Sometimes it really IS all about the scales...

I'm a great proponent of the 'non-scale' victory.

You know the ones, like when your undies begin to fall down, or your pants are too big, or my personal favourite - needing to pull the drivers seat forward another notch, that sort of thing.

Non-scale victories are great for the confidence because you know you've been working out hard, and staying on track with your eating, but the blasted scales just aren't showing the results of all that effort.

They're either staying stubbornly on the same number week in and week out, or they're actually going back up!  So to have victories that have no relation to the numbers on the scales are incredibly important.

In the 12WBT community we all love to bang on about how the number on the scale doesn't define us, how it's not the most important thing, how it's just another tool in our arsenal.

And that's all true.  Every single word.  And we always mean Every. Single. Word.

It's just that sometimes, well sometimes it really is all about the number on that fricking scale!

I forgot to weigh in on Wednesday, so I did it yesterday.

I looked at the scale and I cried.

I dashed back to the bedroom and got my phone to take a picture of the display just in case I was reading it wrong, but I wasn't.

You see there is this number that I have been hovering around for pretty much a year, and I was beginning to believe that I would never get past it.  That it was 'my' number.  The number which my body would naturally gravitate to, and fight to stay at.

I had come so close a number of times that I could just about taste it, only to gain weight again over the next week.

To say it was frustrating would be putting it mildly.

I'd do everything right.  I'd eat the right foods in the right amounts, I'd increase my exercise, I'd drink plenty of water... but all that happened was that the number on the scale would go back up.

Was I subconsciously self-sabotaging?

Was I gaining lean muscle as Madam Lash said?

There were changes happening, I knew that, I was having my non-scale victories, people were remarking on how my shape is changing, my clothes were fitting differently - in fact some of them don't fit at all and are several sizes too big!  I was even able to buy a light jacket for training in a size 16 this week.  So things are going well, but that bloody scale just wouldn't go down past that bloody number!

AARRGGHHH!!!

I knew there was a mental block developing around that number, and that it was going to make things harder, but week after week I just kept on trying, and this week that persistence has paid off.

I lost 1.1kg and broke through that number by the best part of a kilogram!

So now I have a new goal.

To never see that bloody number ever again!

Here and now I am re-committing to eating well and sticking to the 12WBT meal plans,

and to increasing my exercise, and to continue learning to run.

I'll be doing the Winery Wander 5km event at the Hunter Valley Marathon at the end of July and it would be nice to be able to run a whole kilometre without stopping, somewhere along the route.  I don't know if I can build up to that distance in the short time frame I have, but I'm sure as hell gonna do my best.

Maybe that number is where my body will fight to be.  But you know what?  I'm sure as hell gonna fight like the bloody demons from hell are on my arse to continue on the downward trend away from it.

In the meantime, my uber short term goal is...