Weight Watcher's Diaries Part Four
By Carol Daelemans, forward by Kathleen Daelemans

Not wanting to be pushy but with deadlines looming, I sent my sister, Carol, an Instant Message asking her when she'd be turning in her next Weight Watcher Diary. She sent me a note back, "I'm sorry it's late. I just e-mailed it to you. Read it and tell me that it's crap so I can fix it all and send it back."

I told her I completely understood that the bosses she worked for were much more demanding than the ones driving me. "My boss (her three year old) is rather pushy today. I've been called into countless 'Tea Party' meetings. Each time I'm asked to just drop everything as attendance is mandatory."

—Kathleen Daelemans


Article by Carol Daelemans

Week 3 or "the Week I lost my mind and went on vacation with 3 kids"
I don't know what possessed me but I thought it was a good idea to go on vacation with three kids to an indoor water park in February. I'm finally ready to admit it was actually my idea. I can admit it now because looking at it after having survived, I think a good time was had by all. It wasn't stress free and it was very difficult to stay on track eating out but we all still like each other and I didn't gain any weight on the trip. Not bad!

It sure was a lot harder keeping up with Weight Watchers while on vacation. If I ever do get that trip to Europe let me just tell everyone right now, I'll be quitting Weight Watchers the minute my plane takes off and I won't start up again until after I hit U.S. soil once again! I'm quite sure "pain au chocolate" doesn't translate into my Points tracker. Not that it will matter too terribly much. One of the most important things I'm learning with this whole project is which foods are worth the trouble and which ones are best to stay away from. I'm also learning how much is too much.

Apparently, the easiest way for me to have started this diet would have simply been to keep my mouth shut. The whole "eat less, move more" idea is not a joke. I can't believe the things I used to believe where not too bad. Once you have to make a detailed accounting of your food intake you can see the mistakes without too much trouble.

We spent five days and four nights at the Great Wolf Lodge. They have two restaurants and a snack bar in the hotel. They do not have a low fat menu. They do not give low fat much thought at all. One of the restaurants is a "Family Style" restaurant. They have a set price per person and for this you get to choose two entrees for your table. All the side dishes choices you choose are served family style. They also have enormous desserts you can share. This was a hard place to eat. No one wanted to share the baked white fish (myself included). Everyone wanted the lasagna or fried chicken or the barbequed pork to share. Along with these tasty dishes you get the salad bar and mashed potatoes and corn and green beans with bacon and macaroni and cheese. Don't try to tell me that I could have just ignored all that and had the salad bar. If that were true I wouldn't be wearing the size jeans that I am. I like to eat. I enjoy eating. Put food in front of me and I want some. I need to try "just a little bit" of everything. Some of it is my childhood membership in the "clean plate club" but most of it is just me. I like to eat. I like to try new things, old things, different things, everything. It's all good. This type of restaurant is not a good place for me to keep up my Weight Watchers.

The other restaurant was fancier. Since you have to know they shared a kitchen all that "fancier" means here is that they made you wait longer. This type of restaurant is not good for my 3 year old. She barely finds food interesting and sees no reason to wait for it. If it's there she may have some. If it's not there then there must be better things to do. The two older kids didn't have much time for this restaurant either so we spent more time at the snack bar and the Family Restaurant.

The snack bar seemed like it wasn't too bad. If you weren't on Weight Watchers and had the metabolism of a twelve year old, it was great! They had corn dogs, pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, funnel cakes, giant hot pretzels, ice cream, dippin' dots, you name it. Snack heaven. For me they had a side salad or a chef's salad. I went for the side salad since I knew dinner at the restaurants would be harder. I happily ate my salad with only one of the two dressing packets that they give you thinking this was better. Nope. I might as well have had a cheese burger. While finishing up my tiny salad I read the dressing package. Twenty five grams of fat! Who makes these things! I cannot begin to guess what you could put in salad dressing to add up to that much fat. This is completely unfair. It turns out that while a salad is zero points you have to eat it dry. Almost any sort of dressing is going to make it the same as a sandwich. Unfair.

On the fourth day of captivity, the power in the hotel went out. They had a generator that could keep different parts of the hotel in power. This did not include the pool. They gave everyone free food and tried to keep all the four thousand kids entertained. At some point they were smart enough to power up the arcade and give out tons of free tokens to keep the kids from going crazy and taking us with them. We spent half the day this way and then went out to lunch and a did a little shopping. When we got back in the late afternoon they had solved most of the problems and we were able to go back in the pool. The power went out one more time while we were in the pool area but they were smart enough not to ask anyone to leave. They got it back up again in half an hour and we all acted as if nothing went wrong. I wasn't going back in the hotel room with 3 kids. Let them swim in the twilight. They thought is was "way cool".

I have to tell you, trying to figure out my food intake for this day was much harder than any other day. I finally gave up and decided that any food consumed in a power outage while staying at resort filled with bored children did not count toward Weight Watchers Points. That would just be totally unfair. The fact that all the parents and children lived and kept their sense of humor negates all of that right off the bat.

When this "vacation" was over I was happy that we all still mostly liked each other and that I hadn't actually gained any weight. I had only lost 3/4 of a pound. This kept me 1/4 pound away from achieving my first Weight Watchers Star. They give you stars when you get to certain milestones the first one being 5 pounds lost. Oh well, better luck next week.