For anybody who was wondering, it took me exactly 9 days to get back to the weight I was before that weekend trip with the wine, the dessert and the fried calamari. Which I think is actually not so bad. At any rate, I’m fine with it.

Many of my Twitter fitness and weight loss friends like to talk about NSV, or “non-scale victories.” In other words, how do you measure success other than the numbers on the scale?

I really really hate body measurements so I have avoided those like the plague. Now of course I wish I HAD measured myself in January because I’d certainly have some nice inches lost there, but I didn’t. Even now – I just measured my waist just for the fun of it, and it puts me at a SIZE 16 in ALL of the clothing catalogs I love – Athleta, J. Crew, J. Jill, Garnet Hill… bleah. Now I know there is no way I wear a size 16. Yet my measurement says that is what I should order. Which is why I am so loathe to buy clothes via catalog!!

But I had a great non-scale victory this week.

I have been going to the same trainer for about four years. He has mixed up my workouts for all this time, so my body (and mind) never know what to expect. But I have certain things I love to do and others that I dread and hate. One of my most dreaded exercise EVER has been the crab walk. We used to have to do these back and forth across the large gym floor. They made me cry. I could really not go more than 3 “steps” and my butt would collapse on the floor.  It was freaking imPOSSIBLE for me to do and they made me feel hopeless. For YEARS.

So this week I was merrily feeling quite confident and fit and everything I did, he’d say, “Piece of cake?” and I’d go, “Yeah!!” Then he said “Sit down.” I got a sick feeling in my stomach. “Give me a crab walk across the floor.” I really felt like I was going to cry. “DO IT!” So I set off. And… holy guacamole. I could do it! I wasn’t dragging my butt! I wasn’t collapsing!! I was doing it, almost like this guy!! And I realized – before, I was trying to crab walk with an extra 23 pounds on my body. If you stuck a 25 lb sandbag on top of my stomach, I can tell you I would collapse. So it’s a combination of getting stronger and having 23 lbs less to haul around!

In other NSV news, I have been working diligently on the Couch-to-5k program and I am amazed and thrilled to report that last night I completed week 5. Week five is crazier than any week so far – it took me from running 8 minutes nonstop to running 20 minutes nonstop! (um, what happened to 10, 12 or 15 minutes? Huh?) I’m basically skipping weeks 6-9 and going straight to my 5k run this Sunday. I wish I had those 3 extra weeks to train, but I think I can do it anyway. (cue Rocky music!)

And those are my non-scale victories for this week. What are yours?