'Cause You Gotta Have Friends...

Lately I have been listening to a lot of music from the 70's, because it inspires me and gets me in the mood for my retro cooking madness.

Anyway, this morning I heard one of my favorite songs from 1973--"Friends" by the Divine Miss M. (Bette Midler) and I had an epiphany!

Did you know that Jean Nidetch started WW in 1962 with 6 of her friends in her own living room? They met there once a week and talked about their weight struggles, dieting challenges and "dirty" little food secrets. None of them were doctors or nutritionists or psychologists. They were just friends.

Back then, there were no blogs, no internet, no message boards, no social networking--so it was really liberating and brave for these women to confess their eating compulsions and struggles in a public forum. It was truly unheard of for women to discuss such matters so openly. So--When Jean first told the group about her "closet cookie eating" and the fact that she hid cookies in the laundry hamper and woke up in the middle of the night to finish off those boxes of cookies then throw away the empty boxes early in the morning to destroy the evidence before anyone woke up---this was uncharted territory! Jean was making history with her shocking cookie confession and was setting the stage for the rest of us to follow suit.

The spirit of Jean is in all of us as we chronicle our journey to become thinner & healthier. So, this week, in Jean's honor--don't forget to thank your weight loss buddies (both virtual and real-life) and let them know how much they mean to you.

There are a few weight loss bloggers I would like to personally thank for their courage to share their journey so openly with the world. I am in awe of their willingness to put themselves out there (Jean would be so proud) and I consider them my virtual weight loss buddies, because I look forward to their very candid and entertaining posts regularly. In no particular order...

• Sheryl at *Bitchcakes* - She is a WW ROCKSTAR, and if you are not following her--you should be.
• Sue at Did I Just Eat That Out Loud? - This blog is so honest and real. There is even a wall where you can leave your own fears, stresses and worries. How cool is that?
• Helen at Doing a 180 - Very thought-provoking and always leaves me with something to ponder.
• Dana at Eat. Sleep. Get Fit. - Positive energy just oozes from this blog. I love that.

As for my "real-life" WW buddies---you know who you are and I think you are all awesome. Did you ever know that you're my heroes? OK, I'll stop now, because this is starting to get sappy, and I'm beginning to entangle my Bette Midler references...and we all know how painful that can be.