Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Ten Is My Magic Number (Except When It's Another Number)

Ten fingers. Ten toes. That's what we look for when a baby is born, right? "Let's count them again, just to be sure" many a first-time parent has uttered. 10. And when all the digits add up, the number is magical.

I am counting to ten as well, for my own magical reasons. In reality I have many pounds to lose, and if I focus on the end number it can get overwhelming and seem impossible. So I am tracking my weight loss in increments of ten. It seems to be a more realistic goal to lose ten pounds (insert # here) times, then to keep looking off in the distance to that long-term "goal" weight. This may not be a new concept to a lot of people - even Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton has come out with a line of scales that only measures weight loss in stages of ten pounds, and doesn't display your actual weight in order to keep you motivated towards short term weight loss goals (www.marylousweigh.com). But when I finally wrapped my brain around the number ten as a goal, a rainbow formed in the sky and angels flew over my head. Okay maybe not, but it sounded really do-able.

A few weeks ago I was reading a magazine article about the editor's favorite weight loss blogs. One of the blogs was called "Shoes To Lose". The author of the blog decided to reward each of her ten pound weight losses with a new pair of beautiful and not-always-practical shoes. Even though I am not THAT into shoes, I thought it was a great idea to celebrate short term successes and pamper yourself for literally working your butt off. Shoes are not the right reward for me but...I do love spa treatments. Massages, facials, pedicures, sea salt scrubs, manicures, you name it. It's pure heaven. I have declared that this will be my reward: a spa service of my desire each time I hit a ten pound goal.

And so, 10 is my magical number. Except when it's another number. Like 12, because that's the number I hit today. 12 pounds lost so far. Pass the phone, I have a call to make :)




1 comment:

  1. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whoop! Whoop! Take that 12 and keep at it girl!! That's awesome! So proud of you for keeping focus and moving with purpose!!

    I'll be cheering for your "sisters" doing their training walks this weekend up here on the trails. They're sooo excited to be out there training, I can't imagine what they'll be like on the actual event day! xx Good job Lady! So proud!! :)

    ReplyDelete