I became accountable for my weight when I created 344Pounds.com.
Being accountable means stepping up to the plate and taking responsibility for your weight, while publicly declaring your desire to change. Granted, your accountability doesn’t have to be as public as a blog, nor does it have to be as elaborate — but it does have to be public for it to mean anything.
The people you open up with about your weight are called your accountability partners (if you’re reading this, you’re one of mine). While this is hardly a new concept, accountability partner(s) are people that you can open up to and share with anything related to your weight — past struggles, diets, workout routines, recipes, reasons to lose weight, and most importantly, motivation.
An accountability partner (or partners) is someone you can get in touch with on any random day, a day when you have absolutely no desire to go to the gym, and they should be able to talk you into going.
Here are a few ways you can become accountable for your weight:
Workgroups. A lot of workplaces have “Biggest Loser” competitions — these are great opportunities to find accountability partners. While you may not be broadcasting your desire to lose weight to the world, being in a group of 5+ people, all of whom are trying to lose weight, is great accountability. Best of all, it’s accountability you experience constantly, every work day.
Social networking. Considering most of your friends and family are probably already apart of your social network such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., posting messages and updates about your weight loss progress should be a fairly easy transition for you to make. It would also be easy for your followers to post feedback, praise, encouragement, etc.
E-mail list. Just like with your social network, your friends and family are probably already in your e-mail address book. You could send out weekly or bi-monthly progress reports on your weight (with pictures, links to Youtube videos, stats, etc) on certain days. Your friends and family would start to expect and anticipate your weekly/monthly e-mails, much like some of you expect me to lose 10 pounds every Wednesday weigh-in.
Start a blog. I decided to let everybody I had ever met (plus some, apparently) know about my weight problem and my dedication to losing 100+ pounds, so I started 344Pounds.com. While I never intended on having thousands of people across the globe and members of the media contact me (Newsweek, to name a few), it’s been wonderful — it keeps me extremely motivated.
If you’re looking to setup a weight loss blog like mine, check out Blogger or Wordpress. Both are free options and require very little technical know-how.
Trust me — I’m not good with the internets.
Keep it intimate. Weight is an extremely personal issue (gee, slight understatement?) and even when somebody is committed to losing weight, we simply can’t break the shell we’ve created over the past several years or even decades to protect ourselves from the harsh reality of being overweight or obese. If this is the case for you and you still want to be held accountable for your weight, try to find at least have one accountability partner — a significant other, close friend, coworker, pastor, etc.
If you still can’t find anybody, e-mail me and I’ll become your accountability partner. It’s the least I can do, considering you’re mine.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Who expects you to lose 10 pounds every weigh-in? I’d be perfectly happy if you only lost 9. This is a great post, though, really. My thoughts on “support groups”: when we’re in a group of folks all in the same boat (trying to lose weight), we have a tendency to coddle each other rather than push each other. I think sometimes we can be just a little TOOOO understanding and sympathetic rather than kicking each other’s hineys into reality. I avoid the support-type groups for that reason. I’d rather have to answer to my 110 pound sister and know that I’m going to be horribly embarrassed if I have to report failure to her on a weekly basis. Or someone like you who’s in the game but who’s seriously dedicated and who makes no excuses. (Wow, that was a long comment)
Boosymommy, that can be true with any sort of support group. Maybe mixing it up a bit can help there. If you can add in some folks who have maintained a loss for some time, they may be great accountability partners. They’ve been there and know the pain, excuses, challenges and obstacles, but they’ve also been able to radically change their lifestyles.
And to anyone who is nervous about exercising publicly while carrying significant extra weight, please know that some of the people there in that gym or on that street where you are walking/jogging started out just like you-ready to do something but embarrassed to be working out in public or in a gym where everyone looked fit already. Those of us who have carried significant extra weight are rooting for you, hoping you come back, and understand that it’s tough to just get out there. We respect your efforts! You definitely have some cheerleaders, even if we haven’t introduced ourselves to you.
And then there are all the folks going, if he’s doing it why am I sitting on my butt? ;)
You’ve got fans, believe me!
Re: your twitter about sipping your wife’s Mountain Dew:
You do actually have the capacity to retrain your tastebuds. I know that many people who are struggling to improve their diets, for whatever reason, worry that they can’t retrain their tastes. But you can! And you are beginning to change yours!
