It's time for community

maadee91

Hello there

I've been using MFP this summer as part of my first intentional path towards a healthier lifestyle, and have done fairly well so far. About two weeks ago, I visited family (my down-home Southern farm family) and decided to stop counting calories for the week. Needless to say, I've just now decided to start back tomorrow.

Up until now, I've skimmed the boards occasionally, posting three or four times, but have kept to mostly myself. My journey with food is one that has been tied up with my mother's for my entire life, and I'm just now starting to draw boundaries between her limits and mine... so I figured alone was better. But now, I think it may be time to get some support, since almost nobody in my "real" world knows that I'm doing this and I believe that we were made to live in community.

Like I said, I've never done this before... I'm not really sure what "friendships" look like on MFP. And I'm not gonna lie, the idea of posting my food diary for others to see is scary for me. But I think it's time for builiding community. I figured the "Intoduce Yourself" topic would be the place to start.

Anybody willing to take some time to encourage, give advice, be accountability? I'll do the best I can to help you out, too

cownancy

You can have friends and still keep your food diary private. I do that because I am not tolerant enough for people to criticize my food. My goal right now is to stay within the numbers, one way or another and make other changes gradually. Plus, my numbers are different than a lot of other people and, again, I don't want the interference unless I ask.

You can still motivate each other, support each other though.

Heather_GodsWonderWoman

What a great step! Would love to be your friend and help support each other. You are going to find such a great response from the people on MFP. They are the BEST! With this community you are going to soar!
Heather

maadee91

Thank you guys! And thanks for the clarification, cownancy. Definitely good to know

KeriA

When I first got on here I wasn't sure whether I should get involved or not since on my other sites most of my friends I already knew. However I knew this was different this time. I looked around and decided to introduce myself. However that necessarily only makes sense if you read some of the other introductions because why introduce yourself if no one reads your introduction. In doing that I came upon someone who was starting a group with similar weight loss goals which just happened to match mine and I saw others doing what I wanted to do asking to join in. I did and got my first friends. As I progressed in my efforts here to lose weight and get healthy I realized that yes other things were really important to my weight loss but I wasn't sure why but the group and my friends were important. I feel that our diaries are tools for us but there are good reasons to make them public and for keeping them private. That is a separate issue to being friends although there are some that insist that their "friends" have open diaries. If you want accountability or advise or are a great example to others those are great reasons to open it. So either way I would recommend making friends.