"But how do you thank someone,
who's taken you from crayons to perfume?"

Please excuse the cheesy lyric, but I had some good news and some bad news today.

The good news? 1.3kg (2.8lb) gone this week! Woo hoo! I'm guessing the gain last week must have been some sort of water retention spike or something like that. Not surprising considering all the booze and salty crap I ate.

The bad news?

I've ranted about WW leaders before.

I have one of the best around at my meeting. I've said before that I'm considering founding a major religion dedicated to Katherine and if you went to her meetings, you'd know why.

The bad news is that she won't be leading our meetings any more.

So I thought I'd dedicate this one to her.

Dear Katherine

First of all, congratulations! I know you've been working hard at this teaching gig and it's wonderful news that you have a full time job teaching. You've put in a lot of hard work and dedication and it's paid off, you deserve it.

Of course, the selfish part of me wishes you could have that AND the meetings. I've been to a lot of meetings in my time and you transformed them for me. You showed a passion and a professionalism and a dedication that I'd not seen before. It inspired me and taught me a very important lesson. Not just that WW can work, but that I could make it work for ME.

You showed me that I was worth the effort, that this was a lifestyle change I could incorporate into my life and that I'm now reaping the benefits of.

Most of all, you listen.

You don't judge, you don't make shit up and you're always honest. If you don't know the answer, you don't make something up to make yourself look good. You tell us that you don't know and then you go find out. And you come back the following week and share.

You don't look at me like I'm crazy when I ask you questions like, "When do I stop feeling like a fat chick?" You take everyone's questions seriously and you reassure, you inform and you don't let left-field questions throw you.

Your passion is evident in the way you stay informed about weight loss in general, not just weight loss from a WW perspective. You are always honest about the material and the products WW gives you and you teach us that WW is just a tool to help us get to where we want to be, it's not the be all and end all.

Your meetings are more than just the material regurgitated. They're thoughtful and enlightening, even when you are winging it. You bring enough personal experience and draw enough experience from the group to reveal new insights in every meeting.

You understand that this journey is not just about points and exercise, it's about living and creating a new way of life for yourself that involve changes in your head, not just your eating habits.

It's also little things like remembering people's names, keeping on top of how people are doing and making everyone, without exception, feel welcome and feel like they can do it.

You maintain a sense of humour, no matter what. I'm in awe of your people handling skills and how you manage to keep such a disparate group of people focused and inspired.

Could I have done it without you?

I seriously don't think so.

Sure, the WW plan works for people, but only once they have seen how to make it fit into their lifestyle. Too many leaders just spout the party line and expect you to hammer a square peg into a round hole. You revealed how to make it work for each and every one of us. Your passion for food showed me that I wasn't destined for a life of low-fat cheese and rabbit food. You showed me how to incorporate REAL food into my diet and still lose weight.

More importantly, you showed me that success wasn't always choosing the fruit platter for dessert. Success was doing the best you could as often as you could and accepting that while perfection was nice, we're only human. Success was living and living as well and as healthily as we can. Moderation in all things (including moderation - as Oscar Wilde once said).

Without that, and your forthrightness and honesty and humour, I would have given up on WW long ago.

Now you've not taken me from crayons to perfume, but you've taken me from over 100kg to under 75kg and still shrinking. You've taken me from a size 20 to a size 14. And you've taken me from thinking that I could never do this to not just thinking that I could, but actually doing it.

I wish you could be there to help me get to goal, but this is where I have to show you that you've taught me well.

Those kids you'll be teaching won't know how good they have it. If you demonstrate only a tenth of the passion and dedication you've shown to me in the classroom, you'll be transforming lives just like you've helped to transform mine.

It's been an absolute pleasure to attend your meetings and I'm going to miss you terribly. But, if you keep up the Port Melbourne meetings, when I get to goal, you can bet that I'll come swanning in there one Tuesday night to show you.

I owe you more than I can possibly express here.

Thank you.