those not having tolose as much weight. There was some extreme confrontations in thefirst session to weed out those that had no desire in the firstplace. In the five new groups, the first session eliminated onegroup, but the remaining four only lost two of their number.
In further conversations, they haveonly lost five more, which is less than they normally lose. Thegrouping has helped as they can more easily tailor the class to fittheir needs and keep everyone moving at a similar pace. They areexpecting four of them back after they heal from accidents thathappened away from Curves – one a severe burn, two falling on ice,and one in an auto accident. Also, they found that by using age as acommon factor in the grouping has been somewhat helpful, but that hasnot been a great concern for many.
Weight Watchers has lost participantsat the same rate as in prior years and they are now down to thededicated few they normally have and work with for at least thecoming year. Even adding some incentives has not retained attendees. They had hoped that the fall out rate would have been lower thisyear.
In asking questions about what diseasesmay have been involved, I could not get any of this information, so Idon't know if anyone has diabetes. I can appreciate the confidentialnature of this relating to any individual, but I had hoped to getsome numbers at least. I had asked for numbers of memberships andnew members, but even this was not information they would give.
Two people that I knew were joiningWeight Watchers I did talk to. I did find out why they had stopped. Both said that even though they had requested staying off third partypromotion lists, they were inundated with junk mail and email forthis special and that special for exercise equipment and other weightloss information. This was upsetting to them and they felt if theirrequest could be ignored, then what other expectation did they havefor any privacy.
The short “letter to the editor” inDiabetes in Control is what got me interested in this. I will admit that I was surprised by what I learned from formerWeight Watchers members. When I asked about this, the question wasignored and the benefits of advertising was promoted especiallystating how deep the bargains were and the benefits of exercise wereso beneficial that they could not be ignored.