Dieters Need Cheerleaders

Don’t Hide Your Goals
Many people dream of doing great things all their lives without telling one single soul. Often times these hidden hopes are only shared or discovered after it’s too late.

There are plenty of reasons people may choose to keep desires quiet. Some people may be scared of sharing dreams in fear of being laughed at or judged. However, I believe one of the biggest reasons people don’t want to expose their ambitions is to simply avoid the embarrassment of failure.

Closet Dieting Doesn’t Work
Although I do understand it’s a lot safer to keep these things to your self, I believe keeping aspirations hidden just sets you up for failure. I see this in the gym all the time. People will explain how they aren’t telling anyone what they’re doing until they lose some weight first. What they’re really thinking is “I want to make sure I succeed before I tell anyone what I’m doing”. On the contrary, they need to tell people what they are doing in order to increase their chance of success.

Unfortunately with dieters, it is common to fail. The problem is, people’s response to failing is quitting. Let’s put this into perspective. Say you are learning to ride a bike and you fall, do you get back on the bicycle? Of course you do. Do you have a good chance of falling again? Of course you do.

How is a child able to keep trying despite their fears, scrapes, bruises, and desire to give up? A child has someone everyone needs – a cheerleader. When mom or dad picks their child back up and offers encouragement, it may be all they need to to give it one more try.

We All Need a Push
When I was small I probably said “I can’t” more than my father wanted to hear. I can almost hear myself pleading with my dad trying to convince him that I was unable to do whatever task he had given me, “It’s too heavy”, “I can’t reach it”. My father pushed me beyond my comfort zone in so many areas – and thank goodness he did! I was unable to see my own potential and he always believed in me more than I did.

We all need cheerleaders like that in our life. We need someone to tell us we can be the man or woman we want to be. We need people to encourage us that we are not alone in our battles. We need people to speak truth to us and hold us accountable when we are in the wrong and we need people to be there to pick us up when we fall.  However, no one can be there to pick us up, if they never know we fall.

Going SOLO, keeps my goals SO LOW
I can only imagine what it would have been like if I tried to ride a bike for the first time all alone. Knowing me, I would have fallen down, bumped my knee, looked around to make sure no one saw me, and then walked my little bicycle home while crying in self-pity for my uncoordinated gawky self. If you could have seen me as a child, you would understand what I’m talking about. Just picture Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie trying to ride a bicycle and you’ll get the picture.

Maybe after some time passed, and all the stars were aligned, I might have attempted it again. I can assure you, without a cheerleader, I would eventually quit trying. No one likes to fail. Nevertheless, in order to succeed, we need to realize “falling” should be the expected speed bumps, not roadblocks, on the journey to success.

If you are attempting to lose weight or get in better shape, don’t do it alone. Invite some cheerleaders along side of you and remember quitting is really the only way to fail.