A Major Mental Milestone Achieved!

Most people will tell you that there are several factors that drive success in life, regardless of the endeavor you seek to pursue.  Those factors typically include: perseverance, ambition, education, potential, desire, creativity, hard work, luck…etc.  However, one success factor that is very often overshadowed by the other factors is mental toughness.

I personally, believe that mental toughness and the ability to rebound from adversity are two critically important factors toward successful weight loss.  I think anybody who’s struggled with their weight, or any addictive behavior for that matter, can relate to that observation because setbacks will occur during the journey.  I know this first hand because I’ve shared similar setbacks throughout my personal weight loss journey.

Today was my weekly weigh-in at my local WeighWatchers’ meeting, and I was down -1.4 lbs. for a total loss of -18.8 lbs. since I re-started the WW program on 12/29/10. That averages out to -1.88 lbs. per week since then. 

This was a major mental milestone for me, because I finally surpassed the weight I was before I abandoned my first WeightWatchers attempt last November and managed to aggressively gain +18.6 lbs. in two months. 

Since that extra +18.6 lbs. has been erased, I can now in good conscience include the additional number of pounds I lost before I willingly flung myself off the WW wagon as I track toward my goal weight.

Now that all the “crazy math” is done, I’ve lost a total of -26.4 lbs. since I originally started with the plan in April of 2010 and that’s what I’ll measure against going forward.

While this wasn’t a significant achievement “on the scale” of discovering penicillin or the homogenization process for dairy products – it was still a major mental hurdle that I had to clear.

To that end, I fully expect to be re-reading this blog in the future when I’m in need of encouragement for the inevitable difficult days that await me when I may lose ground and have a gainful weigh-in.

I hope that’s not the case, but that’s where the mental toughness and ability to keep moving forward will be critical.  

While that future is still unwritten, this particular blog post for today should end on a high note and I hope that there will be less of me to write about next week.