It's Not Just What You Know About Weight Loss - It's Who You Know, Too

As a personal trainer, I feel that the concept of social support is vastly under estimated. When I went through my own weight loss journey, I found the lack of social support a key obstacle. It is very often not considered when people think about diets or losing weight but I feel it plays a massive part in the overall objective.

In some cases, people can change habits quite easily and get fantastic support from family, friends and colleagues. I have found that gaining complete 100% support from everyone for a weight loss plan is rare. This always sounds like an odd point to make because we assume that people that care about us would want us to succeed? On the surface, people do but in some cases but subconsciously they want to fail in your health and fitness goals.

A good example would be trying to quit smoking, when I gave up, loads of people said to me "go on, have one, it won't do you any harm" One of the reasons for this is because, by quitting, you are doing something that other people either don't want to or can't do. This makes them feel bad so they try and pull you back into the habit.

When it comes to weight loss and exercise, it's the same, people who love you don't walk around saying "I wish they would fail" but they can be secretly pleased if you do. The potential reason for this is the fact that by losing weight, you are exposing other peoples insecurities about themselves and people don't tend to like that.

You will understand what I mean if you have heard people say to you, "oh, don't lose any more weight" and things of this nature because it then makes them feel better about themselves. If you ever get in a situation where your friends try and stop achieving your goals then these are not real friends. If you want to achieve something like weight loss or getting fit, people who care should support you in my opinion even if they don't like it.

In conclusion, I would always discuss a weight loss plan with friends and family to ensure that they understand why you are doing it. This way, you can feel supported from the start and not have to face the challenge later on.

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