Fine tuning

Cars, guitars, pianos. All need a little fine tuning every now and again. Same goes for you. Once you reach your goal, it's a good idea to have a plan in place for maintaining your achievement. You'll hear a lot of diet plans call themselves a lifestyle change. As cheesy as it is, they do make a good point. In order to maintain your new level of awesome, you have to change your way of thinking. Unless, of course, your goal was a temporary state of being. Which I don't believe for a second. You wouldn't put in all this work just to undo it later!!

So, how do we do this? Clearly, it depends on your goal. But, it's a good motivator. Fantasizing about your end result gives you a little motivation to keep pushing to your goal. Taking the time to plan out how you will maintain your results will also keep you from reaching your goal, and then waking up the next day like, "now what"?? After spending so much time trying to get there, you don't want to undo everything you worked so hard for in the name of celebration.

That doesn't mean you can't celebrate, of course. You earned it! It may not mean that you have to be as strict as before. But, you can't go back to your old ways either. (If you do, you'll end up with an old level of awesome. LOL).

If your new level of awesome involved a weight loss, you may want to increase your calorie intake for the maintenance phase. Or, maybe you slowly begin to reintroduce foods you'd given up. For some, what will happen is you will be able to make better choices about your foods and exercise -- you'll know the consequences of the foods you choose, and workout accordingly. If your new level of awesome involved budgeting, then once you've paid off a debt or two, you can raise your weekly allowance. Or, maybe you can buy yourself a monthly treat. In no case should you go back to your old spending habits. If you just eradicated debt from your life, don't go out stacking more bills. That's just silly!

Ok people. go forth and maintain!!