I use dry-erase (Expo®) markers rather than wet-erase (Vis-a-Vis®) because they are in general neater. But either type will work. And don’t buy the cheapest ones either, because they will dry up quick and the tips get all mushy and don’t write well. I recently found some awesome fine tipped dry-erase markers with felt erasers on the end, like pencils.
The main thing that I write on my mirror is tick marks. I weigh myself every morning, and if the scale goes down, I mark a tick for each pound. I don’t erase tick marks unless I gain 5 or more pounds, because less than 5 pounds is probably water/sodium fluctuations and if I erased a tick every time the scale went up I would lose motivation fast. (One of the things you will hear me say over and over is that this is about behavior modification, so you can’t be all anal about everything.) I mark the ticks by month, so it looks sort of like this:
You get the idea. To the left of the ticks, I write the last two digits of my starting weight for that month in parentheses. To the right of the ticks I write the pounds lost that month/pounds lost since Sept. 27th '07/pounds lost since all time high. For example, to the right of February, you will see 6/40/67, which means “6 pounds lost in February, 40 pounds lost since Sept. 27th '07, and 67 pounds lost since diagnosis.”
These ticks and the mysterious numbers on either side serve as a huge motivation to me. Every morning when I stumble to the bathroom to pee they are the first thing my sleep-blurred eyes see. I look, and I say to myself, “Look at that! Look what you have already done! You can do it!”
If I forget to tell myself these things, it’s ok, because another thing I use the mirror (and trusty dry erase markers) for is to write encouraging notes to myself such as “You can do this,” “It’s about choice,” “Small steps count,” and so on. I try to change it up regularly.
Just below the ticks, I write my weight-loss goal for that month, and how many pounds to go. Right now it says New Goal: lose 45 pounds by 3/31. 5 pounds to go! Each time I mark a tick, I also change this number, and I write this part big and dark and right at eye level, because I have come to believe that goals are really, really important. And not just any old goals. I am talking about specific, reachable goals that are made, posted, spoken aloud, and shared with others. Sometimes I make a two-week goal if my motivation starts to get frayed.
I do have to leave a little room for my husband to shave (although he has started making tick marks, too :), so the only other thing I have on the mirror is my Ten lists. Rather than being written in dry erase marker, these have been typed and printed out, and stuck to the mirror with sticky-tak. I have Ten Good Reasons to Lose Weight and Ten Easy Ways to Lose Weight. I have changed these up a few times, and I don’t read them every day, but if I feel myself slipping they are a good shot in the arm.
When I am standing on my scale (the Toyota, I mean; the Lexus faces the towel rack) I am facing my mirror, and my current goal is right at eye level. So unless I want to actually work at ignoring it, I really can’t.
The questions I get asked, on occasion, when I tell people about this, are “Don’t visitors to your house see this and what do they think?” or “Doesn’t all that writing on your mirror make your bathroom pretty ugly?” My response to the first one is that it doesn’t really come up. We have a downstairs bathroom and a guest bathroom, so it is rare when anyone other than the two of us is in our master bathroom. As for the second question, yes, it kinda does, but I don’t really care. If I lose 100 pounds in this process, the attractiveness of my mirror is not even a blip on the radar!
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