Last week was a great week for loss and for breakthroughs. I didn’t have high hopes for this week because big losses usually come with some offsets afterward, but I am pleasantly surprised to report that I have another loss this week; I have now lost 156.4 pounds. This puts me a little closer to my next goal.

Goals are good things, as long as you’re smart about setting those goals and picking ones that are achievable rather than setups for failure. I’ve tried a lot of different things as weight loss goals over the years, and I’m sure you’ve had yours, too. I’ve had rewards, like getting contact lenses again, getting a tattoo, buying something special, even going out to dinner. (Honestly, cheat meals are not a good reward for losing weight — that should be self-explanatory, but hey, I did that, too.)

Physical rewards weren’t really a good incentive for me. They still aren’t.

Random Person who weighs roughly what I’ve lost. Can I count her off as a dependent on taxes?

On one particular effort, I threw out the idea of tying myself to the scale, because I was far too emotionally tied to the number and let it affect my outlook. So, I picked goal clothing that was too small, and when it finally fit, I would weigh, and then pick another set of goal clothing. It worked for a while, except I usually had a number in mind that I wanted and expected to see on the scale after staying off of it for maybe a month or two at a time, and if I didn’t see that number, it frustrated me.

The problem wasn’t the scale; the problem was my perception of success and the expectations tied to it.

I have promised myself any number of things over the years in the name of trying to work up the desire to get down to a certain weight. I still have clothes I bought probably 12 years ago hanging up in the closet; I kept a goal dress and a goal leather coat. Luckily, both were thrift sale finds, because that dress was probably out of style when I bought it. The coat, I’ll eventually see good wear out of it. But I stopped looking at either one and pushing myself to be that size. (On a side note, another coat that was a Christmas gift from my daughter 3 or 4 years ago now fits! And winter will be over soon.)

It’s not the clothes. I don’t even know if my body will be the right shape for those clothes to fit. And it’s not about the covering, anyway; it’s about my body’s ability.

Probably the biggest, dumbest goal I ever tried to take on was telling myself on the very first day of a diet exactly how much weight I needed to lose, total. From that point on, my eyes were set on that likely unachievable goal, and I was incredibly hard on myself, to the point of punishing myself. I didn’t allow myself to live in the meantime; in my head, the rewards would finally be reaped once I was that certain size and weight, and not before.

It’s not about delaying life to some undefined point in the future. It’s about living right here and right now.

This time around, I did something different. So far, it has worked. (And I think, after 4.5 years, it’s safe to call it a success.) I knew full well on the first day of my diet that I needed to lose at least 200 pounds, but I also admitted to myself that setting such a long distance goal was only likely to frustrate me. So, I set my goal for losing 50 pounds. I’ve lost 50 pounds time and time again. Do that, I thought, and then move on.

So that’s what I did. I made it to 50. The reward? Nothing, really, except being able to look myself in the mirror and be glad that I had reached that point. Once that was behind me, I set my goal for another 50. And then another, after that.

Last week, I passed 150 pounds down. And… I didn’t reset my goal for another 50. Nope! I set it for a short goal: 8 pounds. 8 pounds, in the grand scheme of the path I’ve come, is nothing at all. And at the same time, it’s everything. Because I didn’t get here by chunks of 50 pounds down, and again, and again. I got here in increments; 2 pounds here, a slight (or not so slight) gain there, lose that same 2 pounds (or 20 pounds!) a few times until it sticks, another 4 ounces down below my low weight.

Being a total of 158 pounds down puts me firmly under a BMI of 40, which is what my orthopedic surgeon’s office wants. I am already under 40 BMI, but this means I’ll have no doubts when I walk into his office next month and I am weighed once again (with clothes on. Let’s not scare the poor man!). It also means I’ve passed out of the category of morbidly obese to just plain old obese. Not that my whole actual physical state changed magically the second I crossed that line, although by all accounts, the stats say that’s exactly what happens.

I am now within easy attainable reach of that short goal. Like all my other goals, the reward is in my changed and improved abilities as well as my possibilities; now it’s possible to go ahead with knee replacement surgery, which I firmly believe is the next step in my progression toward better health.

After that short goal is met, I have a few other short goals on the way to 200, but the reward is in living in the here and now rather than some fantasy on a distant horizon.