How to lose friends and alienate people

By Emmet Rushe • 7 years ago

Jun
2018

Emmet from Rushe Fitness has a tongue-in-cheek explainer of what to expect when you change your lifestyle for the better.

People like to feel comfortable.

No matter what the situation is, for most people, if they feel comfortable in their surroundings, they will be quite happy where they are.

This is the same when it comes to nutrition, health and wellness.

If you don’t know that there is an issue, you will be quite comfortable and you won’t notice that anything is ‘wrong’ until something shines a light on where you currently are.

How you can lose friends and alienate people

Start a training regime.
This one isn’t too much of a faux-pas within the grand scheme of things.
However, that does depend on what type of training you decide to partake in.
If you start walking, jogging, some light running, yoga, Pilates etc., it is unlikely that you will be shunned at the water cooler.
If you decide to start weight training or doing anything that involves structured training with an actual plan and a purpose, you may be subjected to an array of fables that will include such gems as ‘You will end up looking like a man’, ‘you will end up like a bodybuilder’, and other nonsense that just isn’t true.
So on a scale of 1-10, training would come in at a 4-5 on the how to lose friends and alienate people chart.
Go on a diet.
If there is one way that you can suddenly become the centre of attention, for all the wrong reasons, it is when you go on a diet.
By diet, I mean that you are changing the way that you are eating to improve your health, lose some weight or both.
When you do this, you will make your co-workers feel uncomfortable.
They will be forced to look at how they are eating.
They will question why you are eating certain things.
They will ask why you are drinking so much water.
They will tell you horror stories about friends who have perished because of the diet that they have tried.
They will basically try anything to steer you off course.
This is because you are disrupting the norm; the rut that people get into of always eating junk, bringing ‘treats’ to work, freestyling their meals and snacks and not knowing or caring what or how much they are eating.
Your diet, has highlighted this to them, and they don’t like what they see within themselves.
So on a scale of 1-10, diet would come in at a 7-8 on the how to lose friends and alienate people chart.
Start training and a new diet together.
Wo-Betide anyone who shall start a training program and a new diet plan at the same time.
This is alien territory.
Be prepared to be the brunt of their ‘jokes’.
Have you given up alcohol also? No more invites out for you.
Watching what you eat? No more dinner invites for you.
Refusal of a Friday ‘treat’ Well aren’t you just a saint……
You get my drift of where this is going.
So on a scale of 1-10, training would come in at a 15 on the how to lose friends and alienate people chart.

This is all a bit ‘tongue in cheek’, but the scenarios above are real and have happened more than once to people I have trained and to myself.

People do not like to have their failings held up in front of them, especially when it comes to sensitive issues like their health and nutrition.

There are a few ways that this can happen.

A health scare.
Maybe your doctor has advised you to lose some weight because of cholesterol issues, or other weight or fitness related issues.
An awakening
This ‘awakening’ usually comes out of the blue.
For a friend of mine, his awakening came when the lift to his apartment was broken and he had to walk 10 flights of stairs to get to his flat.
He got half way up and had to give up, he physically couldn’t make it up the stairs.
His awakening led to him losing 100lbs over 2 years and radically changing his life.
A friend or co-worker who decides to change their health and nutrition habits.
This is the main one.
This is the one that will snap you out of your comfort zone and make you look at yourself and your nutrition and health habits in a whole new light.

While the 1^st two on the list might make you change a few things as they will seem important, the 3^rd shouldn’t be ignored.

If you feel uncomfortable around someone who is trying to better themselves, maybe it is because you have let things slip.

You realise this, but you have become so accustomed to it that you didn’t see it as an issue until one of your friends decided to change their own habits.

Don’t shy away from this.

Use this as motivation and join your friend.

You may have tried before and failed because you didn’t have any support. But with someone alongside you who is on the same journey as you, you may have the right ingredients to succeed this time.

All you have to do is try.
#leanin2018