A Healthy Ambition: Benchmarks and Goals

It's been a slow couple of days for me (the fact that I was home - in the land of heavy foods and little exercise - didn't help) and, in the hopes of keeping my motivation up, I began thinking about what the benchmarks are for my end goal of losing weight and becoming fit.  Much like my Debt Project, working-out has obviously taken on a very general purpose and I feel like in order to actually accomplish that goal, I need more tangible benchmarks to hit and some rewards to give myself along the way.

It's the rewards that were stumping me though.  With debt the rewards are easy, but with weight loss, what sort of rewards can you give yourself?  Eat more?  No one wants to do that in the middle of a work out frenzy.  Buy a bikini?  That prospect is so scary that I'm actually shuddering right now.  So I thought about it, and I thought about my debt rewards some more, and I came up with a few work-out goals/rewards after all.

Here they are (the goals that are crossed out have already been completed):

1. Join a gym
2. Establish initial work-out routine (working out 4-5 days a week)
3. Try out a class at the gym
4. Follow routine consistently for 2 months
5. Run 3 miles
6. Buy new work-out clothes - REWARD!
7. Re-evaluate and follow routine consistently for 2 more months
8. Run 6 miles
9. Buy new running shoes - REWARD!
10. Join a pilates class
11. Re-evaluate and follow routine consistently for 2 more months
12. Run a half marathon