"Successful" weight management

Many studies have proven that the best source of motivation for lifestyle changes is seeing success and feeling like your efforts are making a difference. However, many of my clients "see" or perceive their successes differently and too often with a skewed view.

Defining the success of anything involves multiple factors. For example,  a "successful" business not only means it is making money, but also that they have loyal customers, the employees are happy, and the company is growing. "Successfully" raising children not only means they are kept alive until the age of 18, but that they can critically think for themselves, are respectful, healthy, etc.
So why is it that defining success for weight loss is often only based on the number of pounds you lose? Like in the examples above, there are other factors to consider such as your health, happiness, self esteem, waist circumference, relationship with food and ability to plan and prepare healthy meals.

Defining success as a change in the numbers on a scale does not show you the whole picture. It does not acknowledge all the time and efforts put into meal planning, prepping, recipe searching, extra time spent exercising or reading labels.

So, next time you feel down about your lack of change in your weight despite all the hard work you've done, make a check list of all the other accomplishments you want to carry out to lose weight. Go through the list and focus on accomplishing these tasks- seeing all the boxes checked will help to boost your motivation and keep you on track.