Non-Scale Victories

When I did my "serious weight loss" before & immediately after my wedding, I modeled everything after the Weight Watchers plan. My then-fiance did Weight-Watchers, I figured out the "point formula", and ate according to that plan. I never went to meetings, though - I'm just not really a "share your feelings" kind-of guy (that's why I have a blog, so that I don't have to look at you when I do share my feelings), and it always seemed that meetings were more like group therapy than anything else.

As I've written before, however, that whole plan blew up in my face when I stopped following the plan. If you look at the chart, you'll see that I was becoming obsessed with numbers - and those numbers are essentially meaningless unless you're a prize-fighter.

So, now that I'm completely & unequivocally ignoring my weight, what are my landmarks? Well, Weight-Watchers talks of the "Non-Scale Victories" (NSVs). These are the times that you've noticed something, physically, that aren't related to a scale reading.

• I still have the tuxedo I owned in high school (hey, when you're a musician, you need to own a tux). For awhile, symphony concerts would consist of me debating whether it was better to shove my fat ass into my tux pants or simply leave them unbuttoned (hoping that the jacket would cover things). My last concert, I not only fit into these pants, they were a bit loose.
• I can take off many pairs of shorts without undoing the buttons and/or I need to wear a belt to keep them up.
• I find that I actually want to run when I have the choice between running & walking from point A to point B.
• I'm able to do more push-ups in a single-sitting than I was ever able to, even when I was skinny & taking Kung-Fu.
• At the grocery store the other day, somebody actually said to me "you look like you're in your 20's, how's the night-life in Harrisburg?"
• I've actually passed another runner during my morning jogs (I'm still not a speed freak, but it is nice to know that I'm faster than "random person X", as "random people A, B, C, and D" all typically run right past me on these same jogs).

How about you, my health-conscious viewership? What have you noticed as "better" that has little to do with a scale reading?

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I started my workout this morning fully intending to run. But, being outside just wasn't doing it for me. The weather was so humid it was sticky, and the fog was so thick that I couldn't really see across my street. So, instead, I changed things up just a little bit: twenty minutes on the spinning bike, twenty minutes on the rower, then my standard push-ups & sit-ups.