Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Milestones: good or bad?

I, like I assume most people do, have milestones with my healthy life change with regards to fitness and weight loss.  I had a bad back end to last week on the healthy eating front.  Circumstances on Thursday lead to me having pizza for my evening meal; Friday saw me skipping badminton to go to the pub with a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time (she lives out of town) and then on Sunday I had cheeseburger and chips for my lunch when I was out with my mother.  All this after my lovely weight loss for my weigh in last Wednesday.

Last Wednesday I set myself a target/milestone for my weight loss, getting below 120Kg for this weeks weigh in.  This was playing on my mind today before the gym thinking how much damage I had done to my goal by this bad spell.  Therefore I had an unofficial weigh-in before the gym yesterday just to see how bad it was going to be, or how much harder I had to work to hit my target.  My current weight (unofficially) is exactly 120Kg, so I look in a good position for hitting this weeks target.

Great! You may think, but as good as it looks, it got my mind thinking in bad ways.  Very bad ways.  When I saw that I had still lost weight despite 3 bad days last week, and  day less exercise, I thought “excellent, I can eat anything and do a little less exercise and still lose weight”.  I half started planning going back onto Coca-cola, having a mars bar at lunch every day and eating a bit more junk food.  Very bad, dangerous thoughts.

Fortunately the sensible side of me woke up and shut those thoughts down faster than they took hold.  I realised that I was able to have this clichéd ‘falling off the wagon’ and still show results because I have worked so hard to get my weight down and my fitness up that it will handle these problems every now and then.

So overall, I am on target for hitting my milestone of being under 120Kg, close to the milestone I set myself to help keep me on track; however I did have thoughts which had me thinking that I didn’t need to stick rigidly to everything I was doing and I could slack off when I wanted and still benefit.

I do worry, though, that some people out there might be in a similar position of hitting their milestones and still managing it despite a few bad days which could really throw them out there unable to get the bad thoughts I had and therefore ruining all of their hard work.

Personally I think milestones are good.  It helps you break down your overall target into more manageable chunks which I feel will help keep you motivated.  However, don’t be drawn in to the bad thoughts I had if you have some days which are less than ideal for your overall diet.

[Via http://2010weightloss.wordpress.com]

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