I’ve been seeing a lot of these jar weight loss trackers on Pinterest (my biggest time-waster lately) and on the fitness blogs I’m following:

I’m a visual person so I find this really cool. And because I’m inggitera, I made my own. This now sits on my husband’s bookshelf:

There’s a knick-knack store down our street that sells everything from cutesy school supplies to toys like plastic model car kits, that’s where I got my marbles. I’m not going to say how many marbles are in the “pounds to go” bottle.

Yep, there are marbles in the “pounds lost” bottle. I’m starting my count from the day we got married. I’m not on any diet or weight loss program now, but Abet and I have made changes to our lifestyle that are slowly but surely making us lose weight. Since the beginning of the year, we have switched to brown rice, we’ve been doing Meatless Mondays, and we no longer drink soft drinks or iced tea on weekdays. We also no longer have snacks available in our house.

I’m starting to exercise again, and I’m going to go back to Bikram Yoga in a week or two, so I’m expecting to transfer over some more marbles in the weeks to come. I no longer feel the need to lose weight to get sexy or look good in a bikini or something like that, but I want to be fit for one very important reason: I want to have a healthy pregnancy when the time comes (we’re planning on trying to have a baby maybe late next year).

These motivational marbles would also work when I do finally get pregnant. For every pound I gain, I’ll put in a marble into a jar. After my pregnancy, any marbles I accumulate will be my “pounds to go” to get back to my pre-baby weight. Neat, eh?

I can’t wait to empty that bottle on the right. It’s a very ambitious goal, but I’m confident that I’ll be able to do this because the health of my yet-to-be-conceived baby is at stake. That’s my biggest motivation of all.