Reward Yourself for Making Weight
Rewarding yourself is one of the best ways that you can keep yourself motivated to keep losing weight, but you need to make sure you’re doing it right or else you could be doing more harm than good. In this article, we’re going to go over the right way to reward yourself for reaching your weight loss goals and talk about several reward systems that people use.
What to Reward Yourself With
The first thing to consider is what you’re going to reward yourself with. If your reward is a large meal of fried chicken and French fries followed by a massive piece of cheesecake, all you will have done is taken a big step backwards and will now have to work even harder to reach your next goal. The same goes if your reward is less exercise.
Instead, you need to pick non-food and non-exercise rewards. You might go out to a movie with a friend, buy yourself a new piece of jewelry or accessory. Or, you could also go somewhere that you love going, such as a park or a museum. What is important is that you pick something special that you wouldn’t normally buy or do, so that it actually means something to get it as a reward.
When to Reward Yourself
Only reward yourself when you’ve actually reached your goal or else there’s no point. When you go into the week knowing that you’ll still get to buy that scarf you’ve been eyeing even if you skip a workout, then you’ll be much more likely to skip a workout without much regret. However, if you get to the end of the week and have to walk past that scarf because you skipped workouts, then you’ll work that much harder the next week to get it.
How to Reward Yourself
You need to maintain a balance between the size of the goal and the size of the reward. If you get to go on a weekend trip to Las Vegas every time you lose a pound, it will quickly lose its appeal. On the other hand, if you pop a quarter in a vending machine to get a plastic ring after losing 100 pounds, you won’t feel rewarded for anything. Essentially you need to make sure the reward fits the effort.
Different Reward Systems
There are two basic ways that you can reward yourself when it comes to meeting your weight loss goals, both of which we’ve already mentioned, but are now going to elaborate on.
The first method is a weekly reward system, where you set up a small reward at the end of every week, and could have a big reward at the end of the month or every 2 – 3 months. With this method, you need to meet certain goals every day of the week in order to get your reward, whether it’s a certain amount of time exercising or a certain calorie count reached each day.
The other method involves the number of pounds you’ve lost, and doesn’t involve a specific time frame. Once you’ve lost 20 or 10 pounds, you get a reward, no matter how long it took you. With this method, be sure to have smaller goals near the end of your weight loss since you’ll find it harder to lose weight the further into your weight loss you get.