Celebrating beyond the scale

Pin It I recently read another Sparkpeople.com article that I found inspiring.  It was talking about rewarding yourself and encouraging yourself when things are not going so great.  One thing the author brought up was about how we berate ourselves when we "fail".  He said that if we did that to employees every time they slipped up, we wouldn't have very happy employees now would we?  This rang so true!  Some of the things I say to myself when I mess up I would NEVER ever say to someone else!  Why should I treat others or speak to others and better than how I treat/speak to myself?  I shouldn't. Period.

The article goes on to talk about rewarding yourself and this got me thinking.  I tend to reward myself only for weight losses, not for other milestone achievements - like walking over 7km in just over an hour.  If you told me YOU had walked over 7km in just over an hour, I'd be over the moon for you and doing my dance of joy for you.  For me, it was just another walk.  Don't get me wrong, I was happy about the accomplishment, but I didn't celebrate it like I would a good weight loss or someone else's accomplishment.  I have decided that this is wrong.  I think we need to start rewarding ourselves (NOT with food!!) for non-scale victories (NSVs).  We often hear about NSVs at our WW meeting or in the blogosphere, but until today I never really celebrated my own.  That's going to stop.  Today I am going to go to the dollar store and buy myself a wall calendar and some fancy, shiny stickers.  As most of you know, I am such a charts and graphs girl, so I am going to reward myself with a bunch of stickers on my calendar for any day that I have ANY NSV happen - increased time on my walk, increased distance, walking vs taking the car or the bus, fitting into a new size (did I tell you I poured myself into a pair of size 10s this week?  It wasn't pretty, but the zipper went up!), tracking 100% for the day, or whatever that victory may be.  I think we all need to celebrate beyond the scale.

Do you celebrate NSVs?  How do you celebrate?  I think we should start a list...here's a good start:

Take yourself to the movies
Get a mani or pedi
Buy stickers and a calendar and stick away!
Plan a ME day
Buy a new article of clothing
Plan a girls night out
Paint your own nails
Plan a weekend getaway
Plan a BIG trip (for a big NSV)