Supporting the Diet Industry

I have a serious problem with the diet industry. I believe they're making gazillions of dollars by making people (mostly women) feel bad about themselves. I also believe they're setting people up to fail so that they'll come back and spend even more money. I hate the success stories that are all about how disgusting someone looked before and how she's a whole different person now. I hate how the success stories always state in teeny tiny print that those results are not typical. I hate to give my money to companies that do shit like that.

And yet. I joined Weight Watchers. There are some things I hate about it -- most notably the politics of the industry -- and also some things that are really working for me. I'm trying my best to use what tools are helpful and still do my own thing.
What I like:

• Getting weighed, officially, once a week
• My leader (more on him later)
• The online tools (looking up foods, calculating points from my recipes, etc...)
• Counting Points (isn't that freaky -- I thought I would hate this, but I don't. More on that, too)
• It inspired me to get more exercise, which has changed my life more than losing weight is.

What I don't like:

• That I'm supporting the evil diet industry
• That the food they sell is total processed crap in small portions and they pretend it's good for you because it's low in "Points"
• Most of the other leaders I've encountered
• The "success stories" that make people sound like they were disgusting losers before they joined Weight Watchers

What makes me feel like I made the right decision to join is that I ended up with my leader instead of someone else. My leader is gay, Jewish, in his 50's, entirely un-perky. He tells stories about his mother hiding food from him when he was a child. He never uses catch-phrases. He rarely gets to the Weight Watchers assigned weekly topics. I adore him. I wish he was my friend.

The first leader I encountered had been working for Weight Watchers full time for about thirty years. She was drinking the sugar-free Kool Aid, big time. In discussing how to deal with celebrations -- your own birthday, for instance -- she pulled out a Weight Watchers cookbook and pointed to a chocolate cake recipe. She asked us to guess why a slice was only, I don't remember how many points -- 2? 3? I was thinking, less sugar? whole wheat flour? eggless? The answer was: a serving size is approximately two bites. So she's trying to sell a cookbook based on its serving sizes. Fucked up. I drove across town to get away from her.

Once my leader (across town, and completely worth the drive) missed a meeting and our substitute made me want to play corporate bingo. She kept saying "your weight loss journey" and smiling too big. She said that at the end of the summer "there should be less of us." I walked out.

Another time he was gone, our substitute handed out plastic sun-visors.

I got really lucky.

And so, I let them charge me every month so that I can go to meetings and be weighed and count Points on my computer. Did I sell out?