Dealing with Expected Failures

I am sure that everyone can relate to not quite reaching a goal that you set. Since this year is focused on losing weight, I have set some very challenging, yet attainable goals, for timelines. One of those goals was to have my weight below 270 by today. I can tell you right now, that I wasn't able to reach that goal. Worse yet, I knew a couple of days ago that it probably wasn't going to happen.

I weigh myself 2 times a week, every Wednesday and Sunday morning. Over the past 4 weeks, I have dropped weight each time I have stepped on the scale, at the rate of about 4 lbs per week. Coming into this week I was sitting at 274.4 lbs and knew it would be a challenge to reach my goal. On Wednesday I was down to 272.4 and hopes were high. However, life happens, and just because I am working on my weight, does not mean that I can put life on hold. My week ended with supper out before a daddy daughter dance on Friday, eating out again for Erin's birthday on Saturday night, then a party with pizza and snacks following dinner.

Now I won't go into the "rules" of my dieting here, as I think everyone needs to find what works for them. I will say that extreme restrictions and depriving myself is not part of my plan because that is what leads me to binge eat later. I was very proud of my choices when eating out all of those times, and my exercise and other eating was spot on for the week. That being said, I just knew that with the extra food leading up to a weigh in would not bode well on the scale. In fact, at one point last night, Erin and I had even discussed skipping the weigh in all together since I knew it wouldn't be representative of the work I put in. After thinking this through, I thought better of it. I got up this morning and put in a solid hour and a half in the gym and stepped on the scale to see a weight of 273.2.

Was I disappointed? I sure was, but this journey isn't about a single weigh in. This journey is about long term progress. Knowing that my weigh in was not going to be great, I could have thrown it all out the door. I could have skipped my weekend work outs, eaten a 14 ounce rib eye steak with steak fries (which is what I really wanted) instead of 1/2 a chicken breast and a plain baked potato. I could have gone to the party and eaten half a pizza, but I didn't. By thinking through the situation ahead of time, I was able to accept the failure for what it was, a minor blip on the radar, and I was able to prevent it from turning into something much larger. I guess you could even say that I was able to turn the physical failure into a mental success.