My second friend has disappeared into the international abyss. The first friend, Tom Smith, was clearly a mercenary who last phoned me from Chile. The second, Marc Bender, had been working on elections in Iraq and sent only one email in three years, during a break he took in Australia. Trouble is, Marc and I succeeded in keeping our weight down with pure male competition and a standing bet about our target weight.
Without Marc my weight started to climb
and I joined Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers was an automatic
choice. It is the only program that has been scientifically tested
with a control group over a three-year period (the outcome was
statistically positive, but modest). All the instructors on staff are
successful alumni of the program.
I have been to Weight Watchers in San Francisco where members are encouraged to talk to the person next to them and the subject is often about resisting pressure from friends and work associates to eat “just a little piece of this cake.” In Salt Lake the subject is recipes and the problems of cooking for large families with low-calorie, store-bought prepared food.
I put up a website with my favorite commercial products I've found that help keep calories down. If you go to the website, one Weight Watcher point is 60-130 calories.