Thursday, March 13th, 2008...6:33 am
9 Tips For Kick-Starting Your Dormant Weight Loss Blog
So you read 4 Reasons You Should Be Writing a Weight Loss Blog and decided to start one yourself. You got on an exercise and diet plan that was really working. But then you got stuck in a plateau and started getting frustrated. The expectations you put on yourself in following your exercise and eating routines, in finding interesting things to write about and in contributing to helping others with their own journeys through comments, started to take a toll and you started to feel overwhelmed. Work and life issues didn’t help.
My friends, that’s pretty much what I have been dealing with.
Here are 9 tips that I used to bust out of this rut:
- Read your blog. If you are like me and if you have followed my advice, you have been honest in your blog and you have written about both the ups and the downs. Go back through your archives and remember key points on your journey. Pay particular attention to that first month. Think about how much better you feel now, and reflect on how your weight loss blog has helped get you to where you are. Read the comments. Think about all of the people who have taken the time to offer you support over your journey.
- Clean out your Inbox. If you are feeling overwhelmed you need to attack the clutter. Your email Inbox is undoubtedly filled with old messages you had planned to one day to respond to. Either respond to them or just delete them. Do whatever it takes to get your Inbox empty.
- Mark all of your RSS feeds as read. I do not mean read them all, I mean mark them all as read. This is more clutter and you need to start with a clean slate. Sure you may miss a ton of cool stuff but if it truly is that good you will see it again soon - either linked to by someone else or in a future “best of” post by the author. The world will continue on if you miss a bunch of good content. There is always going to be a steady stream of new content for you to digest, don’t worry.
- Address whatever else was causing you to be overwhelmed. In my case one thing that was causing me to feel overwhelmed was my newly introduced weight loss forums. I realized very quickly a forum is a lot of work. I wasn’t prepared for that. I need to either decide to shut them down or give them the energy they deserve. Figure out what is burdening you and put a plan in place to address it.
- Tell someone about your blog. Still blogging anonymously? Tell someone in the “real world” about your blog and your weight loss journey, and ask that they support you. It’s too easy to disappear off the face of the blogging planet if you nobody in your life knows about your weight loss blog.
- Re-evaluate your goals. Go through all of your short and long term goals and make sure they are the right goals and achievable. Make whatever adjustments are necessary and commit to making the appropriate changes to meet your goals.
- Start exercising and eating right again. Good for you if you have maintained your exercising and good eating habits during your rut, but I’ll bet you didn’t. You need to get back on that horse today, cowboy!
- Write a post. Get started writing again. Kind of like I am here. Do not preface your post with “I am so sorry I haven’t been posting…” I hate that. We all go through ruts. Just get back up and start posting honest content on your blog. That’s what your readers want, not a bunch of apologies.
- Visit other sites. As I have not been keeping up writing my own blog I have not been keeping up in reading yours. If you have been following my tips you have already marked all of your RSS feeds as read but now I am telling you to hit the blog pavement and go touch all of the blogs in your blogroll. Post as many comments as you can. This is your coming out party! You are back, baby.
In a blog rut? Give these tips a try and if you do, let me know how they worked out for you!
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21 Comments
March 13th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
9 Tips For Kick-Starting Your Dormant Weight Loss Blog…
Losing weight is hard work. A blog can be an important aspect of your weight loss journey. But it can also add to feelings of being overwhelmed, and it is easy to get into ruts. Here are 9 tips to kick-starting your weight loss blog….
March 13th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
It’s about time you give an update. Felt like you fell of the planet.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Hey there John - glad to see the fire is burning again. I have been wondering about the level of work in a forum, and I think you’ve answered that question pretty well - essentially, before you do, proceed with caution…
I really liked the RSS tip as well - such an obvious thing in some ways, and so easy to overlook and feel overwhelmed with in others. I actually try to do this daily. I read what I can, and then mark everything else as read.
On the inbox, I actually bit the bullet on my hotmail account and deleted almost 15,000 messages (100 at a time) over the span of a week. Finally got it down to zero. Unbelievable how much mental junk you have to sift through via email.
