We
can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone. Dr. Loretta Scott
Chuffed, managed to lose 1/2lb yesterday and I’m still off
the wine and sleeping fabulously. Have
you noticed it’s always easier to lose weight if you have some support. I’ve got three friends doing it with me at
the moment, so we’re gonna keep each other on track. It’s important to ask for help when you need
it, a dear friend told me that yesterday and she also said, I don’t mean just
with your weight – apparently I can be a little self-sufficient, but I’m
learning to lean on others one step at a time.
It’s important to surround yourself with motivating and encouraging people. It particularly helps your weight loss efforts
when you know how to ask for and get the help you need. That’s why Weight Watchers works and is so
successful, and successful members know that when they involve the people in
their lives in their weight loss efforts, they’re fostering the kinds of
healthy relationships that will help them maintain too. So ask for help from the people who are
willing, negotiate with the people who aren’t, and rely on your meeting for
outside support.
Research has shown that ongoing social support from family
and friends, as well as other sources, may help to sustain weight loss, which
makes sense doesn’t it. when you make an
effort to ask for what you need, you’re more actively thinking about what you
need. And through your actions you’re
acknowledging, to both your loved ones and yourself that what you need is
important and worthwhile.
When you ask for help - whether from your friends, family,
and colleagues or the people at your meeting - you’re putting the power of
others behind your efforts. I had a
phone text conversation with a struggling member last night, and just a few
texts helped to make her feel better and see clearer, had she not asked for
help, I wouldn’t have known she was struggling.
I’m good but I’m not psychic!
If you’re not used to asking the people in your life for
assistance with anything (much less with something as big as weight loss), it
may feel tempting to just clam up and lose weight in secret. If seeking help outside your support system
seems daunting, you might be tempted to just try to do it alone. But it doesn’t have to be that way, that way
is much more difficult. If you make it a
habit to ask for help – from the people you’re close to and from others – you
don’t have to be in it alone. Plus think
about it this way: wouldn’t you rather start asking for help now, so that
someday, when you really need a hand, asking is just an everyday habit?
I recently had a new member who was giving me very obvious
signals that she wasn’t impressed at all with anything, me, the meeting, life
in general I think and I have to say by the end of the meeting she’d actually
managed to bring my ‘umph’ and enthusiasm down a little, which just shows how
strong one persons feelings can be, how their mood can affect yours. Luckily by the end of the getting started
session, she’d perked up a little (only a little, it’d take more than half hour
to change her view on life) and I managed to leave my meeting my usual
satisfied self.
No matter how much of your journey you’re sharing with the
people outside your meeting, the people at your meeting know a lot about what
you’re experiencing, mostly because they’re in similar situations. That
member I’ve just mentioned probably has a lot of reasons to make her feel the
way she does and hopefully over the weeks and months she’ll share some of them
and start to feel better about things, but we have to learn to be more
open. My meetings are a safe place where
anything that’s said is kept in confidence and other members empathise because they
are or have been in similar situations.
I’m going to leave you today with an incident that happened to one
of my members yesterday which made me smile, Lorraine was outside the school gates
Well done Lorraine!
ReplyDeleteThat woman should stay at home.