I had my weekly Veterans Administration weight management class today. The process is that I check in at the front desk and then wait for someone to call the class participants. The past two weeks I’ve been the only participant here in Pocatello. We go through the magic door (that separates the workers from the waiters) and get weighed. The fellow handling the class setup records the weight and then we (actually, I) go into a conference room where the facilitator sets up a video conference call with the VA conference room in Salt Lake City. There are three sites participating in the video conference, Salt Lake, Orem, and Pocatello.

The meeting lasts for an hour. Today’s topic was reading food labels and how to use the information on the label. So far I haven’t really learned anything new from these meetings, just reinforcement of what I already knew. Today there was a new participant (even though this was week 4 of the six, or is it eight?, week session). He had to comment on *everything* which caused the instructor not to be able to get through all the material she had planned.

There’s lots of things I don’t like about this whole setup, including that observation above on the new guy. However, it is causing me to do some things that will probably be helpful, such as keeping a food record and looking at how many calories I’m actually eating.

However, at the weigh-in today, I gained weight from last week. Definitely didn’t expect that! I had an appointment yesterday with my primary car doctor and according to their scale I had lost 10 pounds since the previous weigh-in at the VA clinic. So, these scales are definitely weighing differently! I think I’ll need to drag out our scales and use them once a week to see how I’m progressing.

TTFN!