I was so gleefully, immodestly happy today when I set up my old Wii Fit, did a body analysis (the one where they somehow decide if you’re 23 or 45 based on your ability to stand on a line) and found that I had lost NINE POUNDS since I started Weight Watchers on 9/9!! I was so thrilled I danced out a Rocky montage to”Eye of the Tiger” with my cat and then called my mom to joyously spout the news, as if I were having a baby or something.

Let me explain why nine el-bees is such a huge deal. I’ve tried Weight Watchers on and off for the past half-decade, and each time I was all “this is the new me” for the first week and then lost interest before I could even collect a -5 lb star on the weight graph. That’s like restarting a video game ten times and quitting before the end of the first level. Lame.

But this time, something had changed in me. Entering into this fall, I had brought with me a few epiphanies: Make myself happy first. Find new things I enjoy. Don’t rely on a relationship for happiness. Avoid drunks and A-holes. Cliché words you might find on a stock photo of a sunset or winding road, but amazingly powerful mantras once you internalize them.

While my emotional and spiritual outlook had evolved, I realized that my physical self was out of sync. I had a permanent inner tube of fat around my abdomen, my thyroid was like the beat down kid on the playground who had decided not to get back up, and shoveling french fries into my mouth was a primary form of evening entertainment.

The decision to change was very sudden, like switching on a light bulb. I really just woke up one morning while the other mantras were swirling around in me and said, “I’m doing Weight Watchers, but for real this time.”

There wasn’t some lofty goal to slim down X amount of weight in X amount of time. I didn’t have some grandiose plan to cut hydrogenated glutens or carbonated cheese out of my diet. I just figured I would keep track of what I eat and try to keep the numbers from going too far over.

They say that it takes 18 days, or 21 days, or some divisible of three like that to replace an old habit and form a new one. So in my journal I made a colorful three-week chart (with stickers!) to record my Weight Watchers total each day. The first week, I was militant about keeping my daily number down. I even had weekly points left over. The fortnight following that, I felt empowered and un-hungry some days but other times struggled with cravings and panicked feelings of impending starvation (you know, because all the grocery stores around me had burned to the ground).

But even on my bad days where I ate a whole bag of cheese puffs as a pre-breakfast warmup or went to town on a non-crotchmeat steak dinner at Red Lobster, I always wrote down my points. I wasn’t going to delude myself into thinking every day was all 32s when in fact some days got into the 80s. And I wasn’t going to feel guilty about it and give up– I took the cheese puff days as part of the learning experience.

By the end of my three week chart, my attitude toward food had changed. First of all, I was getting out of the habit of using food as a carnival show. I began to look to other relaxing rewards for a job well done, like painting old sauce jars, photographing fall leaves in the park, or watching a warm-hearted Lifetime Christmas movie while taking a Twilight Woods bubble bath.

Also important is that my physiological response to hunger changed. You know when you have a lot of stuff in your car trunk and don’t even realize it, but then one day you finally donate the three bags of old clothes, put away the lawn chair set, recycle the pile of magazines, take in the extra box of cat litter, bring in your derby gear for a wash, and bury the dead body stuffed way in the back? Suddenly your Buick Century feels like a Fiat 500, and you’re getting twenty extra miles to the gallon.

That’s what eating less felt like. Instead of consuming food to avoid being hungry, I began to enjoy feeling slightly empty. It was a buoyant sensation not to be carting a huge food baby around, and even if the scale hadn’t changed yet, the new, athletic freedom of being lighter was instantly rewarding.

I also started taking thyroid medication, which has upped my metabolism to that of a normal person’s and has also helped me not feel like a square donut trying to roll forward. I guess there’s not so much an increase in energy beyond what I normally felt, but an absence of desire to be the third arm rest on a couch. And when you feel good about yourself with greater frequency, it makes you want to stick to a healthy regimen. See, it all fits! Who knew that an Rx the size of a mini Altoid could so greatly alter one’s perception of the human existence?

Maybe the most important thing is that Weight Watchers has just become another habit. I’m NOT thinking about what I want to eat all the time. I’m NOT thinking about how tedious recording food is. I’ve killed the mindset that I better eat now before there is a famine, and all that’s left is mayonnaise and nasty sea bug lobster.

It has all just become a part of the daily routine, like taking my thyroid Altoid, or going to work, or planning evening activities. I’m used to eating less now and figure that when the weight comes off, it comes off. Being able to fit in January’s jeans is an ancillary reward for being healthier and trying to live a happier life. Because it’s all really just how you feel inside. Remember…