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acceptance, active, adventurous, advice, authenticity, be, Beautiful, Beauty, believe, big boned, body, breathe, celebrate, change, confidence, courage, emotion, empathy, experience, failure, fat, fear, Feel, focus, food, Freedom, future, genetics, goals, grateful, habit, happiness, Happy, healing, healthy, helpful, Honesty, Hope, human, hungry, Impossible, journey, joy, lessons, life, Listen, love, Mask, mistakes, moment, positive, rationale, Reality, skinny, support, thin, weight, weight loss, weight loss journey
These statements and more were engrained in my head as a young girl growing into a woman. I was given constant excuses and rationale for weight gain and never did I even think being a healthy weight was something that I could achieve.
I was always capable of being a healthy weight, I just never believed it was possible until recently.
So, what can you do to help someone who is embarking on a weight loss journey of their own?
How can you help someone not be held back by who they think they aren’t?
How do you help them make the impossible possible?
I have a number of things that I would suggest:
1.) Be a Listener
Just listen to how things are going, don’t always offer advice.
2.) Be Supportive
There are so many ways to do this: Steer food conversations to something else. Don’t be a food pusher. Learn what their trigger foods are and help them to avoid them. Compliment, compliment, compliment all of their positive accomplishments!
3.) Be Helpful
Tell them it is ok when set backs happen and that you are still proud of them and their journey.
4.) Be Active Together
Keep activity as a focus instead of eating being a focus. Help keep food from being the centerpiece of a good time. People struggling with weight need friends who will do this with them! 🙂
5.) Be Hopeful & Positive
Talk with hope about their future goals in any way that you can. Steer them from only talking about the past or dwelling on mistakes.
6.) Be Adventurous
Try new things, try new healthy foods together – make new healthy habits a plan instead of an attitude of whatever happens, happens…
7.) Be Empathetic
Listen to their struggles with hunger, with cravings, with weight gain, with clothes not fitting…even if you have never been there, a little empathy goes a long way.
8.) Be Accepting
Accept who they are now and where there are on their journey.
9.) Be Real
Tell them it is possible but don’t lead them astray by okaying old habits that got them overweight in the first place.
10.) Be Focused
Try to help them replace old unhealthy habits with new healthy ones that can help them reach their weight loss goals. Assure them that there are so many other ways to feel good other than by eating. A bored stomach is not always a hungry stomach…neither is a happy, hurt, angry or sad stomach…help them to not feed emotions empty calories…feed them love through your touch, your listening and your caring.
11.) Be Celebratory!
“It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.” -Author Unknown