That is great stuff Daniel. I found the same thing. I had 60lbs to lose (20lbs to go still). Thinking of trying to climb the mountain of shedding that much weight was just too much to take on at once so I decided to do something very similar to what you did.

I created a calendar and charted out into the future losing 2lbs a week until I hit my goal weight. (I am on track for that happening on March 16th 2011). Twice a week I log my weight in this calendar and it gives me a real guide as to where I have had successes and where I need more work. Every time I look at the calendar I make it a point to go back to the beginning and take a look at how far I have come and where I am headed and celebrate the victories that I have had all over again. On top of that I am tracking daily all of my calories and exercise daily (and getting on the scale every morning to take note of where I am starting off that day). What this has done is allowed me to create a situation for myself where I am celebrating small successes multiple times a week and the days that I don't have anything to celebrate, I have not veered so far off course that I bag the weight loss plan all together. Weight loss used to be an unmanageable monster that I would try to beat and fail. Now that I have a clear plan to tackle this in small increments, I am seeing far more success than failure and it is not a matter of if I can accomplish the task, it is when.

Fascinating insights. Set very small milestones, meet them, celebrate - carry the celebration momentum over - set new milestone when starting to get tired again, and repeat. Very excellent stuff, thanks for the comment Joe. I gotta think more on this, I think there's definitely something really important here...

Wow, that's interesting. I think you're definitely on to something.

When I was in high school, I was on the soccer team. We conditioned every day. And we ran. Ran for miles. I hated running. So I picked up a few tips to get by. It turns out, you can play some mental games to push yourself further than you otherwise would.

The trick is to create small challenges for yourself as you run. It gets you past the fear by giving you explicit chances to quit. And it gives you the satisfaction of winning. Over and over. I'd think to myself: I'm only going to run to that light post up ahead then I can quit. I'd pass it. I'd celebrate. And I'd run a bit further. What really surprised me though was how easy it was to keep on running--even at the same pace--while mentally celebrating compared to when I was struggling through the challenge.

The mental stress always crept back in though. So when it did, I'd think up another challenge. Maybe a longer distance that time. While going a little faster. I can always quit after winning this next challenge. Then again, if I felt like I couldn't quite make it any further, I'd create a shorter, more attainable goal. And even after that small win, knowing I gave myself permission to quit, the decision was mine again. I could choose whether or not to push on. So I did. These little wins are what kept me moving forward. I'd have given up otherwise.

Now running may not quite be the same as long-term habit change. But when you're required to run several miles a day for weeks at a time, it certainly feels like it! Besides, I continued to run after high school soccer ended. It ended up being habit. (It may also have helped that we were coached through it all though. It's certainly harder to do these things on your own. I think you can learn a lot from being coached and applying the same strategies to your own long-term habit changes. After all, these guys are trained to train.)

Hey, that's a great post Daniel. Really good stuff.

I'm actually cutting right now - I put a lot of weight on when I was recovering from a motorcycle crash in Cambodia. I figured I wanted enough nutrients to heal as much as possible, so went heavy on proteins, fats, fruit and fruit juices, etc.

I was at 22.5% bodyfat on November 11th. Haven't been measured since then - I should do this more often. I'm traveling so daily might not be feasible, but weekly or twice-weekly might. I do track my daily calories and average them at the end of the week, so I know I'm trending in the right direciton.

Good post - I'd recommend everyone take a minute to read it, if they're interested in the topic.

Very good insights here, excellent stuff Hurt. Also, I went in and cleaned up the formatting quickly like you asked - normally I don't sweat typos, this was a really good comment and I wanted to make sure everyone could see it easily. Cheers.

Hi Sebastian,

Great point. I think it's one of the key reasons that my weight-loss method at http://danieltenner.com/posts/0018-how-to-lose-weight.html works well... the daily weighing and graphs allow you to celebrate your weight loss every day.

Sorry, Looks like I screwed up when I put in the quote tags. You may want to edit the above post to make it more readable.

This reminded me of something Steve Litt (troubleshooters.com) wrote about regarding troubleshooting:

"Take pride in what you just did. GLOAT over how you beat the problem that was trying to beat you. SAVOR the victory. GO OVER in your mind every step of the way to victory. REVIEW the course of the troubleshoot, where you were brilliant, where you could have done better. BRAG to your co-workers."

He used that technique as a defense against burnout, perhaps we can apply the same process to changing habits? Celebrate all the little victories as you go along, take pride every day you skip soda, or every time you resist temptation. Change the solution around from having a two week long celebration at the end to some amount of random positive reinforcement when you successfully follow the new behavior. Then continue reinforcing the behavior a decreasing amount after you've succeeded in adopting the new habit until the habit has become second nature.
I don't know if the above would actually prove effective or useful, but I thought it might be relevant.