The Influences of Friends and Family-Good or Maybe Not So Good

The decision to loss weight is a personal one. Sometimes you may have a spouse or a friend agree to do it together and if you do, consider yourself lucky, because with help, it gives you 2 or more heads to motivate to do the good things and discourage from doing the bad tings. I believe that is why Weight Watchers is so successful, because you have this fear of the being embarrassed at the weigh-in when scale goes up instead of down. You know everyone is looking and is on your side to loss weight. It helps to motivate you to not eat that piece of cake, or walk when you may be too tired.

Let’s say you’re like me and you are totally on your own to do the right thing. You have a plan. Try to stay around 2000 calories a day, eat less high glycemic carb, Ab exercises in the morning, the elliptical or weights in the evening, walk more, and drink less booze.

The problem is the rest of your world doesn’t have your plan. The wife and son still love to go out to eat. The elliptical makes a creaking noise that annoys the household. The people at the office love to bring cookies and cake to eat. You’re invited to the big tailgating party at LSU, which if done right is a full day of eating & drinking. What’s a poor little weight losing guy to do?

I know my friends and family don’t intentionally mean to sabotage the plan. Before “The Plan”, these were the kind of things we did together; this is how we had fun. I still love going out to eat, who doesn’t love a piece of cake, I remember the college days when I could drink you under the table, and 30 minutes on the elliptical certainly isn’t in the
“Top Ten” of a good time.

Here’s what you do. Stay focused. Losing weight is a 24 hour a day batch of good or bad decisions. Don’t give up all your fun, but don’t lapse into old habits. A friend of mine at work, Grace was giving Helen some advice after she ate a piece of cheesecake after Helen had started a new diet to cut back on sweets. The advice was:

“If you on a trip and you get a flat tire. You don’t say the heck with it and go home. You get out and change the tire and get back in your car and get back to your vacation.”

Same with your weight loss plan. If influences drive you to break from your diet, don’t give up the ship, just start back the next day with a greater sense of urgency.

By the way, I went to the tailgate party and was bad, I turned down the piece of cake at work, I told me wife and son this time I am going to stay home and eat soup, and when I am on the elliptical, just turn up the TV.