Because you live in a culture that’s unfavorable toward weight control, the people you live and work with are very important to the success of your weight management efforts. There are three roles they’ll play:
- A positive influence—supportive
- A negative influence—a saboteur (either consciously, or not)
- A neutral influence—not actively supportive, but also not a saboteur
The purpose of developing a support network is to ensure that you have more people on the positive side of the ledger than on the negative side. Weight Loss Mastery Skill #5 is Support. The people most likely to sustain new behaviors (in this case healthy eating and an active lifestyle) are the ones who have social support in doing them.
I’ll be posting a more detailed discussion on 1) how to create your support network, 2) using support to prevent lapses from becoming relapse, and 3) sabotage, and handling saboteurs.
Stay tuned!