Whether you are looking to lose that “Freshman Fifteen” or are in the 100+ Pounds-to-Go Club you should be writing a weight loss blog as a critical component of your weight loss plan.
A weight loss blog is not a food journal or a food diary. Keeping a food journal can also be important and in fact will most likely be suggested to you by your doctor or dietician. A food journal is where you log your daily meals and snacks. It is where you account for all the calories you ingest. It can be important, especially at the start of a diet, because most people underestimate the amount of food they actually eat in a day. A well kept food journal will help the dieter properly plan their intake so as to lose weight.
A weight loss blog is much more than a food journal. A good weight loss blog deals much more with the emotional aspects of eating, exercising and getting fit. It is the human interest side of the story.
These are the 4 reasons you should be writing a weight loss blog:
- Building a Support Network. There are a lot of great weight loss blogs out there. Some of the authors have been blogging for a long time and have great inspirational stories of success to share. Others are just starting out and are struggling with the same issues you may be struggling with. When you write a weight loss blog you are joining a community of like souls who support each other through comments, emails, and links. A good weight loss blog tells a story that interests people; a story they want to see through to completion. The story of your success. Most dieters have a support network that rarely extends beyond the four walls of their abode. The size of a weight loss blogger’s support network is only limited by the effort they are willing to put in to build it.
- Gaining Accountability. Let’s be honest, the hardest part about writing a weight loss blog is, well, being honest. It’s also the most important part. Force yourself to write about your weight gain, even though nobody would know if you fibbed and wrote that you lost weight this week. Tell the world how you felt when someone snickered at you for your size. Get out there and write about how you slipped up and ate the entire bag of cookies. Take accountability for your decisions and their impact on your weight loss plans. And then take action to make better decisions. Going through this thought process is very difficult if you aren’t documenting it. Writing a weight loss blog gives you the vehicle for documenting and improving upon the daily decisions that are the difference between success and failure.
- Recording History. As you lose weight and become healthier you will take certain things for granted such as climbing stairs without being winded, being able to easily say “no” to seconds, or to being satisfied with just that one small piece of pizza. You will forget that only a year ago you couldn’t do 100 crunches at a time. You will forget that you used to need two Big Macs to get through lunch. And then one day you’ll have a bad day, or a bad week, or maybe even a bad month. And it may be bad enough to cause you to get discouraged and quit. As the story of your weight loss journey unfolds in your weight loss blog, however, you’ll have continual reminders of how far you have come. How by looking at the long term view you can still see your success, even through all of the ups and downs along the way. It’s easy to forget if you haven’t recorded it. A weight loss blog gives you the means to record and review that history when you need it the most.
- Ensuring Success. All other things being equal, the dieter who blogs openly and honestly about her weight loss journey will be more successful than the dieter who goes it alone. The support network you will build will motivate you to be successful as you won’t want to let others down. The accountability you will gain from being open and honest will keep you on track. The story you are recording will be the reminder of how good you really have it now. All of this will add up to the success you are looking to achieve.
Has your weight loss blog helped you? Please share your story in the comments; I love to read about success!
P.S. Has anyone looked at NextAdvisor? They provide unbiased first-hand reviews of all kinds of consumer services and they recently conducted a taste test, using real-life ordinary subjects, of popular diet program foods like Maximuscle. Their goal is to provide honest information about diet programs to dieters before they sign up for them, which sounds like a pretty cool idea to me.
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