Get Fit Friday – Unintentional Sabotages

If you are like me and going through a lifestyle change at a point in your life when you are in your mid to late 30’s then you have probably been going through different types of diet and exercise plans for a good portion of your life. It is true that there are a few people who have never had to deal with weight issues until they had children and then found that their metabolism suddenly changed and then they had to deal with it, but even then they probably have gone through at least two or three different types of diets. I mean, let’s get real, turn on the television and there are at least three different diets mentioned during a one hour television program.

It amazes me to think that our society bombards us with so many different types of diets and doesn’t tell people who are not on them what is best about the diets that are being shows. For the simple reason that they don’t talk about the pitfalls behind each of the diets, people who are not on these different diets can become saboteurs of others’ lifestyle changes without meaning to. They generally have good intentions behind what they are saying or doing but do not completely understand what is being said or done in their actions.

Let me explain.

It feels as if I have been on some sort of diet since I was in late elementary school; now should I have been at that young of an age, I don’t really know but my parents felt that I needed to be. At that age my parents were in control of what I ate while I was in their house but not what I ate outside of the house. So if I didn’t like the diet that we were on at that time, mind you I was the one on the diet and everyone else in the household would eat whatever they wanted, I would just eat whatever I wanted when I was not in the house. I could not see why it was fair, in my mind, that everyone in the house to eat what they wanted and I had to have special food; which tasted terrible on one of the diets that I was on.

As I got older there were friends of mine, or I thought that they were friends, who would eat a meal next to me knowing full well that I was watching what I was eating. I was not counting my calories, like I do now on MyFitnessPal, but I was just watching my portions and at the time I was trying to not have too much salt on my food. When I would chat with one friend, the other friend would add food to my plate and also add salt to my food. They were doing the “mean girl” routine. They would tell me that I looked fine the way that I did and that I didn’t need to lose any weight. Being in high school, I so badly wanted to believe them. When I did not lose weight, I got frustrated and just gave up.

Now these are two examples of people who were in my life who were not really trying to get me to gain weight and were trying to help me out, in their own way, but were sabotaging my weight loss battles. When these times happen, a person just wants to throw in the towel and not even care and it take quite a bit of time to start to realize that you need to start to do it for yourself and not care what the other people in your life want but you need to do it for yourself. Sure it is important to make those in your life happy but them wanting to spend time with you, but if it is because of the way that you look that they don’t want to be around you then that is their own problem and there is nothing that you can do to fix that. It is all about getting healthy for yourself and knowing that it is a challenge that you are willing to go on for yourself.