Not Letting The Scale Define Me, So It's Going Into Hiding

Setting goals is pretty easy pretty, in my opinion. I can sit here all day and tell you thinks I hope to accomplish or things I'm working towards. Now, sticking with those goals is much harder.

I make it even harder on myself by having different categories of goals. Fitness goals, career goals, relationship goals, family goals, travel goals, etc. Where I don't do so well is that I have so many goals that it becomes too hard to try and work on them all at once and I get discouraged when I don't achieve or see progress with them.

Fitness wise; I'm like any future bride, I want to look ah-may-zing in my wedding dress on our wedding day and feel my absolute best. I'm all about the Sweating for the wedding hashtag.

But I can't forget that I'm also working on making myself healthier, on running faster, on feeling my best all the time but without missing out on life. I have to learn how to be consistent, how to make healthy choices 80% of the time and to let myself enjoy the 20% of relaxed choices.

I deal with bad anxiety on a constant basis so letting myself enjoy things that are "bad" for me is very difficult and I usually end up kicking myself for it later. What I have come to realize in this category of my many goals is that striving for perfection (and then subsequently getting upset and discouraged because I haven't obtained it) is unreasonable. Unrealistic. Near impossible-unless I'm willing to sacrifice in other areas of my life to make room for the necessities to make near perfection possible such as; going out for dinner and drinks with my friends on Friday night, staying home from the gym because I have a monster headache that I blame on the weather (that happened today) or spending the day with my sisters and just not having the time to squeeze in a workout. Does this mean I (or anyone else) should hate our bodies, feel that guilt or anxiety? Of course not. Our bodies are amazing gifts.

I read somewhere that your body with land at a natural weight (if you've been trying to lose weight for a while) and usually the "ideal" (whatever the hell that is) is 5-10 pounds leaner than the bodies natural weight. Those 5-10 pounds are your cheat days, your days of just not wanting to workout, basically, those 5-10 pounds are your freedom. At least that is what I got out of it.

What I have been working on to stick with my fitness goals is to make them detailed. Reminding myself of how many days I need to push myself to make it to the gym or take our pups on a long walk and then marking them off on my calendar on the fridge helps me.

I love the feeling of marking something off the list for that day, so getting to highlight the date is like marking the day. It says, "I worked hard in the gym today" or "The girls and I have a right to be tired, we walked 2 and a half miles".

Nothing is a better motivator to continue doing what you're doing then results, right? But life is messy. Life can't always be planned. Things happen unexpectedly and we have to learn how to adapt and not let it get to us. I know I need to learn how to get motivated and keep the mindset even if I don't see any results. Simply to continue to be healthy and moving.

The number on the scale has never really been my friend. Either it's too low and scaring the shit out of me, or its too high and I can feel myself tearing myself up. Learning how to not let the scale define me is something I am going to actively work on and try to document here. How? Well, my scale is going into hiding. I can still feel my best on my wedding day even if the scale number goes up because I have packed on muscle (which I gain very quickly and then the scale number goes up and I get frustrated). I can still get faster and compete a Gladiator Dash 5k with my friend in June.
Just because my scale is gone doesn't mean that I'm not going to hold myself accountable in some way. I'm going to take my measurements and focus on the non-scale victories. Focus on the positives; not the things that could potentially give me (and I know a lot of others); anxiety, dread, a loss of self esteem or maybe that number is where we get our self worth. A lot easier said than done, I know. But what I tell others, I need to follow too; love yourself, you're beautiful, be positive, do your best, and enjoy life instead of find it a chore.

Strive for progress, not perfection and don't let the scale define you.