measuring success.

Happy Sunday! I regret to inform you that this post will not be a weekly meal planning one - the craziness of our schedule has made it nearly impossible for me to accurately track my grocery bills. With the wedding just three weeks from today, and my half marathon looming even sooner, I'm pretty sure the only A-game I've been on lately is not losing my damn mind. Surprisingly, I'm surviving in tact.

My "scaleless in September" attitude is working, believe it or not. In all honesty, I weighed myself once - this past Friday - and I was happily at the same place I was before I committed to the idea of not weighing myself so frequently. It's all I can ask for, considering all that's on my plate right now (literally and metaphorically).

What I want to talk about is measuring success. Usually, as with most tasks, you often look for a concrete way to measure how well you've gone. Teachers judge students' progress using grades, football games are scored on a points system, and people losing weight go straight to the scale to see how they've progressed. I get it. It's measurable, and you can't manipulate a number. But teachers, coaches and most people struggling to lose weight know that there are thousands of other ways to measure success than a number. My hiatus from the scale this month has forced me to reevaluate how I measure my success at the end of the day, and it's forced me to take a look at what I view as a win or loss.

I've been without a scale for just 8 days (and that hardly counts, because I still weighed in once), but without the stress of daily weighing, here are the ways I've measured my success:

• I ran 10 miles yesterday. TEN MILES, you guys. I have no idea how many calories I burned, because I'm not concerned with how that generates on the scale right now. What was I concerned with? Fueling my body, hydrating, maintaing a good pace and taking care of my body afterwards. In other words, what you should care about when you run 10 miles. Not how many pounds you'll lose as a result. The one thing I've learned about long distance running? Don't do it to lose weight.
• I hate my legs. I have a stocky build, so even though I've lost about 70 pounds, my legs are still thick. But I rocked shorts yesterday anyway - and when I looked in the mirror yesterday, for the very first time in my life, I thought to myself, those legs just took me 10 miles. I love those legs.
• Without a scale, I'm forced to evaluate every single food choice based on how it's going to make me feel - not how it's going to appear on the scale the next day. I learned this lesson the hard way after consuming half my weight in nachos and french fries Friday night, followed by Chipotle after my run yesterday. Realistically speaking, I probably burned most of those calories during my run (and what I didn't burn in that run, I know I will this week), but that's not the point. Those choices made me feel like shit. I mean, seriously guys. Awful. I've been trying to lose weight, but I'm still teaching myself lessons every single day. 

In the spirit of measuring success in various ways other than the scale, tomorrow kicks off my very first ever Best Body Bootcamp - an online program designed to provide 8 weeks of strength training and bootcamp exercises with the option for weekly prize drawings. Tina provides the workouts, but really advocates for making the program work for the individual. With that, she asks that each participant set two individual goals each week in addition to meeting the weekly requirement of being active 5 times per week to be eligible for prize drawings. 

I am in love with the idea of setting personal goals each week that make me strive towards being healthier in general - not towards losing more weight on the scale. The goals can be anything that will personally aid you in being a healthier you. This week, my two personal goals are:

1. Drink a ViSalus shake every morning for breakfast. I've given up my shakes lately, but need to get back on track as we near the wedding day. The shakes make me feel great, help refuel me after workouts and start me off on the right food each morning.
2. Drink 64 ounces of water every day. I have a big 32 ounce water bottle that I used to be really good about filling up twice a day at work. It curbed my need to snack at the office, made for better workouts and hydrated me before and after long runs. Time to get back on it!

I've been doing a lot of running these past few weeks, but not a lot of anything else. The calories I burn running have allowed me to eat fairly poorly and still break even on the scale, but my body feels weak. I've lost some serious core and upper body strength, and I'm really looking forward to incorporating BBB into my schedules, especially over the next 3 weeks, so I feel strong and confident at my wedding. I've learned the hard way that it's not enough just to do cardio - strength training gives me a sense of strength the same way that running does. 

Here's to kicking off a new workout program, a new week and the official 3-week countdown until my WEDDING!