Once you get used to water or diet drinks, full sugar drinks taste like syrup. I even find myself watering down fruit juices, because they taste too sweet and too thick to me.
Believe me, I used to have the world’s biggest sweet tooth! I was shocked at how quickly I lost that preference. I haven’t bought candy in 25 years. It just doesn’t interest me any longer. It went from an occasional treat to something that was cloyingly over-sweet.
A great deal of what we believe to be ‘our taste’ is really ‘habit’. Change your habits, and you will change your taste. As you’ve already begun to discover!
I think those that are really sensitive about their weight, will notice it is easier to be accountable and work with it if they just decide to let down their walls and be open about it.
I’m not super sensitive about my weight, but especially recently, I’ve just made it a point to stop worrying so much about keeping it private. I’ve made the effort to NOT be sensitive about my weight.
There is something freeing about just admitting it to everyone and working through it instead.
I love being one of your accountability partners!
If I might add, along with the social networking thing, there are a lot of weight loss websites that have communities. I’ve had really good luck with Livestrong. I posted the group that I started. I won’t lie, two of the people on there are my friends in real life, but I love that we’re all keeping each other going. If you’re looking for an accountability buddy, we’re happy to help. No one is losing 10 pounds a week or anything, but we’re working on it! :-)
As someone with a weight loss/maintenance/issues blog of her own, I can’t say enough how much it has helped me stabilize at a healthy weight. Even if you don’t alert the media, if it’s just something your family and friends check in on, it’s so helpful to come clean about it. Why are we all so weird about our weights? Come clean, get it out there, and, as you stress, be accountable to yourself and others. That’s half the battle.
And no one expects you to lose 10 pounds a week, Tyler. You are human!
I think bossymommy has it all wrong. If you constantly feel like a failure because of a perceived slipup, you will never accomplish anything. The idea of accountability, is not for it’s negative motivation, but positive motivation. You need someone to give that push out the door to gym, not a shove and a kick in the butt or critizism for not feeling like it. It is admirable to have the goal of losing 10 pounds a week, just not the healthy way to do it. Slow and steady is much better for your health and much easier to maintain. The first couple of weeks will be big losses, then you should taper off to 2 pounds a week. This is not failure, but being sensible.
Hey great blog (found you via cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com)
I like the accountability thing. I’m not really a joiner. And I’m pretty busy. About 7 years ago, I decided to try and lose some weight. Really, I didn’t think it was possible. I’m a “big girl”, and 182 lbs is just my body’s setpoint.
Enter weight watchers, the rest is history. I lost 57 lbs and have kept most of it off (you know, there was a baby in there). I didn’t do the group thing, I did the on-line thing, and you can’t really lie to your computer. Well, you can, but why would you?
I realized just recently how amazing it is. Through life changes and job changes, I’d say 90% of the people I know now – never knew me as fat. And those who do? Barely remember. It’s impressive, because people treat you differently when you are fat. I got the impression that some folks were a bit intimidated by my weight loss (skinny people even!)
I still remember though, and the picture is on my fridge to remind me every day. And a couple pics on the screen saver at home.
Keep up the excellent work! You’ve averaged 4.5 lbs per week since you started, that’s AWESOME!!
I myself have lost over 100 lbs and contribute much of my success to accountability, be it from friends and family or people I met on the internet through PeerTrainer.com and Flickr. Congratulations on taking control of your life and letting everyone know. It takes a lot of courage to admit to yourself that you have a hurdle you need to jump, but to admit it to everyone you know is even more difficult.
Keep up the amazing work!
Tyler — I just came across your blog when doing research for our business. I have always believed in accountability, but have found that the person you decide to make yourself accountable to can have a big impact on your success. I’ve struggled when accountability comes from a friend with worse habits than my own, or as another one of your readers commented, is too forgiving. I need someone that I truly don’t want to disappoint, and have found that that person can be someone going through the same challenges as myself (how could I let someone down that is fighting the same fight as myself?) or in some cases, an expert or a professional that I’ve chosen to open up to. I’m surprised how little information there is online about accountability when it comes to weight loss.
PS: our business is http://www.ichange.com, which is built on accountability ( and is why I was searching google for “accountability” and “weight loss” and found you).