Unsupportive People with Health Journeys: The Comparers

This is the last in the Unsupportive People series and probably the most important for one aspect.

The unsupportive person might actually be you.

Unsupportive People or Self?

I said what I said. You may be the unsupportive person on your own journey.

Every time we go on social media and compare ourselves to someone else on a health journey with negativity… we are the problem.

In the other blogs, I mentioned not being understood on your journey…

…but what you are doing in this occurrence, it might be you that is creating this misunderstanding. Think about the fairness of comparing your outcome to someone else’s without having a full understanding of it.

So how do help ourselves here?

I just finished reading the book Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay by Liz Fosslien and Molly West Duffy. They discussed how the issue is not the comparison, but more so on how we compare. Sometimes comparison can be a good thing. We look to others as people who need people for guidance, inspiration, motivation, and connection. So why completely rule out the topic of comparison, without breaking it down into what is a more healthy means of comparison, and what would be a more negative means of comparison. Something that can be helpful, is to challenge your thoughts through a barrage of questions.

How long have they been at it? Are you comparing your 1 year to their 10 years?
Do you know all of the things that they have tried? How about the things that they have failed?
What about the processes that they implemented? How many habits they have cemented in? How many bad ones they have broken?
Do you know if they have different struggles going on that they are completely admitting to or including in their posts?

These questions are definitely not the end-all-to-be-all when it comes to this topic. I highly suggest that you challenge your thought process at every given chance to really make sure that you are aligning yourself with the positive aspects of comparison.

In my own experience, there are many times when people look at my before and after pictures and it gives them a ray of hope. But then there are also times when people want to full details of what I did so that they can replicate it and have the same results. What you won’t see out in the open (and I don’t think to mention often) is there are things that I have done that others may not do. And there are things that others have done that I may not be willing to do.

I may have lost 135 lbs sustainably throughout a 10-year lifestyle change but…

I have also sent myself to bed at night whimpering and crying because I was still hungry.
I have avoided full participation in birthday celebrations.
I have gone without alcohol for several months at a time.
And so much more…

What We Don’t Know about Others

I want to throw this out there though. Do you know the life that they have lived that brought them there?

Transformations can seem just as simple as numbers showing a loss and pictures… But they don’t show how many times someone may have failed before they got to that point.

You get to see the highlights of the before and the after… You don’t see the middle where maybe they fell and regained half of it back and then had to get back into it all… you know?

You also don’t see the motivation moments that pushed them before this too. Maybe this was a health matter and one that was urgent… like life-or-death. We will do different things with different things on the line.

This is all a part of their story. And this is their struggle.

And your struggle is real for you.

But you get to hear your whole story… You don’t know their whole story.

Where we start matters

Something else that I think it’s really important for us to touch on it’s something that one of my friends pointed out to me a long time ago…

Where we start matters as much as where we’re going.

What if before you start tracking, you feel as though you were eating small portions but you had this daily…

A grande vanilla latte and a breakfast sandwich from Starbucks (610 kcal)
A salad from Wendy’s (500 kcal)
1.5 cups of Stouffer’s frozen lasagna for dinner (480 kcal)
1 cup ice cream for dessert (500 kcal)

This visually doesn’t look like a lot of food BUT it’s 2090 kcal of very calorie-dense options.

Now think about the moment that the options change to more nutrient-dense options and there is a protein focus. For the same level of fullness, you will more than likely see a much lower calorie count. And the weight will come off because there’s a calorie deficit in place. It may come off pretty fast, depending on how this person is tracking or if they’re going by fullness levels.

Others Comparing You

You can choose to not accept their opinion.
You can do that internally or externally.
You may get offended. They may get offended.
You can also allow them to offend you or you can decide to not let it get to you.

One thing I ask of you (as a pet peeve of my own)… try not to say, “If I can do it, you can too”.

Do not assume their capabilities and compare them to your own.

This is not to discount them or to discount you. Because that’s what it comes down to. Some people are willing to do certain things, and other people are not. And both of those ways are okay. We are all living our own lives, and we have to be OK with our own actions.

What to say?

This is so very complicated. You have to see what you feel OK with. There’s endless amounts of the answers. Here are some of the ones that I have given..

Finally, From A Coach Being Compared…

Nutritionists and fitness coaches… We get it too. We get people who compare us to other nutritionists, fitness coaches, or influencers.

We hear things like, “Why don’t you look like this if you are in this business?”

A lot of us also deal with our own level of insecurity because people have a tendency to look at our bodies as our business cards. But here’s the thing. Most of us coaches have put in endless hours of personal growth, and done the hard work to get to where we are in this very moment. And not every moment for us is worthy of the highlight reel, or the perfection expectation that others have of us.

Think about what we’ve already gone through with this.

Everybody compares. Everybody struggles.

Where you are right now, doesn’t define anything except what you have previously done.

Same goes for us coaches.

Challenge: What if we think of things this way instead?

Now here is where I want to challenge you.

I want to challenge you to take all of these different things and try to change your thoughts around them.

Try these thoughts on for size.

We are all responsible for ourselves, our own actions, and our reactions. Where we start and what we do are our only concerns and our concerns alone.
I need to continually do the things that make me happy. Sometimes when I try to do, look, or act like others, I am left, feeling unhappy. I am not willing to sacrifice my own peace and joy.
I am going to try to always be supportive of the people around me, and what they choose to do in their life. I want others to also be this way for me. But if they are not, that’s OK too. I do this for me. I am being the change that I want to see in the world and that is enough.

Unsupportive People with Health Journeys: The Comparers