Friday, November 13, 2009

Get Others Involved in Your Goals


Get Others Involved in Your Goals
Don't be a Weight-Loss Loner
-- By Mike Kramer, SparkPeople Contributor

Coaches, mentors, trainers, teammates, partners, fans. Even the greatest athletes in the world can’t do it alone.

People naturally perform better when others are on their side and helping out. Even in everyday nutrition and fitness, we’ve found that people who involve others and ask for help get much better results and stick to their programs longer than people who try to go the distance on their own.
Why is that? For starters, positive peer pressure can be one of the most powerful motivators around. It’s tougher to quit when someone else is counting on you. In fact, with a team that’s pulling for you, it’s less likely that you’ll want to quit.

When you involve others, you have access to more knowledge, more ideas, more enthusiasm, and more resources. Bicyclists and race car drivers are finding out that they need teammates looking out for them if they have any chance at all of winning. You can take advantage of the same benefits.

Finally, having other people help out just makes weight loss a heckuva lot more fun. Especially for social exercisers, trying to lose weight and exercise alone can leave you bored out of your mind.

Your weight loss goals are every bit as important as those of a world-class athlete. This is why SparkPeople emphasizes meeting and getting to know other members. We’ve seen the Spark that happens on the Message Boards, when members rally behind someone who’s struggling, or congratulate the latest success.

Business people draw on a team of accountants, lawyers, financial advisers, headhunters, board members, etc. Together, they form a team of specialists that open up possibilities to that businessperson and his/her business goals. You can build a similar team around your weight loss goals. People that can help with your journey are all around you. You can do this without making a lot of demands on anyone’s time. Some possible ways to build a strong team by only asking one thing of each person:

:Ask a friend to check with you once a week to see how you’re doing.
:Ask your significant other to be there when you need to unload.
:Ask a co-worker to keep you upbeat.
:Ask your kids to help you find active ways to have fun.
:Ask your brother-in-law to pass along inspirational reading and interesting health news.
:Ask your photographer sister to take "before" and "in-progress" pictures.

Better yet, why not ask someone to join your healthy lifestyle quest? Going through and succeeding with a new program with a friend or buddy can create a bond that carries over into other areas of your life.

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