It can be incredibly hard to make huge lifestyle changes when you don’t have the support of the people closest to you. It can even be embarrassing at times to make healthy choices, even though you know that they are the absolute best things for you. So how do you change your lifestyle without support of your friends and family? Well here are some of my best suggestions for navigating some of the tricky situations that may come up.
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Food
Eating has become such a social thing in our culture that this can be the most difficult hurdle to jump over when you are changing your lifestyle. Your friends and family might judge you because of the food choices you are making or they might feel annoyed and held back by you because you are making healthier choices.
The bottom line is that your lifestyle choices do affect the people around you who care about you. Though it would be awesome to get support from them, it’s not something I would expect. You can figure out how to make this not so much of an issue, but it will take a little work, a little creativity, and a little bit of grace. Just know that relationships go through growing pains, and just because your friends don’t embrace your changes now, down the road when they see the progress you’ve made, they will likely be proud of you.
Bring Your Own Food
In my mind, it is just common courtesy anyway, but offer to bring food to any family or friends gathering. Make sure your food assignment is something that you like to eat and that is healthy. Then when you are loading up your plate, give yourself a healthy serving of your own food and maybe smaller servings of the other foods.
There are lots of foods and snacks that are healthy and delicious. You don’t have to make a cheesecake out of cashews to have something healthy and delicious. I wouldn’t try to disguise your food as something that it isn’t. No need to make black bean brownies. Instead, make a beautiful salad, or a vegetable platter. You could even make a low-calorie dessert, like angel food cake, and top it with heaps of fruit. You don’t have to bring “health food” to contribute a healthy dish.
Come Up With Other Activities
Maybe you and your partner like to go out for pizza once a week as a special treat. Maybe you like to get ice cream with your friends. These are all fun activities, but they aren’t REALLY activities, are they?
Many times we make food our destination point when it really doesn’t have to be. If you want to get together with your friends and you find that it ends up being centered around food, figure out some fun suggestions of other things you can do! Invest in a fun card or board game and do a game night. People can still bring food, but you won’t feel so left out if you don’t eat it and your friends won’t feel so awkward without you eating the treats if you are all busy doing something else.
Here are some great activity ideas that are fun, don’t require any special skills, and aren’t centered wholly around food:
- Go on a walk
- Go to a farmer’s market
- Ride Bikes
- Play at an arcade
- Do yoga at a studio
- Learn a new skill
Though it might feel like going out of their comfort zone at first, your friends and family will likely enjoy a lot of the new activities and you will make some really great memories.
Don’t Talk About It Endlessly
People really don’t like healthy choices to be shoved in their faces. Everyone walks around with a lot of feelings every day. And many of these feelings are guilt about not doing more than they are currently doing.
Did you feel a lot of guilt about your daily food choices and the amount of time you spent working out each week before you started making changes in your life? People already KNOW they should be healthier. There are always ways to improve. But having a friend incessantly talking about things that they are doing to be healthy, how much weight they’ve lost, or even complaining about things they “can’t” have anymore, is very tiresome.
If you would love your friends and family to make healthier choices, you can make them aware of what you are doing, but leave it at that. Be a good example of a healthy lifestyle, but don’t be obnoxious about it. Otherwise, the reason your friends aren’t more supportive of your lifestyle might not be because they are making unhealthy choices, but because they don’t want to spend much time with you anymore.
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Using BionicGym
The thing I love the most about BionicGym is that it is so convenient. This is the number one selling point for this weight loss tool in my book. Using BionicGym is the most seamless lifestyle change and it won’t affect your friends or family very much in comparison with other weight loss programs. It doesn’t require a special diet, so you don’t have to make separate meals for yourself and the rest of your family. And there are other benefits as well that I go into detail with below.
Cheaper Than Gym Membership
If you are worried about BionicGym being a huge expense for your family, then just take a look at what the other alternatives are. BionicGym is not a cheap system, but you do get a great deal for what you are getting. If you were to look at any gym membership, it is likely more than what BionicGym would be in the long term.
Gyms might offer a low monthly rate, but if you actually go in to sign a contract, they will hit you with other costs like startup fees and a yearly cleaning rate as well. These are all hidden fees and when you sign a contract, they can be really hard to get out of. Many times you cannot get out of them early without paying some kind of fine and after the contract is over, many times it will start up again at a different rate.
Then you have to think of the actual time you will spend at the gym. Are you likely to go every day? Are you going to keep that commitment? Do you have a good past track record in the past of going to the gym regularly? When you do go to the gym, do you wander around aimlessly not really knowing what you should do?
These are all points to bring up with your family when you are considering purchasing BionicGym. Your close family likely does want you to be healthier and if you present it as something that is so convenient, you are much more likely to do it, then they might see your point of view.
Convenient
BionicGym is by far, much more convenient than going to the gym. You don’t have to get a babysitter. You don’t have to drive there. And you don’t even have to change your clothes! BionicGym is something that won’t take you away from your family and you can do it while you’re watching a movie together.
It should make your significant other much happier to have that much more time with you at home.
Carve Out Time
If it is difficult to do BionicGym when your friends or family are around, then carve out some uninterrupted time during the day that you can consistently devote to this. You can wake up earlier, go to bed later, or find time during the day when you can sit down and do another activity like paying bills or working. The nice thing about BionicGym is that you don’t have to devote your whole self to the workout. You can do it easily while you are getting other tasks done. All you need is to be able to carve out some time where you can be stationary either sitting or standing.
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Staying Motivated
How can you stay motivated to keep up your healthy changes when you have unsupportive family and friends around you? It is actually really, really difficult! The changes are going to be hard for you. It’s going to be hard to stay motivated to get your workout in when it seems like no one else cares around you. It’s going to be hard to make healthy choices in the kitchen when people around you are annoyed at your healthy habits (especially kids!) But don’t lose hope! You need to be your own cheerleader if no one else around you is. Here are ways to stay motivated:
Take Before and Afters
Weight comes off slowly. The older you get, the slower the weight seems to come off. But it is important to take before and after photos so you can remind yourself that you are making changes that are having real results. In fact, sometimes because you are burning fat and maybe gaining muscle at the same time, you can’t see your victory on the scale as well. A photo will help you see that even if the numbers on the scale aren’t moving, your body is going through some significant changes.
Take Measurements
Another way to measure off of the scale is to take your actual measurements. Take measurements of your arms, hips, waist, thighs, and chest. You won’t see progress in a day, but you will see progress from month to month.
Assign one day a month as your check-in day where you step on the scale, take a picture, and take your measurements.
Mood Journals
Sometimes you start making healthy choices for more reasons than just looking good. In fact, when I started feeling back pain, that is when I really took my health seriously. It can be hard to measure your mood or your pain level, but you can keep a journal with some kind of rating system that makes sense to you to track these levels. After consistently working out, you will see your mood lift as well as how you feel in your skin.
Support Groups
If you still feel like you need someone on your side in this journey and the people around you aren’t filling that need, then look for a support group. There are many weight loss support groups that you can find and join through social media. Look around and find one that speaks to you and join it. This might be a great opportunity to meet some new friends and get inspiration for things to try.
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Conclusion
Ultimately, it is not your family and friends’ job to make sure you are following your healthy lifestyle. Their support is appreciated and can be helpful, but you CAN do this on your own. You CAN change your lifestyle without support. You just have to stay strong and remind yourself of the reasons why you are working so hard. So don’t use the lack of support as a reason to quit trying to make yourself healthier! Get yourself a BionicGym to make working out convenient and identify challenges that you might run across beforehand so you can figure out how to work around them.