When Other People Try To Sabotage Your Fitness Efforts

OK, so you’ve been making progress with your workouts.

You’re feeling pretty good about yourself – in fact, for the first time ever you have some visible muscle definition!

Your hard work truly is paying off. You feel better than ever, and want to share it with the world.

Unfortunately, you get the sense that the rest of the world doesn’t really want to hear about it.

And all of this seems kind of strange to you…

After all, in the beginning, your friends and family were pretty supportive about your goals of getting into shape.

They cheered you on when you first grudgingly hauled yourself to the gym.

They seemed impressed when you held firm about not eating that extra slice of pizza.

But things have slowly changed…

Nowadays, these same people that previously supported your efforts – be it your friends, family, or co-workers – no longer seem to be on the same page.

In fact, sometimes you feel that they may be trying to sabotage your fitness efforts: encouraging you to skip the gym, or egging you on to eat a little more…

What gives?

Well, if this sounds like your situation, you can rest easy knowing that you’re not alone.

This is actually a fairly common phenomenon that often happens when people suddenly decide to embrace the fitness lifestyle – and actually stick with it for longer than a few weeks!

This article will go over some of the common reasons for why this tends to happen, as well as some tips on how to deal with it.

It’s Not You, It’s Them

Now this isn’t meant to be disparaging of your friends and family.

I’m going to assume here that they genuinely have your best interests at heart.

However, at the same time, they are only human themselves, and aren’t able to just provide endless support for your endeavors in a vacuum.

You see, when you start changing your life for the better – working out, eating right, and trying to live a healthier lifestyle – this can often inadvertently cast a light on the very things that your friends or family members are insecure about themselves.

Your boyfriend may have been supportive about you starting to lose some weight (since he loves you) – but now that you’ve lost 20 pounds, it makes him feel bad about the 10 or so that he’d like to lose himself.

And your newfound abstemious eating habits at work, where you routinely choose the salad over nachos, forces your coworkers to question why they too aren’t making these healthy choices.

The solution to this is fairly simple. First of all you need to realize that this truly has very little to do with you – but that unfortunately your new lifestyle serves as a mirror that sometimes offers a less-than-flattering reflection to others around you.

Try to be sensitive to this reality. In the end, we’ve all got things that we’d like to improve about ourselves – so instead of letting it get to you, try instead to be supportive of others around you, and forgiving of their foibles.

Ok, So Maybe Part Of It Is You

While the above situation applies a lot of the time, it doesn’t tell the whole story…

You see, there are some cases where you may be flaunting your new lifestyle a little too much to other people.

Do you talk endlessly about the minutia of your workouts, or the foods that you did (or didn’t eat) this week?

If so, I’ve got some news for you…

Nobody cares!

Yup, that’s right, nobody really gives a shit about how virtuous you are, how many calories you’ve eaten, or how much weight you’ve lifted.

Or at least they don’t care about it nearly as much as you do…

You have to remember that everyone has different goals, and that nobody likes a bragger!

So don’t be that guy. Be proud of your accomplishments, but don’t be the person that needs to rub them in everyone’s face all the damn time.

Choose Your Friends Wisely

Now the other possibility here is that your friends or certain family members are just haters.

Yup, it sucks to acknowledge that, but sometimes people are just toxic – and there is little that you can do about this, short of getting the hell away from them.

So, in such situations, your best bet is to avoid such people whenever possible.

Does your ‘friend’ attempt to sabotage your fitness efforts by trying to get you to skip the gym?

Does your mom practically force feed you at the table, even though she’s well aware that you’re trying to lose weight?

If so, you may need to reevaluate who you’re spending your time with.

Sometimes this is tough. We don’t pick our family, co-workers are often hard to avoid, and it’s not always easy just to ditch your friends (even if they’re bringing you down).

But make no mistake about it: we are all greatly impacted by the people that we choose to associate with.

If you hang out with negative people, you’ll often find yourself becoming more negative.

Likewise, if you spend time with hard-working, driven people, these characteristics will often rub off on you as well.

So, if you do happen to have some haters in your life that are constantly, and deliberately, trying to derail your fitness efforts, you should endeavor to spend as little time as possible with them…

…And, in certain cases, you may want to delete them from your life entirely.