Health and wellness trends are all around us. It seems like everyone is starting (or quitting) a diet every other day of the week. But what keeps people from sticking with their goals? Sure, losing weight is a hard thing to do but there has been lots of evidence to prove that documenting your journey can have a profound effect on your ability to stay the course. If you are thinking about starting down a healthy path, think about sharing your journey with people online. Wondering how to do that? Here’s how you can share your story of weight loss with the world online.
Write for Yourself First
It’s intimidating to think about putting yourself out there, especially pictures of personal information if you are overweight. It shouldn’t be that way, but we are programmed to be ashamed of ourselves. So we tend to hide away. Rather than do that, consider sharing your story with an audience, but always write from a place that serves you first. You can’t tell your story with the hopes of getting rich from it. That clouds your authenticity. Rather than write a tell-all novel about your weight loss, consider writing for yourself first. Tell the story to yourself and make sure you are comfortable with what you are sharing before you ask anyone else to read it. This is an important step in sharing your weight loss journey online because internet trolls are a real thing and you are going to come into contact with them. But when you are writing for yourself and not the world, you’ll be able to stand behind your words.
Share the Good and the Bad
One of the most important things about sharing a weight loss journey online is that you don’t over emphasize the positive and downplay the negative. Always share both sides of your journey. Whether you got into your ash catcher bong collection on the weekend and ate an entire bag of pretzels by yourself, or you ran a half marathon – share both. It’s important that people see the real you and how vulnerable you are in sharing your story. Don’t downplay the things that go wrong. Those are actually the stories that people want to hear because it helps them see you as a real person with real problems…just like them. So before you decide to add another filter to your Instagram account, consider that sharing your story from a place of reality is much more important to your audience online.
Ask for Help
When you have an online community who is following you on your weight loss journey, get them involved. Don’t hide away when you are having a bad day. These people are, believe it or not, rooting for you and want to see you succeed. There is a lot of motivation and inspiration to be derived from that kind of interaction. When we see others doing the things we want to do in life, it reminds us that we can do them too. So if you are struggling, reach out to your network and ask for the help, encouragement, or advice you need.
Whatever you decide to do, don’t chicken out. Even if you feel like nobody is listening to your story, reading your blog, or liking your pictures of weekly progress reports, there is always something watching. Perhaps you just need to do this for yourself. Maybe you are the person you are trying to connect with. It’s a hard journey and one that many people don’t succeed at getting to the other side. If writing down your journey or sharing it online with people will help you even a little bit, it’s worth the effort to share on a regular basis. You might even be surprised by what you learn about yourself in the process.
