Infighting

There's a cutthroat world of infighting amongst Weight Watchers leaders.

It seems astonishing to me, but there you go.

I hadn't really though about it much, although some of the signs were there. I've seen Beth going through an audit (someone from Corporate came and sat in our meeting...) and had her ask me to attend a different meeting for one week so she could pad her numbers.

There's competition between the different leaders at our center. Beth's constantly telling us that we're her "best" meeting. I thought she was kidding. Or trying to make us feel better.

Yesterday, she told Thomas and I that the Wednesday night leader was still "claiming" us, and that she'd had to fight about it. (We signed up on a Wednesday night, and tried a couple of different leaders before we found someone we liked...) Certainly, I want Beth to be able to "take credit" for our retention as members. I'm quite sure we wouldn't still be attending meetings if we had to put up with the idiot on Tuesday nights.

I don't know why it didn't really occur to me that this is a competitive business. I mean, we all know that the Diet Industry is huge, hungry, and unethical. I'm sure even Weight Watchers has some deep dark secret somewhere...

And certainly, with this member-grabbing fight going on, there's definitely someone's job/raise at stake.

Turns out, we are Beth's best meeting. For the whole district, our center has the largest Monday meetings. Monday is apparently not a hot day for weight loss. Most people weigh in on Tuesdays, or Fridays. Beth's theory about this is that people want to feel less accountable for what they eat over the weekend... by weighing in before the weekend, they feel that they can eat more during the weekend, because they have "all week" to take it off. Or by weighing in on Tuesday, they've had "a few extra days" to behave after the weekend. I admit, I do this a bit myself. Thomas and I usually have a splurge meal/food item every week and I refuse to eat it on Sunday, because it'll "stick around" for my weigh in. Silly, but there ya go.

Beth is always telling us how much weight, as a group, we've lost. And praising us for our attendance and retention. (The Monday group has a 68% retention since January, and we lost over 72 pounds this week!)

Until Beth was telling us, however, that she'd had to fight to get us moved over to "her" numbers... it just hadn't dawned on me exactly how important these things are.

Especially, as she confided to us, Thomas and I are two of the "biggest losers".

(Thomas made 50 pounds yesterday... and I just didn't quite get to my 45 pound bling... by like .6 pounds.)