12W12S2P Update: "Can't" Is A Four-Letter Word

I have complained before about Weight Watchers, and how I basically hate it, even though I know it is a program that works for a lot of people, including me at one point. But it's really hard for me to get behind a corporation, part of the diet-and-fitness-industrial-complex, that makes money by featuring an Academy Award winner in a commercial whose tagline is, essentially:


"Before Weight Watchers, my whole world was 'can't.'"


Other people have put this better than I could -- see here -- but I think it's worth mentioning just the same. I went on this dumb diet for my own reasons, which even I don't know, but I assure you that nothing about me will be different when I'm finished except my bra size. I don't actually feel any better about myself, because not eating doesn't fix self-esteem problems that had nothing to do with the number on the scale in the first place. I've admitted that I'm probably more neurotic now, more self-conscious, than I have been in a long time, because people are noticing me now, and it makes me uncomfortable. I don't think that wearing a single-digit pant size is going to magically repair all the damage that 36 years of living my own crazy life has caused.


The article I link to comes off, a little bit, as bashing Jennifer Hudson, which is not the writer's intent, I don't think. But I do agree with her that it is not a big leap to watch the commercial and think, "Really? Your 'whole world was "can't?"' Really? The Oscar, the Grammy, the baby, all of that? Was 'can't?'" I nodded my head when I read, "Weight Watchers wants us all to believe that there is no such thing as success or happiness unless you’re thin." Because I believe that it's true. The weight-loss industry does not make billions of dollars a year by basing its business plan on people loving themselves at any size.


Sometimes, like now, the mixed messages make me want to cry. One of the biggest reasons why I wanted to make a lifestyle change in the first place was to set a good example for my daughter: eat healthy, move healthy, be healthy, the way we want her to be. But if she sees me measuring rice and counting pistachios and eating only a sandwich for dinner while everyone else is eating pork chops, what is that telling her? Is it telling her the same thing that it tells me -- that it doesn't matter what we do, because someone will find a reason to find us inadequate in some way? Too tall, too thin, too curly-headed? Too short, too fat, too poker-straight?


What do you do when your three-year-old asks you, "Why?" and you don't answer, because you can't?