The Full Suburban: My mutt Maggie and I are watching our weight

Our dog Maggie is on a diet. A portly little pup of mysterious provenance (our best guess is beagle-chihuahua-spaniel mixed with whatever breed likes to bark at grass), Maggie has been experiencing some mild but vexing medical problems as of late.

The last time I took her to the veterinarian for a checkup, I was told that we had two options: Maggie could lose a few pounds to see if that fixed the problem, or we could bring her in for an ultrasound and possible surgery. We opted for the diet.

“Just a quarter cup of food in the morning and another quarter cup at night,” the vet said cheerfully as she ushered Maggie and me out the door and into the cold new reality known as “trying to lose weight.”

Maggie had no idea what hit her later that night when a scant quarter cup of food was poured into her bowl not even covering the bottom of the dish. Undeterred, she moved onto Plan B, which involved sitting patiently near the table as we ate dinner, waiting for her usual windfall of leftover bits of chicken or sprinkles of cheese.

When she discovered that no dinner scraps were coming, she moped back to her bed by the fireplace, a decidedly depressed look on her doggy face.

In dog years, Maggie and I are about the same age. We’re soul sisters. And I stand in solidarity with her because I, too, am currently on a diet. OK, not a, “diet” per se, but a “lifestyle change” that encourages me to enjoy fruits, vegetables and lean proteins instead of brownies, cheese and bread. So, a diet.

Maggie and I wander together around the kitchen at various times throughout the day, she hoping that a Ditto child will drop some morsel of his lunch onto the floor, and me hoping that a bowl of ice cream will suddenly lose all its caloric value. I am disappointed much more often than she is.

This may be Maggie’s first foray into the dreary world of weight loss, but it is certainly not mine. I’ve done Weight Watchers off and on for 15 years, and – say what you want about it – it works. I mean, it’s not rocket science: When you restrict your calories and increase your exercise, you tend to lose weight. It’s in the actual sticking to the program that the difficulty arises.

Weight Watchers (or “WW,” as it’s called these days) hinges on using a points system to track the food and drink you put into your body. I’m sure there are complicated algorithms and other mathematical words that went into developing this system, but what it really boils down to is the fact that I get 16 points per day, and a box of Junior Mints is worth 11. These are difficult times.

I remember sitting in a Weight Watchers meeting not long after I first started 15 years ago listening to people share their successes and struggles from the past week. I happened to glance out the window just as a crow landed in the parking lot and picked up a piece of roadkill or something similarly disgusting.

In my half-starved state, I immediately thought, “Oooh, what’s that – a piece of chicken? That’s, like, what, three points?” I took a bite of the rice cake I had brought to the meeting as a snack and envied the crow his good fortune.

A few weeks ago, I stood at my kitchen counter and pored over a Schwan’s frozen food catalog while munching on carrots dipped in plain-Greek-yogurt ranch dressing

“Could anything be more delicious than the frozen pie I’m looking at right now?” I wondered as my mouth watered and I choked down another bite of carrot.

My mind was carried back to the days of my childhood when my mom would regularly purchase items from the Schwan’s, truck and our giant freezer was stocked at all times with 5-gallon tubs of ice cream – yes, the size usually reserved for commercial ice cream shops.

Those were the halcyon days of high metabolism and effortless muscle tone. These days, Maggie and I are staring down a healthier, but much less delicious, future. I think I’ll go lay down by the fireplace and mope.

Julia Ditto shares her life with her husband, six children and a random menagerie of farm animals in Spokane Valley. She can be reached at dittojulia@gmail.com.