To Lose Weight, Get Your Friends and Family Involved

Social support can help you achieve your fitness goals faster

Getting in shape is often a long and difficult endeavor, but sharing that burden with supportive friends and family can significantly lighten your load and help you lose more pounds.

Get The Word Out

Toiling alone is never easy, so tell your friends and family about your weight loss goals. Their support and goodwill will help buoy you through those days when you don’t feel like going to the gym or when a doughnut in the break room is calling your name.

Take the extra step and have your friends and family hold you accountable to weekly or monthly goals. Task them with keeping you on track. Supportive friends and family will be more than happy to ask about your progress every day, keep you honest during dinner and sound the alarm if some rouge cookies force themselves on your plate.

You’ll be amazed at how powerful accountability can be. The positive reinforcement you get when you tell your friends about your weight loss each week or how you ran three miles yesterday will propel your forward to reach new goals. Accountability is one of the main principles behind weight loss clubs like Weight Watchers, and one of the reasons they remain popular when so many other systems come and go.

Recruit

Asking friends and family to hold you accountable for meeting your weight loss and fitness goals is a great way to keep yourself honest, but actually recruiting your family and friends to join you is even better.

If you have friends or family members who are trying to lose weight, make a pact to get fit together. Meet each other at the gym and keep each other motivated to try heavier weights or run faster on the treadmill. Draw up meal plans together. Report back to each other on a regular basis. Knowing that someone is waiting for you at the gym will get you there even on those days when it’s the last thing you feel like doing. Also, sharing your Haagen-Dazs withdrawal with a friend will make you feel better.

Losing weight with a friend or in a group is a great motivator. Cheering on a friend’s success and receiving enthusiastic support and encouragement when you start to see results will keep you pushing yourself hard.

Achieving your fitness goals alone is always an option, but bringing friends and family along will help keep you going longer and farther so that you see more results more quickly and, most importantly, enjoy yourself along the way.