For those of you who are wondering what in the world NSV is, NSV stands for non-scale victory. As someone who struggled in the past with being obsessed with the number on the scale, celebrating healthy milestones that have nothing to do with the scale has become very important to me. Pointing out NSVs is great for times when the scale is not moving or is (GULP) going up because it helps me to see what other kinds of progress is being made. I had two great NSVs this weekend that I must share!

1. I can wear a size 14! Remember all those size 14 clothes I got from a friend back in July? At the time, I could wear the skirts but could not really wear many of the pants. Well, this weekend I revisited that pile of pants, tried some on, and all but one pair fits! So not only do I have a bunch of “new” pairs of pants, but they are in a smaller size. I am SO excited about this. I’m pretty sure the last time I wore a size 14 was about 10 years ago, and I didn’t stay a size 14 long because I went to college, and well, you fill in the blanks. 🙂

2. I ran 4 miles! As I confessed last month, I have not been running much but have been trying to build up my endurance so I can run a 10k and half marathon this year. On Saturday morning I headed to the park to take advantage of the warm weather (45 degrees-woohoo!). I planned to run for about 25 minutes and then walk some more. The park where I went has a trail that is 1.3 miles around. I did a 5-minute warm-up walk, then I began doing intervals of 5 minutes of running with 1 minute of walking. After I finished the first lap, I felt really good, so I decided to finish a second, even though that would end up being about 30 minutes instead of 25. Then when I finished that lap, I decided that I may as well go ahead and finish a third. And since 3 laps would make 3.9 miles, I couldn’t leave it at that but had to go a full 4 miles, so I ran for a few extra minutes beyond the third lap. I completed the 4 miles in 46:40, which is an average pace of 11:40 per mile, and I felt AMAZING when I finished, like I could accomplish anything! (The one downer of this run is that my feet hurt afterward. My new shoes didn’t bother me at all when I ran 3 miles on the treadmill on Friday, but they definitely hurt on Saturday. I am not sure what to think about that.)

Have you had any NSVs lately? Share them here!