I, like many people trying to get in shape and lose weight, am not the best of friends with the scale. On some of my best weeks of eating well and working out it won't budge and sometimes the scale goes down inexplicably after I had a Carl's Jr. Guacamole burger (yum). So, in order to stay on track, I need both motivation (our upcoming trip to Hawaii) and a means of measuring success without a scale. Although a generally downward trend on the scale is still important. To date I have found the following to be successful alternates to the scale.
1. Measure with a tape measure instead of a scale
2. Hold onto your skinny jeans and try them on occasionally.
3. Listen to yourself. The more successful I am and the more I have changed the more I hear myself say "no thanks," bring me the doggy-bag with my meal, grill my fish don't fry them, give me my salad dressing on the side. I'll actually see myself stopping when full and pushing the rest away, whereas I used to belong to the clean plate school.
4. I have learned to trim down food associated occasions to be healthy. It's amazing that I totally switched out all of our Super Bowl snacks for healthy ones and the guys didn't notice. I thought that the switch from cheesy pizza and nachos to healthy veggies and salsa would throw them for a loop, but instead they chowed down, wooped and hollered and went home happy.
5. I have learned to reward myself without food. Instead of eating out with appetizers, dinner, and dessert I just splurged on a pair of Lucky jeans. After my first 5 pounds I got a nice new set of pilates gear. When I'm down 5%, I will be going to the spa.
6. When I exercise now I'm not dying after only 5 minutes. I am exercising without exhaustion and can concentrate on form.
7. The last and most completely satisfying way of measuring my success without a scale has been the complements that I've been getting. I don't know if its because of the weight I have lost or the energy I have showing through with my self-confidence, but I have worked hard and my efforts are paying off.
