Okay, so, like, you know all this talk about WeightWatchers lately? You know how I’ve said that I get 28 points a day and stuff? Well, I’ve been living for the last three weeks on that 28 points a day (more or less… okay, mostly more) and I’ve done pretty well. I’ve figured out at which places I just can’t afford to eat and what foods just won’t fit in the points budget. I think I’ve been a great student.

So why would I be upset? Well, you know me. I didn’t really read every word of instructions when I signed up. I’m a guy. Worse yet, I’m a geek – a web geek at that – and when I sign up for some web service, I pretty much feel comfortable figuring it out on my own.

But somehow, somewhere, I missed the part where you’re supposed to “click here” to take your “target point quiz”. See, even the name doesn’t really tell me what’s really going on there. The “target point quiz” is where you “confirm” your height, weight, age, and gender, and pick whether you want to maintain your weight or lose weight. I figured that since you asked me all those questions when I signed up that the 28 points that showed up on my profile was correct. But noooo.

See I stumbled across the “target point quiz” purely by accident late last week. I “confirmed” all that information and clicked “save” (Why it’s “save” and not “calculate” or something more descriptive, I don’t know.) and then noticed that my point total changed from 28 points a day to 37. 37?! Good grief! That’s HUGE compared to 28. I could eat like a relative pig and not use up 37 points a day (plus the 35 “extra points” I get per week).

I took the “quiz” several times and the result was always the same: 37. I crawled all over the web site trying to find out how to set it back to 28, how to fix my calculated result from the “quiz”. I even googled the points and found a chart that showed, for my weight, I should be at 28:

225 to 250 pounds = 28 Points

Finally, I relented, and sent an email to support. Two days later, I get this response:

Based on your information 37 POINTS® is your correct POINTS Target. It is possible that you were viewing your POINTS® Target before you took the POINTS quiz. After the sign-up process you would have been assigned a POINTS® Target value that is based solely on your current weight.

So what you’re telling me is that 28 points is correct for a person that weighs 250 pounds, but is… what? …a four-foot-tall, ten-year-old girl? How could they make such a retarded assumption. They already had all the information they needed, but somehow they assigned my points target based on only one criteria. I’vE BEEN EATING LIKE A BIRD FOR THREE WEEKS WHEN I DIDN’t HAVE TO??!!

Never mess with a large, hungry man. He may not have the energy to curtail his ham-sized fists of rage.

So anyway, that was last week. I’m pretty much over being mad. I know I should be happy that I’m allowed to eat more now. But somehow I feel cheated. I feel like three weeks of happy eating has been stolen from me. Granted I’ve lost almost ten pounds, but the victory is as hollow as my stomach has felt for the last three weeks.

I’m going to have some ice cream now. About a half gallon. With a bottle of Hershey’s on top.