Non-Scale Victories #NSV

I’m writing this post from my phone while I watch Lifetime Movie Network. The future is now!

About 2 months ago, I joined DietBet when I saw some other friends were doing it (I give into peer pressure easily). They have a few different types of challenges that you can join, but the most popular seem to be ones where you commit to trying to lose 4% of your body weight in 4 weeks. That’s what I joined in early January and I won the bet. I lost over 10 lbs and promptly joined 3 more challenges for February because I’m already losing weight and I could really use the money.

Despite the Body Positive Movement gaining momentum and acceptance, it can be easy to feel inadequate when the scale shows a number higher than you’d like. I can often tell when I’m fluffier than I want to be by the way my clothes aren’t fitting or by how puffy my face looks in pictures and it makes me feel bad all on its own. But having those digits glaring back at you from the scale can really ruin my day. It’s petty, I know, but it’s how I feel. That’s why I truly felt like my mind was blown when I learned about #NSV.

An NSV is a Non-Scale Victory. I actually came across this on the Instagram account for DietBet when they’d reposted someone’s picture that just showed a woman fitting into summer dress. I saw the hashtag #dietbetnsv and had to ask what it was.

Non-Scale Victory. It can be just about anything that counts as progress that isn’t measured by your mass. It’s such a simple concept, but it took me a while to come around to it.

I definitely have body dismorphia. It’s maybe not as skewed as others, but it’s there. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever had an eating disorder, but I occasionally binge and I like to eat my feelings. I’m also very food motivated. It makes thing interesting. It’s weird, too, because sometimes I think I’m a lot larger than I am and I’m pleasantly surprised to find otherwise. Every now and then I think I’m a lot smaller than I am, and then I realize I’ve miscalculated and I feel so embarrassed. It’s like I can’t trust my own mind, and that probably hurts the most.

Anyway, learning about NSV made me really sit and think about what my personal non-scale victories have been in the first could months of 2018. It was a good brain exercise and left me feeling really proud of all I’ve accomplished aside from weight loss so far.

• My skinny jeans are pretty loose and I now have to wear belts to keep my pants from falling down because there’s less of me to keep them up than there is pushing them down.
• I’ve still got a little in the middle, but my muffin top is almost gone.
• More of my clothes are fitting and I feel better when I have more outfit options.
• I recently finished 1st out of 18 people in my indoor cycling class at CycleBar.
• I’m starting to see a hint of my practically nonexistent jawline and it makes me ecstatic.
• I’m working really hard on my choreo for Zumba® Fitness and my classes are slowly growing.
• I’ve found working out has felt easier and I have more energy for exercising, even if that’s not true in other areas in my life.
• My crow pose in a recent hot yoga class was slow and sloppy, but I’d never been able to do it before. Now I can say I’ve done it and I can work to make it stronger.
• I went to a resale shop and tried on a dress that was labeled 8/10 and I feel like maybe the sizing wasn’t true, but the dress fit! I didn’t buy it because it wasn’t all that flattering, but it fit!
• CycleBar has 4 lbs weighted bars and 6 lbs weighted bars for arm work. I graduated to the 6 lbs!

All of the things listed above, and more, are more than enough to be thankful for. I worked really hard to claim those victories and it’s not even March! I look forward to seeing more progress this year and maybe I’ll even be able to add a few running PRs to the list by 2019.

Do you have any non-scale victories that you hope to achieve in 2018? Are there any you’ve already claimed? What steps are you taking to be successful?