In my last two posts, I’ve covered themes that I believe need to be in place in order to maintain high levels of weight loss motivation. The last theme I’d like to cover on this topic is Social Support.
Research has shown time and time again that when people have a social network that supports their efforts, they are more successful at losing weight. Nothing zaps a person’s motivation more than being surrounded by people who aren’t “on board” with their goal, who practice competing behaviors (non-goal oriented behaviors), or who flat out sabotage the individual’s efforts. Very recent research has also found that “birds of a feather flock together”. In other words, if you spend your time with overweight individuals who don’t exercise and eat poorly 24/7, guess what your lifestyle and physique might begin to look like??? Scary isn’t it? Maybe our friends CAN make us fat??!!

So what’s a boomer woman who wants to get slim and stay slim to do? Please understand I’m not asking you to dump friends, family or significant others if they don’t share your goals of being fit and healthy. However, I am suggesting you create a support network NOW. Here’s what I’d like you to do:

1). Identify several people that you know and trust. Let them know of your current goals. Please don’t tell them you are “trying” to lose weight or that you are training to “try” and run a faster 10k. That language implies that you don’t necessarily believe you will succeed. Let them know you WILL be losing weight, or that you WILL be ramping up your running skills. Use words that commit you to your goal.
2). Give these trusted individuals ideas on how they can help and support you. Maybe it’s by not bringing junk food to the office. Maybe it is by becoming an exercise buddy.
3). Ask your support folks to check in on you with a “how’s your program going?” type of question in a few weeks.

All three of these suggestions will do two things for you: 1) They’ll help you develop a support network and 2) They will create some accountability for you. Accountability is really important when you set out to achieve a goal. Knowing someone is going to be checking in on you raises the stakes a bit and stokes your motivation.

If you’ve been successful with a weight loss goal and you were helped by a person in your support network, please post here so we all can learn how other boomer gals are making weight loss happen with social support. Heck, that would be social support in and of itself, wouldn’t it??? The guys have their good ‘ol boys network. We boomer gals need to have our own little club to help each other get where we need to go!

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