Duane Morin

My wife joined weight watchers recently. I vehemently refused. But I have access to all of her point-keeping scorecards now and could play the game the same way. 20ish points a day for me? No problem. Now it’s a personal challenge. I know that a handful of pretzels is 3 points. 5 handfuls of pretzels (or, worse, Dove mini chocolates….) is like a day’s points right there, shot to heck.

Sure I still cheat sometimes. I’m not doing the “weigh in every week” thing. But I’m down like 17 pounds and even though I still make my regular cafeteria trips at work it’s almost always just for diet coke or water. Sometimes pretzels or nuts. Almost never chocolate or Doritos.

Been biting my nails for 30 years now, easy. Ever since I can remember. Know what finally worked? The rubber band on the wrist trick. Don’t ask me why, but it’s been just about 2 weeks now and although I still stare longingly at my fingers and occasionally catch myself trying to just pick at little bits of cuticle, I can honestly say that I’m done. My hands look and feel like somebody else’s now. It’s very weird.

I think the rubber band thing worked, for me, for a couple of simple reasons. First and foremost it’s always there. Every other tool that you can think of, clippers and files and polishes and so on… you will eventually not have on you (driving? sleeping?) and there you go, an excuse to pick. But the elastic can stay on all the time, even in the shower.

Second, it’s not so much the negative reinforcement thing, snapping it is no big deal to me and I rarely do it. It’s just the reminder. Like, ok, I’m staring at my fingers. I have a couple of choices now. I can bite them. I can snap the elastic. Or I can just look and then go look at something else. Sometimes I snap it, sometimes I don’t.

Highly, highly, highly recommended.

Office in my house means “place for all the paperwork”, which means “place to dump all the paperwork that you plan to get to later.” Gotta work on staying on top of it.