Just call me Duchess

I signed up at Weight Watchers yesterday, prompted by a certain group photo in which my ass was clearly the most substantial of the 15 assembled. Not that this--the state of things--is a surprise to me, but there's something particularly gripping about the objectification by photographs. Heart in my mouth the whole way there; I hate group self-improvement things and always feel terribly self-conscious, and hope the entire way there it won't be one of those "Give me one word that describes your feelings" kinds of things. Alas...that was the first thing out of the speaker's mouth. But never mind. Whatever. OK.

Weight Watchers has changed in the 15 years since I last set foot in a meeting; now you stand on a white tile in front of a table and the person behind the table sees your weight on a digital readout that's facing her. This comforts me; bad enough to be there, much less have the 5 people in line behind me craning their necks. Because, of course, everyone cares very, very much about the details of my weight. Everyone.

My children pored through the materials when I got home. I chose to tell them--unusual for me--because I want to defuse a dynamic that's developed between me and Maisie. "Hey, you can eat at McDonald's on this!" Maisie cries out. "A whole happy meal is only 12 points!" The diet of her dreams. I've been very careful from the beginning about food talk--especially with her. But I find that body size is a bit like race: just because you don't talk about it doesn't mean it's not potently acting on you. I've misstepped here. She already thinks her thighs are fat (they aren't) and won't wear skirts anymore unless they come to the knees. When she was 3 she turned to me, tearfully, and asked, "When I grow up am I going to be fat like you?" (I was, er, slow to lose that pregnancy weight; the breakup with her Dad the month before she was born was tough on my dietary resolve.) I reassured her that she wouldn't be like me, which--maybe you can imagine--was about the most painful moment in my life up to that point.

That was the beginning of it all, for me: the fear of embarrassing her, certainly, but also the fear that she would overcompensate in some way to spare my feelings about something she'd already identified as a bad thing--that she would edit herself with me. And so I look for it, and find it. "You're so beautiful," she'll tell me from time to time. I'll smile. "Really, you are!" she'll say, even if I've done nothing to let on that I don't feel beautiful. When she says that, I hear her saying what she wants me to be and feel despite the fact of the matter: I hear the declaration as a compensation for what she sees and is feeling inside.

This morning she woke up at 3 and climbed into bed with me. "I'm so happy," she said. "Why?" I asked. "I just love this food program you found," she murmers, and falls asleep. This is what's on her mind at 3 in the morning.

I honestly never thought I'd lose weight for someone else. And certainly people lose weight for more than one reason, and I have plenty. But I've never felt more determined. Enough.