The picture of above is from my vacation last year at Keystone, South Dakota. I took my lovely wife on her first helicopter ride and got a shot of this old abandoned mine shaft just a few miles away from Mount Rushmore. It was a great flight where we got a lot of pictures, but looking at this it makes me think of having a voracious appetite, a never ending craving for simple carbs and how it affects our bodies. Like modern day amateur explores who venture into these shafts just to find themselves hopelessly lost, the same happens when we consume too many simple carbs. You eat them and they end up hopelessly lost as fat in your body which you may or may never get rid of. Explorers may or may never be found in these old shafts.

I practice intermittent fasting on the 16:8 protocol and only eat high protein foods with zero simple carbs. I do eat carbs, but I only consume complex carbs and a limited amount on most days. By eating like this I am able to fuel my body for busy work weeks and grueling weight training sessions. I quit counting Weight Watchers Smart Points, yet I do still use their program. Only now I use it to count calories. I aim for 2500 calories a day, but usually find myself absolutely stuffed by the time I have consumed only about 1800 to 2000 calories. Hell, I used to eat that many in one sitting at fast food places which I now totally avoid too.

Following Weight Watchers on maintenance, I was still losing weight even after I no longer desired to lose weight once my body fat had reached ten percent. I have increased my caloric intake with more protein and am managing now to have stopped the weight loss. The good thing is I eat a ton of food, and never get cravings in between meals since kicking refined sugar entirely. It is quite simple, our bodies become addicted to sugar and it is hard to kick just like tobacco and alcohol are hard to quit. And the best thing is by having kicked sugar in it’s entirety, I do not feel like I am denying myself anything. Nope, I do no miss cake, cookies, soda pop or any kind of sweet treats. Honestly, none of that stuff tastes as good as feeling physically fit feels.

On Weight Watchers Connect and in my personal life , I have had folks inquire how I have had such good luck in losing weight. Folks ask me what can they do for themselves. First, none of this has been good luck, it involves hard work and having the mind set to commit to a life time of health and wellness over just losing weight. I am more than happy to help people towards health and wellness, but too many are not willing to give themselves 100% effort to improving their lives. I was talking to a lady at work the other day who asked my secret. After I told her, she said that maybe she would start sometime in the summer. Well guess what, procrastination and laziness is never going to get you where you think you want to be.Like being an alcoholic, I guess you just have to be sick of your own fat ass before being willing to commit to getting yourself healthy. I talk to folks personally and on social media about kicking simple carbs, refined sugar, and most refuse to give this up. Folks want their treats. But here is a reality for you, trying to control those sweets that loaded excess fat on your ass is like an alcoholic thinking they are on a good path to sobriety even when they tempt drunkenness with the occasional drink on the weekend. How many hard core drunks do you know that can do this on a sustainable level. Guess what, if you are addicted to sugar, those occasional treats can very well, and likely will, turn back into a daily thing if you have already displayed that you have no self control over them by getting fat in the first place.

If you have found yourself on Weight Watchers because you are over weight and have little control over sugar cravings, you have to be out of your blooming mind to think you have a realistic shot at not falling back in to the same old trap. Yes, some people are successful. No, Weight Watchers does not tell you to deny yourself. Yet, when you read Connect posts every day, that social media forum is plum full of folks writing about how they lost control These stories far outweigh the true success stories. If anyone is serious about losing weight and being healthy, you have to make a true commitment to yourself. By going half assed about it, the only one you are cheating is yourself. You can look around your world and find plenty of excuses and people to blame for how you are. But the reality is you had better first take a good hard look at yourself. No one is to blame but you if you are an otherwise healthy individual. And even if not, you had better look inwards before looking outward for blame. It is on you entirely.

The lifestyle I promote is not entirely of my own creation. It is a mixture of concepts that I have put together for myself and it works quite well. I am 54 years old, 174 pounds with only 10% body fat. My blood labs are excellent and my blood pressure is 110/68 with a 61 bpm resting heart rate. I use weight training programs put together by folks smarter than myself who have put in the research to best understand nutrition, rest and physiology for top level performance. I still use the Weight Watchers program to not only maintain weight, but also now to actually regain lost lean muscle mass from my weight loss phase. The information is all provided by Weight Watchers for me to work on my objective. I count calories and macro-nutrients which are provided on the app. I weigh in and track it every week just as I did during my weight loss phase of body re-composition. I use the app now even more diligently than I did while losing. It is hard work in the gym and a minor amount of time tracking my food consumption. Tracking is now just a matter of habit that takes me a matter of maybe a minute to accomplish. Weight Watchers gives you the tools for success. Even with all the butt hurt whining about Free Style not working, Weight Watchers has provided the information to make it work if you first seek it instead of just going off the basics with little to no understanding of what you are doing. Weight Watchers is promoting a high protein low carb lifestyle. Even if they do not straight out tell you that you need to kick simple carbs, all you need to do is look at and understand how the point system works to see where they are leading folks. If you are on Free Style and can not lose, it is solely on you. Maybe you should re-evaluate a weekend sweet treats and the stuff you might sneek in during the week when no one is looking. Maybe you have kicked the sweets, but eat like a glutton while ignoring the Weight Watchers Simply Filling concept. If you can not lose on Free Style, you need to go back and count how many calories a day you are consuming since after all, weight management and loss is still as simple as calories consumed against calories expended. Barring any true health and or hormonal issue, no one is a special snow flake.This program works, if you truthfully work it. People say that there is no one size fits all way to lose weight, to them I say bullshit. We used a one size fits all approach for fatties in basic training. Your diet is strictly controlled and you are put on a strict exercise regimen. No one fails this unless they are finding a way to sneak their Twinkies when no one is looking.

Weight Watchers is an excellent program for health and wellness. There are some who say it does not work for them, but these same folks are not only not being honest with others, they are not being honest with themselves. If you cheat yourself on a daily or weekly basis, you really need to evaluate yourself and not the program.

If you have read this far, thank you. Please feel free to comment if you like. No one needs to be worried about being PC on my blog as I will just give you full frontal honesty. If anyone disagrees with me, that is fine to voice it. I am full well open to honest dialogue with anyone, but know that here I am not going to pull punches as I would on Connect. I invite dissenting opinions as long as they are respectful in nature and not just trolling. Respectful as in no personal attacks on myself or others. But, know that I do not give a fuck if your language is as salty as my own.