Have you ever been so happy about your progress on your health journey, only to show up to a get together and immediately start comparing your progress to a friend who has recently lost weight or made a lifestyle change? There’s no joy in that comparison.
As women, it is common to walk into a room and immediately size up the other women in the room. There is so much focus on how people are doing, how much weight they’ve lost and what steps they’ve taken to accomplish their goals. If we focus on comparing our own progress to those around us, it robs us of the ability to accurately assess our own situation.
Say you’ve taken great measures to implement a lifestyle change and you’ve been on track for a month now. You show up to a gathering where one of your friends has decided to make some smaller changes and isn’t as far along on their health journey as you are. If you start to compare your progress and think that you’re way ahead of the game, you can become complacent with your own strides and this can actually cause you to backtrack on your progress.
On the flip side, you could be sitting in the corner of the room, thinking about how you need to make a change in your life. You’re listening to one of your friends talk about how she lost 20 pounds in 3 months, is sugar free and has never felt better. You take a look at your own situation and by comparison, think that you’re so far away from that goal so you start thinking, “Why would I even start?”
So let’s stop and question this comparison game because it’s creating much more disconnect than motivation for you. The only person you should compare yourself against is yourself. That is the only way to come to an accurate conclusion of your progress.
As human mammals, we have extremely complex relationships with food. This is because our relationship with food is so intimately intertwined with our life experiences. Your past traumas and triumphs, current mindset and emotions all factor into our wellness journeys.
Your relationship with food is as unique as your life experience so it is impossible to place them on the same scale as those around you. Do yourself a favor and the next time you walk into a room and size up another woman – stop yourself, take a deep breath, and laugh.
Remember that this whole comparison game is silly and the best way to keep it from throwing you off track is to find the humor in it. Once you’ve done that, you’ve made the space for you to focus on your own journey and continue bettering yourself.