How "Losing it for Good"™ Almost Made Me Lose It

Jennifer Hudson's Weight Watchers commercials make me want to throw up... literally. I used to be just like her, a true Weight Watchers' success story. I did weigh less than when I was in high school. The pounds just seemed to fall off, much to the chagrin of the women in my meetings who had been on program on and off for decades.
That should have been a clue right there. Weight Watchers constantly proclaims that it is the only program that works, it's not a diet, it's a "lifestyle". But if that were really the case, why are so many meetings filled with women who have been attending for years; some since before I was even born? In the first meeting I ever attended, the woman sitting next to me (in an almost proud way) told me that she had made it to Lifetime™ status five times in the past 15 years. I should have run screaming from the building when I heard that, but I didn't. I was so vulnerable and desperate at the time; I saw Weight Watchers as my only chance for losing weight and gaining back my self confidence.
For the first three months, I religiously followed program, and I lost weight. I was the poster child of Weight Watchers compliance. I could look at any food and tell the points™ value from memory. I had more bookmarks, stickers, and keychains than any person could want. Everything was great and then I hit, as a fellow Weight Watcher aptly put it, The Wall. The Wall is when you realize that you can't keep counting points for the rest of your life, that this supposedly simple formula to solve all of your weight problems isn't so simple after all, that your food problem maybe doesn't have all that much to do with food. I've never known anybody who hasn't hit The Wall at some point in their Weight Watchers career. We all handle it in different ways: some sit grumpily at meetings, pissed because they feel that are not losing weight; others fall off the bandwagon, then back on, and off again for decades; and some, the healthy ones, leave and don't let the door hit their ass on the way out. As for me I stayed, I purged, I lost.
Of course Weight Watchers does not condone purging. The problem is that they don't condone natural eating either. Every food and measure of success can be reduced to a number. Did you lose weight this week? Congratulations, you're a success! You ate more points than you were supposed to this week? Failure! For somebody like me, whose brain was already a little twisted when it came to food, Weight Watchers was a very nurturing place for disordered thoughts to grow. Now I had a secret solution for every time I ate a few too many points: just throw those dang points up. It was simple math really; points in, points out.
After two years I left Weight Watchers for good. I had lost almost 90 pounds. Success! Not really. I also left with a full blown eating disorder that to this day I still struggle with. I'm not trying to say that Weight Watchers causes eating disorders, not at all. I do however think that it does not promote healthy long-term eating, or positive body image by focusing solely on the "numbers game". I don't believe in dieting anymore. After I left treatment for bulimia in 2009, I vowed to normalize my food through intuitive eating. It's a hard thing to do though, when you still know the point value of practically every food that you eat. There a days when I still catch myself trying to guess how many points™ I've had, instead of listening to my body's hunger/fullness cues. I hope that someday Weight Watchers will change their program; teach people to eat based on internal signals, not point values; teach people to love their bodies as they are now, not how they will be. I can't make them change, and based on the amount of advertising they are doing lately, it doesn't seem like they are hurting for business. I do know though, that I would gladly pay my two years of membership fees all over again if I could only get their propaganda out of my head.