Rewards

There was a time in my life that I used food as a reward.  Heck, I am from the South, we use food for EVERYTHING!!  Someone had a baby?  Bring a casserole!  Dinner at Church?  Covered dish!  Funeral?  Take some food!!  In order to truly change my life and be healthier I have to change this way of thinking.  I did decide to reward myself for my weight loss but what good would it do me to lose weight and then "reward" myself by eating junk food?  Is that really a reward or sabotage?  So, I decided that for every 15 pounds I lost I would reward myself with new clothes!  I picked 15 pounds because 15 pounds is roughly a dress size.  So far I'm down to a size 18 jeans and I've rewarded myself once, down 26 pounds so far so only 4 more to go and then more new clothes!  I can't wait till I'm the size where I can get one of these and not just under my Civil War gowns :)  
Rewards are very important in this journey but those rewards CANNOT be food.  I have to change the way I view food.  It can be a treat but not a reward.  I can eat things like cake, ice cream, and cinnamon rolls but they are treats (like today on my birthday when I had 3 cinnamon rolls and a caramel roll!) but they are not rewards for anything.


My better health, better life, better looking body are my rewards :)

Quitting

Recently I read a post in a blog I'm following called A Weight-y Life and the lady was talking about not wanting to reach her goal.  It got me thinking about what would happen when I reach my goal.  I know it is still a ways off (though I am down 26 pounds!) but it still got me thinking.  Will I ever quit trying to lose weight?  I sure hope so!  At some point I know this journey will end, either at 194 or at 130 (ish) and then the REAL work will begin.  Then the maintenance will start.  I started thinking about maintenance and how important that is.  Without maintenance all this work will be worthless because then I will just balloon back up to what I use to be, or worse.  I did some looking around and I found this blog that has some good maintenance tips.  I found, over all, that most of the maintenance tips are pretty much the same as the weight loss tips.  My guess is that once you have reached your goal, if it is like mine and far off, you have trained yourself how to eat and how to live so you just continue to do that.  I also use the myfitnesspal website and you can set your goals on that site so it will be interesting to see how my calorie limit changes once I change my goal to no weight loss (but also no gain).  I KNOW that counting calories and exercise are the key to MY weight loss and I have no doubt they will also be the key to my eventual maintenance.  Whatever happens when I do reach my goal, and I WILL reach my goal, I know that I will NEVER see 260 lb. again and hopefully I will never see 200 lb again either (after I pass it on my way down that is)  :)

Progress not Perfection

There is a saying that goes "We claim progress not perfection" and that is so true for me!  I have defiantly made some progress in the last few months.  Since June I have lost roughly 24 pounds!  This is an awesome success for me.  Now, the trick is to keep it up!  I really have to watch myself and keep my larger goal in mind.  My ultimate goal, right now, is to get to 194 which means about another 50 pounds.  This is a very delicate time in my weight loss because I have made great strides and I can't let that go to my head and get complacent thinking, "Oh look how great I have done I can totally quit now and eat like a mad woman!!"  And, I can't let the fact that I still have 50 pounds to go get me discouraged thinking "Look how far I still have to go it is impossible!!"  This is a balancing act of progress.  I have made progress, I feel better, and I look better.  I NEVER want to go back to where I was before I started this journey!  I know I can make progress, it is possible to get to my goal I just have to keep making progress.  
I know I am not perfect, I know I will make mistakes on this journey, I may even gain some weight somewhere along the way! :(  But as long as I make PROGRESS I will succeed.  Even if that progress at time is 2 steps forward and 1 step back it is still progress.  So far that has not bee the case, all my steps have been forward (and downward) :) but I'm not stupid enough to think this will all go smoothly and that I will never have a back slide.  I have to prepare myself for that or that will be my downfall I know it.  Just have to keep making progress.  I don't have to be perfect at this, I just have to keep making progress.