RANT: BIG BROTHER IS WEIGHT WATCHING YOU!

Nessie is over weight. Nessie thinks it's time to see her feet again. Nessie realizes that the time old excuses of 'my medication makes me fat' and ‘the washing machine shrunk my jeans' are just that, old. Nessie has joined Weight Watchers. Nessie will now pause for selected sniggers and judgement from the readers. Nessie is going to stop typing in third person now because Nessie is confusing herself.

Yes that's right; I've joined that ever growing cult of Weight Watchers. I call it a cult for many reasons.

1. They use an inordinate amount of cult references. For example; it’s run by people who call themselves ‘leaders’ helping you to achieve your ‘goal’ by sticking to the ‘plan’.

2. It relies on a tremendous amount of brain washing to keep its followers in line.

3. Their meetings are highly stressed and full of followers who, collectively, resemble peak hour at the unemployment office.

I was going to do this blog all about my first meeting, which was a barrel of laughs I can tell you, but I changed my mind when I made a rather startling (well, it is to me... I'm food deprived) discovery that I thought would appeal to a more general audience. So bare with me, this may take some time!

My leader is a particularly insipid and obsequious woman called Fiona, or FiFi as she asked us to call her. You know the type: too much make up, lots patronising disguised as support and the frightening belief that if you dare turn up to one of her meetings having gained weight, then that supercilious grin plastered to her face could very easily turn into a sneer before she publicly flays you alive in front of the other sheeple of her congregation.

Well, I signed up (having to hand over not just my email address but blood, urine, sperm and any alias’ I had ever gone by), weighed in at my expected inordinate amount, stayed for the patronising pep talk and left, my ears ringing with the thinly veiled threat

"Now remember, I'll know it you cheat or not"

*SHUDDER*

Now ordinarily I'm not a particularly paranoid person. Sure I believe everyone mocks my hair cut/weight/intelligence/motherhood skills/survival rate but no more than your average mentally unbalanced anti social reprobate. So imagine my surprise when I found myself with the sneaking suspicion that, at any given moment I was about to be (as you young, hip things call it) PUNKED!

Every time I reached for a piece of food I kept checking out the window to make sure there were no unmarked satellite vans packed with a Weight Watchers SWAT team prepared to rugby tackle me to the ground lest I actually consume more calories than a fruit fly’s fart.

I became convinced that Mr. Ness and Wee Ness were, in actual fact, double agents. Yeah sure, Wee Ness 'claimed' she was chatting to her invisible friend but you can never be too sure.

After adopting this new paranoid, jumpy and quiet frankly pathetic shadow of the fat bastard I'd formally been, I decided to give in to the mind games and just follow all the rules (sod anarchy, it doesn't use up enough calories). I realized that if I was convinced I was going to be caught cheating it was only because I'd be cheating myself... or so they wanted me to believe.

When you join Weight Watchers they give you your own individual password so you can go to their online site and chat/cry/swap conspiracy theories with other fat people. I, like the blind fool that I am, joined immediately after the meeting. With the highly suspect promise that you're 50% more likely to loose weight if you join the website as well as attend the meetings, how could I refuse?

I was on there the other night, feeling weak (and not just from lack of sustenance) and looking for support. When a familiar name popped up on my screen.

"Hiya Ness its Fifi. What are you doing up this late at night? You're going to absolutely ruin your diet by not getting enough recommended sleep. Don't you dare cheat. Of to bed with you. I'll know if you stay online. See you at the Wednesday meeting. You WILL have lost weight."

Bloody hell! I screamed out loud, pushed myself away from the computer instantly and scurried up to bed like a frightened animal.

So that's how she would know if I'd cheated or not. Big Brother's not just watching, he's bloody stalking and in a 'watch you as you sleep, brush the strands of hair from your face' way... Big Brother is incestuous!

I'm going to my meeting tomorrow night as planned. If I don't return home after that it means I gained weight. Please send the search party to Weight Watchers... armed!