Celebrating Success

Note: Justine is celebrating her success this week with a trip to the Galapagos Islands, but she’ll be back at the gym next week.

Mike, our trainer extraordinaire at The Sports Club/LA - Orange County, keeps telling me that I need to set small goals that are attainable and celebrate when I achieve them. He’s usually telling me this while I’m grudgingly curling 20 pounds of weights or when I’m mid-pushup, when celebration is the furthest thing from my mind. And I imagine that his version of celebration is quite different than mine, since my version is likely to include a glass of wine and something sweet or salty. In our last post, I didn’t take time to celebrate my 10-pound weight loss and reduction of 3% of my body fat. And, really, it is something to celebrate. But my Type A personality is never happy with any result, because the way my mind works it could (and should) always be more.

I am a highly skeptical person, and a very smart woman once told me that being a skeptical person sometimes helps (nobody will ever pull one over on me!), but skepticism can often lead to self-sabotage. For example, if I’m skeptical I can ever reach my weight-loss goal, I am likely to give up early on. Which is why Mike is onto something when he tells me to set smaller goals for myself. After learning that I’d lost 10 pounds, I worked harder than ever last week, because I didn’t want to waste the work I’d done to date. I really did feel like I’d achieved something great and I was more focused on how loose my pants were and not on the many pounds I have to go.

So I’m not going to go home tonight and stop at Fatburger to celebrate my 10 pounds lost. Instead, I’m going to make a salad and happily eat it while envisioning myself 10 pounds (not 20) lighter.