You do not have to stay for the meetings. You can go in, get weighed, and leave. You can purchase what you'd like during their open hours. They usually open up half an hour before a meeting starts. That's what they mean by open.

Yeah, sorry I should clarify.

They have meeting times, but then they have Open hours. A center will open up about a 1/2 hour before the meeting to give people time to arrive, get weighed in, buy what they want etc. You can go from when they open, even after the meeting starts (since you don't wish to stay for meeting it won't matter).

A healthy weight loss is 1-2 pounds a week, so don't start feeling discouraged that you lost 3 pounds. That is a wonderful achievement!

Thanks for the encouragement!

Actually, I was very happy about the 3 lbs. It's been this week (4/18-4/25)where things slowed down more than they would have, had I not indulged so much! I had BK (small burgers, but still) twice, and that is SO BAD!! Even if I was staying within my points or was able to just tap into a couple flex points, which I was...the salt itself probably caused me to retain some water. So from 4/18 - 4/25, I had probably a 1.2 lb loss (adjusted down from the 1.6 my scale indicated, because on the 18th I noticed that there is still a .4 lb difference between our scale and the WW scale...which I'll accept. It was the 3.5 lb difference (our scale reading lighter than the WW scale or any scale I'd been on in the last few months) that bugged me before.

I know that 1-2 lbs/week is the recommended loss. But I was so hoping I'd be in the group of WW clients who loses a bit more than that in the first couple weeks.

Still, 1.2 lbs is a loss, and I am happy it occurred, despite my self-sabotaging ways this week. Woohoo!!!

1-2 lbs is not the "recommended" or "average" loss. 1 - 2 lbs is so often quoted as the maximum safe loss that many people assume that most people are losing this much. The reality is that the average is much, much lower. If you have any doubts, count the number of people in a meeting some time and divide it into the number of pounds lost by the group (if your leader shares that information, as many do). You'll find that the average loss is much, much less than 2 lbs per week.

This is why I love TOPS, you really get a sense of how much "average" is by the way the weight recorder reports on the weight loss. When you lose 2 lbs, and win "biggest loser" for the week, it really puts into perspective how hard it is to lose weight, and how well you're doing. Even when someone else wins it, and it's only a smidgen more than you lost, you really start to realize just what "average" really is. Also something that weight watcher's doesn't report, that TOPS does, is if the group (as a whole, they don't "out" individuals) gained more weight than it lost. It does happen, but you'd never guess it in a WW meeting, so if you turtle (stay the same) or gain, you tend to feel like a freak, when it's usually just part of the process.

No week makes or breaks your weight loss, and as one doctor told me, a loss of 4 ounces per week, done every week, is more than most "dieter's" accomplish for the long-haul. The thought of losing only 13 pounds per year is frightful to me, but then I think of how many years I did not lose 13 lbs (and probably gained instead).

I think impatience and a false sense of failure (when a person is actually statistically in the lead) pushes more people off weight loss plans than anything else.

TOPS = Take Off Pounds Sensibly... other than that I don't know much about it, but I have seen threads in here...

Here ya go... Hope it helps

http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=138861

TOPS is taking off the pounds sensibly. And Kaplods is an expert on it. So, if you have any questions about it, make sure to ask her.

Hi! I'm new here and this is my first post (yay!). TOPS is great, and would be the group I'd prefer to join; however, the only one in my area meets only one day a week, a weekday, during the day, and so is just not convenient for me. So I'm in Weight Watchers instead.

WW is good too, don't get me wrong - especially once you find a good location and start going to the meetings regularly, which I've been doing for about a month with good results. And the meeting times are *way* more convenient.

However, I was in a TOPS group in high school and remember it fondly, and also remember I lost quite a bit of weight during my year there.

Mom and I did TOPS back in the 60's & 70's when I was a teen. Mom reached goal and I managed to keep my weight from getting out of hand and trimmed down in high school. TOPS was more like a club with members taking turns serving on it's board as leader, secretary and treasurer. For many of the ladies, it appeared to be their only social outlet and I remember them fondly. We even sang songs from a TOPS songbook.

However, I didn't like some of the humiliation aspects of TOPS and hope it's changed since those days. In the TOPS pledge (recited at each meeting) it said, "even though I overeat in private, my excess pounds are there for the entire world to see what a fool I've been." At our meetings we even had to say said "oink, oink I'm a big fat pig, I gained X pounds" during roll call. That was 40 years ago and I hope much has changed.

About 8 years ago I thought I'd try TOPS again and dropped in at a meeting during the day at a local church. Jaws dropped as I walked into a room full of ladies in their 70's and 80's. They had been meeting since the 60's, sang the same songs and said the same pledge. They were so surprised to see a 40-something woman at their meeting. They welcomed me, but did say I might like another group a little more. To be polite, I sat through the entire meeting. It was like deja vu. I did go visit another group with younger people. It may have been an off night though as they were discussing club business and fundraising. I never went back.

I've gone back to Weight Watchers and have lost 10 lbs. in recent weeks. If you don't like a particular leader, try another meeting or location. I've heard that people who attend meetings lose up to 8 times faster.

Good luck finding the right support group.