Keep it up - read your own blog for inspiration - reading yours is working for me!
metroknow
almostfit.com
March 13th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
glad you are back! I couldn’t agree more about the emails and rss feeds. Sometimes, they stress me out all day long!
March 14th, 2008 at 2:36 am
Welcome back John. We’ve missed you.
March 14th, 2008 at 3:43 am
Glad to see you back!
It’s true… there are days when the blog thing kind of feels a bit overwhelming to me. It’s not that I don’t have ideas to write about, it’s that I get tired and the writing doesn’t happen while they are “fresh”. Which then makes me feel like I’ve fallen behind and am failing. I’m learning to just do what I can and let the rest go. There has to be balance between the blog and actually living my life! If I’m not an especially entertaining blogger, so be it.
But I don’t regret starting my blog at all… it’s really helping keep me accountable, even when I can’t post every day.
As for what keeps me going… it’s the little things. When the scale fails to enchant me with a new loss, I remember that I feel healthier and better. I remember that I can almost use the 8th hole on my heart rate monitor watch when I started with the 6th hole. It’s the realization that I’m not floating quite as easily in the pool as I used to. Or noticing that now, I can have a good sweaty session on my Nordic Track without my heart rate going sky high half the time.
Gratitude plays a key role. Whenever I am frustrated with my body… I try to think of things I am grateful for. There are so many. Doing that gives me the strength to trek onwards.
March 14th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Yaay! Glad you’re back and sounding stronger than ever!
Now, get busy!
March 14th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Good stuff as always, John.
March 14th, 2008 at 9:27 am
[...] perseverance in sticking to his goals. Today I was treated to a post that is really relevant to me, Tips for Kick Starting Your Dormant Weight Loss Blog . Obviously, my blog only touches upon the subject in a blue moon, but the tips are extremely [...]
March 14th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Thanks for the inspiration!
http://houndsgood.com/2008/03/14/a-cure-for-blog-writers-block/
March 14th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Nice one John, just what I needed
March 14th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Hey John, I can relate to the feeling of overwhelm - put yourself first, your eating and exercising, otherwise the rest doesn’t even matter!
Hang in there!!
March 14th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
And don’t forget to leave comments on other blogs. For some unknown reason in the last month or so my comments per post ration has dropped to almost 1 or 2 comments per post from about 10 to 15 per post several months ago. Kind of depressing. And this is despite the fact that hits on my blog have increased.
Welcome back!
March 14th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Good stuff John!
March 15th, 2008 at 12:58 am
[...] I picked myself up yesterday with my post 9 Tips For Kick-Starting Your Dormant Weight Loss Blog I logged into my weight loss forums for the first time and was really surprised and happy to see [...]
March 15th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Welcome back, John. Seems like we were both out of touch for a while. I’m glad to hear that your head is back in the game!
March 16th, 2008 at 6:24 am
It’s good to have you back; you were missed.
Reading other people’s blogs does give great inspiration, which is one of the reasons I created the Healthy Lifestyle Bloggers Network. It’s so great to be able to go to one page and check out many people’s blogs. It’s like having 40 RSS feeds in one location.
You should check it out…………………….:)
http://healthylifestylebloggers.com
March 16th, 2008 at 8:35 am
I started a weight loss blog, it kind of sucks and is there mostly for my benefit. I get to look back and see my progress or not. It’s helpful…keeps me on my toes.
March 17th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
John,
Glad to see you are back at it. It can be a little overwhelming sometimes trying to do all the right things for your health, family, and career, PLUS a blog.
Keep doing what you need for yourself and write about it when you can. We all enjoy reading about the journey!
March 18th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
[...] John over at John Is Fit wrote a great post with his 9 tips for “Kick-Starting Your Dormant We… This post is *so* good and I’ve seen *so* many “dormant” weight loss blogs lately [...]
March 20th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
ok that first tip?
so obvious and SO POWERFUL.
M.
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