Come One, Come All

Not too long ago, I worked at a suburban branch of a major weight loss chain. As day jobs go, it wasn’t too bad. We wore our own clothes with understated name tags—no absurd lab coats or ill-fitting logo’ed shirts. The job consisted of light filing and listening to lite rock. As weight loss consultants (Not “nutritionists”! Not “dietitians”! Liability! Danger! Danger!), we got to feel a vicarious thrill from time to time when a client would lose a couple of pounds over the course of a week—not to mention the ecstasy of monitoring our own body weight free of charge.

Most of our clients were busy professional women looking to lose those last ten pounds’ worth of desk-job/veal-pen pudge. An FBI profiler would categorize them as white, affluent, pleasingly plump. Some were serial snackers, others spree eaters. Our job was to lure them into our strip-mall HQ and make them eat our pre-portioned vegetables.

The bulk of business for this international company came from women who lost and gained those same ten pounds over and over and over again. It worked like this: Once a client hit her goal, she would graduate to what was known as the “maintenance” phase of the program. The maintenance phase transitioned the client from weekly check-in meetings to a monthly check-in. Over the course of a month, believe me, that number on the scale can sure creep back up. But no matter, you can always go back to your weekly meetings, any time you want. We’re here for you, to support you. Eternally.

Life at our little strip-mall diet club couldn’t be all smiles and sugar-free chocolate-flavored calcium-fortified chew treats. There were unpleasant tasks, too. One was something referred to as “Reminder Calling.” Between client meetings, we consultants had to call folks who’d missed their weight loss check-in. Welcome to the Hotel Minnesota. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

The list of call-back numbers was very long. In my weeks of experience as a weight loss consultant, I can tell you one thing for sure. People like to talk about losing weight, they like to buy things to help them lose weight, but they don’t really like to lose weight. They like to nap and eat cheesy gorditas. Since I was, on average, at least fifteen pounds heavier than any of my clients, I was a very popular consultant. I made people feel better about themselves. I was the Good Cop. People who would usually have been nervous to step on the scale after a week of binging felt safe to do it in front of me. They knew I wouldn’t pistol-whip them with frozen entrées. Consequently, I had a very low drop-out rate. I rarely had to make the dreaded Reminder Calls.

Sometimes, though, a manager would take us out of the loop and get all of the consultants to work on the list at once—a blitz of concentrated effort intended to whittle the list down as much as possible. One manager had the she-balls to call this drudgery a “Phone Party!” She’d spring it on us, bombshell-style. She’d practically skip through the beige-carpeted labyrinth of cubicles, singing, “Phone Party! Everyone meet in the conference room for a Phone Party!” The conference room table would be set up with a long line of phones, like a Jerry Lewis telethon. We’d each take a section of the dropout list and call as many people as we could in an hour. That was the “phone” part. The “party” part was a small bag of unsalted soy kernels. You had to bring your own Diet Coke.

Our manager even tried to muster up a little friendly competition. A consultant would receive a tiny gold star sticker for each client she could get to book a make-up appointment. For a while, this got the phone lines burning. You see, we thought there might be a larger prize at the end of the hour for those with the most gold stickers. A coffee cup bearing a nondenominational inspirational message, or perhaps a sweetly scented votive candle. But no. No one quite knew what to do with these stickers, so each of us found our own way to use them. One memorable co-worker used hers to make glittery pastie-type circles on her sweater. I wore mine like jailhouse tears. The Ace Frehley of calorie coaches. Though I enjoyed my stint in dietary law enforcement, I went back to waiting tables because I’m better at encouraging people to live outside the food pyramid. You don’t get gold stars for bringing an extra bread basket to the table, but you get a more satisfying reward: tips.