Giving Thanks Bob Harper-style

When my nuggets of wisdom come from reality TV, it makes me wonder about the status of my life. Ha!  But then where in my real like would I run into such veteran weight loss gurus as Bob Harper-the infinitely less abrasive long-standing Biggest Loser trainer?

So as you guessed, I was watching The Biggest Loser this week, and was very interested in the exchange between Bob and Antone, while discussing John's ambivalence on the scale.

You see, every week John gets up there, pulls very decent numbers pretty consistently, yet he is always disappointed to some degree.

And you know what Bob said???  He said that since John didn't appreciate his losses, that he would never realize how far he had come, what he went through to get there, and therefore it would be super easy for him to regain his weight...

I wonder if this is a problem for all Medifasters, too?  See we are conditioned to expect 3-5 pounds of loss per week based on program design, because hey-that is what the posters and ads all say, as well as what my weight loss counselor said initially...

So we see these losses, come to expect them as regular, and pretty soon 30, 40, 50, 100, etc., pounds are gone, and we may have never stopped to realize in actuality how difficult it really is to lose weight, how devoted we were to do so, and how skinny we have become.  Heck maybe this is a problem for everyone?

See, I realized that I never STOPPED pushing myself, being tough on myself, staying focused, to say "hey, that is a shit ton of weight that you lost, look how good you look, feel how good you feel, good for you!!!"  Sure at the end when I hit 159 I was pretty proud of the number, but I'm not sure I really knew how skinny I was-obviously I didn't because when I gained a few back I had virtually no idea.

Now I'm not talking about taking a break from dieting, but snapping out of the zone to have some a-ha moment, doing a happy dance, etc.

I guess I let the routine get so routine, that I never fully grasped how far I came because one week was the same as the next-being a machine is not always good I guess.  This may sound very 'poor little rich girl', but seriously I have to realize that if I don't cheer my success then I won't see my failures coming until the rolls are hitting me in the face (quite literally).  

I think my Medifast counselor even realized that I was not appreciating how well I was doing after a while, but at that point I was a lost cause-being cranky over a three pound loss because it wasn't five...but by then it was too late, my mindset was, well, set.

Therefore this time I will make much more of an effort to appreciate my successes, because I know I will lose weight, that is not in question, but I need to be proud of myself, so that my success does not mean hitting goal, but cheering the journey every step of the way...  

So my journey is just that, a long yet satisfying push to goal, and is not summed up by my destination alone-only then will I be thankful for what I've done, where I've been, and how I look and feel NOW.