I trust that you had a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends! Mine was a little hectic, which included my car breaking down on the freeway Christmas evening (ack!). This is the first chance that I’ve had to post here for you so I thought I’d answer a comment from a new reader of Fearless Fat Loss today. It’s a great topic, which I think many can benefit from.

Have you ever joined an online weight loss support group? I have, in fact I joined the Provida forums in January 2004 and started posting there a few months later. I was a bit shy at first and was having great success with the Six Week Body Makeover on my own, but I wasn’t getting in regular exercise. When I joined a support group it gave me the motivation to exercise.

While the Provida forums are for the Six Week Body Makeover, there are other online weight loss support forums out there. Today’s topic involves the fact that it’s easy to be dishonest about your weight loss progress when you are in an online weight loss support group as opposed to a weight loss support group that you attend in person.

In general, it’s easy to be dishonest online because you’re not face to face with someone. Is that a good thing? No, because it doesn’t help you or others. It’s also bad karma if you’re taking advantage of other people, which is a separate topic about some parts of the Internet, so let’s get back to the online support groups. 😉

This smart reader of Fearless Fat Loss (read her full comment here), goes by the screen name BritishBookLady and she has been very successful with losing 30 pounds so far by following the Six Week Body Makeover. Her problem is that she has gained back 5 of those pounds and she’s feeling a little stuck. She’s feeling like this because in one of the 6WBMO support groups she was in she was dishonest about her weight loss progress. She wasn’t sticking to the plan but she reported that she was losing weight. Now she feels reluctant to join another group for fear that she will get into the same rut with herself and not stick to the plan while dishonestly reporting her stats like she is progressing.

She wanted to know if I’d ever experienced this and how to overcome it. I have definitely experienced not being honest with myself about my weight and food issues, which I think is more limiting than being dishonest with others. I can also relate to not being 100% honest with others at all times for fear of not being “perfect”. So, I can certainly relate to these issues, and I have also been in the rut of continuing to look at the past which has held me back from progressing in the now.

I think that what this comes down to is forgiving yourself for being dishonest, letting go of the past, and being honest with yourself daily. You can take a daily inventory of your emotions and actions to keep yourself honest, and I really recommend journaling. It keeps you grounded and in touch with where you’re currently at.

As far as the past and your past actions, whether that is regarding dishonesty or overeating, we have to let it go. When we continue to berate ourselves for past indiscretions, we keep ourselves stuck in the negative. It’s important to acknowledge what you’ve done, but as long as you learn from it and you don’t repeat it, then you’ve made progress.

BritishBookLady admitted that she wasn’t following the program which is why she regained 5 pounds so she’s already being honest with herself. That is the first step, and the most important one. She’s admitted where she made some mistakes, and she wants to move on. I bet that a lot of people can relate to this, I sure can! As far as whether or not it’s a good idea to join another support group, I think that first you must determine what your level of commitment to yourself is. You could even tell the group upfront that you’ve had problems with not reporting your stats honestly in the past, which will take the power right out of it; what is there to fear then? As long as you’re honest with yourself and you commit to being honest with the group, that will also give you the motivation to stick to your eating and exercise plan because you’ll know that if you gain weight you’ll be reporting it!

Honesty is an extremely large component of healing the issues that cause overeating and overweight. If you aren’t honest with yourself about the state of your health, overeating, using food for emotions, and food addiction, you won’t make positive progress. Each of us can only change ourselves and it does begin with being honest. If we aren’t honest with us, how can we be honest with others?

I think that BritishBookLady has already made a huge step in her level of honesty and has a lot to be proud of. She posted her comment for us to read and admitted her mistakes. If she wasn’t being honest with herself she would be in denial and would then really be stuck, but instead she is moving forward and looking for solutions. Here’s to all of us looking for solutions today for whatever issues we need to deal with instead of turning to food, which cannot solve any problem for us except the problem of fueling our body!