Why we may feel the need as women, to tell everyone about our diet choices…
Bathing suit season is soon approaching and you start dieting before your big trip. You feel the need to tell everyone when you see them, after you start your new plan and explain what your doing and why. Sound familiar?
Why are we motivated to do this, especially as women?
Well for one, we may seek validation to fulfill an image we may think others need to see. For example, we may want others to know that we are concerned about our health and are willing to take steps to make improvements with it. We may also feel social pressures to show others that we can adopt a healthy lifestyle. Like times when perhaps our group of friends are making healthy choices at a restaurant outing, and this influences us to adopt these practices and then talk about them. We may also feel the pressures or insecurities of feeling that others have a certain perception of us, so we take the necessary steps to prove to them that we may be the opposite of what we perceive. For instance, the need to tell a friend of ours our dietary intentions that has made comments in the past about our unhealthy habits, etc.
But, is telling everyone about our diet intentions a good thing?
This can boil down to a two-fold answer. In some cases, the answer would be yes. This is because communicating our dietary intentions can actually give us a sense of accountability. By telling others the specifics, we can allow this to add to our accountability and support, which in turn, can possibly increase the chance of us being successful.
Yet, does telling everyone about our dietary intentions really ensure success when it comes to our nutrition and fitness? What about the other side of the coin…the side that involves our personal discipline? And when we don’t feel the motivation not only within ourselves, but also with the pressures of social accountability, is this enough to push us through the days when things get harder to stay consistent with the promises we’ve made ourselves and communicated to others?
The side of the “telling everyone your dietary intentions” coin (the side we forget to prioritize when we rely on our accountability coming from others), would answer by saying that we should rely on our accountability to come from ourselves first. This is because when we’re not personally held accountable, social accountability may not be enough to sustain us to reaching our goals. The reason for this, is that when we don’t prioritize and dig-deep to understand the reasons behind why we want to reach our goals, we leave the onus on only our social pressures to keep us accountable. This can often lead to us not building independence and confidence within ourselves, when it comes to our personal fitness. And in the end, this most often will lead to failed fitness attempts.
So, how do we prioritize and develop this accountability within ourselves? We have to find our “WHY”. Our “WHY” is the soul-gripping reason why we want to achieve our goals. It’s the glue that will keep us motivated on days that we feel we can’t give any more. Through the development of a strong “WHY”, we can learn to lean on it, on days we don’t feel motivated. We will understand that motivation can oftentimes be fleeting, and our “WHY” will allow us to develop the discipline we need in order to drive our consistent actions that lead us to our goals. And, with this consistency, we’ll begin to see results and this in turn, will lead us to our motivation.
So, how do we go about finding our “WHY” as mothers when it comes to our fitness?
I talk about this process in my book, “How to Reset, Reframe and Reshape: a mother’s guide to changing her mindset about fitness and her body.”
Finding your “WHY” starts by taking the time to do some soul-searching, asking yourself some poignant questions about the real reason why you want to reach your fitness goals and visualizing these reasons. It isn’t found by relying on temporary motivators like fitting into a certain bathing suit or pair of pants for an upcoming event. Your “WHY” is the real reason, the deep reason why your soul will be disappointed should you not achieve your fitness aspirations.
In a busy world like we’re in, the process of identifying our “WHY” can be easily missed, yet it is one of the greatest influencers when it comes to achieving our health and fitness goals. Without it’s identification, we may risk living a life that isn’t true to ourselves and miss the opportunity to live out our potential. We may regret that we didn’t pursue our dreams that may have been left unfulfilled, as we placed too much emphasis on allowing others to be our guides of accountability, when we could have led ourselves down the successful path we needed to take when it came to reaching our fitness goals.
So, you can see, inasmuch as others can also drive our accountability, taking the time to identify our “WHY” allows us to claim our accountability authentically and with the potential for greater confidence within ourselves when it comes to our fitness. After all, it will be us that will be looking at ourselves in the mirror, asking if we were one hundred percent accountable when it came to our goals, not our friend sitting across from us at the table.
So when it comes to involving others in your dietary choices, it is true that they can help with your accountability. But, just remember, the greatest driver of your fitness accountability will be found within yourself by establishing your “WHY”. If you haven’t already done it, grab your pen and paper and write it down today!
