How do you compare to your friends and family?

ShibaEars wrote: »

I am trying the hardest to be healthy, I'd say. No one else in my family has any desire to learn about proper nutrition. My mom, dad and brother all try to be active, with varying degrees of success. My mom and several aunts would rather try every fad diet there is than count calories (it's "too hard"). My friends like to start new diets/exercise regimes but they rarely last more than a week. I guess I wouldn't care about their unhealthy habits so much, but my mom & friends complain to me about how they're gaining weight.

I wish I had people in my life that liked to be more active! I'd like to go on vacations to places to go hiking or something active like that, but they'd all rather just go sit on a beach. I did finally say screw it and just my dog and I went on a weekend hiking trip, but it would be nice to have someone else to go with.

Check around and see if there is a hiking club in your area.

I just focus on myself. "Comparison is the thief of joy".

Pretty much none of my friends or family are health conscious, at least not the close ones, other than one. One of my best friends is losing weight with MFP, too, and we go swimming together and will run together once it's warmer. In comparison, my other friends are almost all overweight and doing nothing about it. My dad occasionally goes cycling but he's pretty overweight and doesn't understand that he can't out cycle his bad diet. My 82-year-old grandad does aquafit, though!
My sister is also not healthy, but in the opposite way. She's underweight and aiming to get more underweight, which can be just as unhealthy as being overweight.

Whilst I know that my family will always be there for me, I often feel like an outcast for the healthy lifestyle which I lead. All I get is moaned at for "working out too much" and "not eating enough." But I seriously workout because I love doing so and I eat for my bodies needs and normally consume around 2000calories a day before exercise.

Non-health conscious people never understand this lifestyle choice.

i have a cousin who is really kind of crazy (in so many more ways than one) and if iactualy saw her practicing what she PREACHES.... I wouldn't give it a second thought, but if you say you're a strict vegan and then chow down on pork ribs in the next breath like you haven't eaten in weeks, well..... LOL Ironically, shes the thinnest in the family. go figure that one out she also tends to take Dr Oz as the gospel so, theres that.

So if we take HER out of the equation, I would say I am probably the one who is most likely to look at (and take into consideration) food labels and nutrition facts.

ahoy_m8 wrote: »

PammieSuzyQ wrote: »

do you know what's worse? watching those alcoholic, pizza cramming, cigarette smoking, drug abusing, carboholics living *kitten* forever in their hugely grotesque obese bodies, going to the hospitals for strokes, diverticulitis, spinal stenosis, heart events, stent placements and seemingly living forever. die damn you die! you don't deserve to abuse a body that once backpacked for god's sake, and get to live!!!!

oops! did i say that out loud?

^^this made me laugh. Thanks for that.

OP it's an interesting question. My friends and family are really diverse, upon reflection. My brother is an incredibly athletic outdoorsman year round, especially for a guy who has a real job, and my mother is morbidly obese and has been immobile flat on her back since her hip replacement in September. Not her first joint surgery, either. She always nags my daughter and me to be less active so we don't end up like her. For real. It's not the extra 150 pounds she put on, nooooo....., it's that she was "too active" in her youth. Riiiiight.

Your question made me realize, though, that my friends are big drinkers. That is one thing I have had to moderate with age to maintain my weight. I thought about putting that in the confessions thread.... that it was weight maintenance that caused me to moderate my drinking vs. some other more noble reason.

I'm glad that I made somebody laugh! It was also a great vent, LOL! Also meant to be an eye opener on the fact that we cannot make ANYONE change.

Despite our love for them, and even if they really love us in return. Change comes from within the depths of our soul, it is a strong desire, nay, a NEED. Until someone reaches that point, all the soft gentle murmerings, the sweetest kindest language, the more urgent naggings, and finally the strenuous rantings will not move anyone.

I stayed with my husband for 28 years before I left. The man is still self destructing. I will give him credit for quitting meth a whole 15 months after I did. I think when I screamed at him after he urged me to use some while I was pregnant, it finally hit him what he was doing to me and to our family. But he used sudafed tablets until he stroked out ten years later, and now he drinks whenever he can scrape up enough money. We all cut him off of alcohol. His heart is still weakening from the smoking and alcohol, but none of us can stop or change him.

So anyone thinking they can change anyone else. Please go and bang your head against a brick wall and tell me how long before you knock it down.

Family - my parents are my inspiration. They both deal with significant health problems and yet manage to wring every last ounce of athletic ability and participation out of life. My dad! my dad has an average of one doctor visit per week, yet he and I are long-distance bike buddies. We have roughly equivalent routes on Strava and compete weekly in the summer. He usually wins.

Friends/colleagues - Among other things, I am in grad school. There is about a 50/50 split between people who eat their stress and people who marathon their stress.

I don't talk about food and dieting in meatspace as a matter of policy.