Fat loss is a topic that has many facets. You need to do the right kind of workouts, get your diet in order, have mental tenacity and discipline, change your lifestyle, and be committed to continually learning and improving yourself. It’s difficult – make no mistake about it - and you deserve A LOT of credit for embarking on this journey because it’s very easy to get lazy and not follow through.

But there’s one CRITICAL factor in your fat loss program that you absolutely MUST have to ensure success and yet 99.9% of people out there are not doing this one thing. In fact, I’m willing to bet that you’ve never even considered this element of your fat loss program at all, and it’s probably holding you back from achieving the success you deserve.

So What Is This Critical Factor That I’m Missing?

This HUGELY important factor that you must have is…social support. That means getting other people on board as part of your fat loss ‘entourage’ so that you’re not doing it alone.

The great thing about social support is that it can come in many forms. You can get a friend or family member to undertake their fat loss journey at the same time as yours and become your workout buddy. You can hire a personal trainer to design a good program for you and keep you motivated and accountable. Heck, you can even tell your doctor or another health professional about your goals to get their backing and support; in fact, one Stanford study showed that accountability to a health professional was a good tool to help people lose more weight.

But what if I don’t have a workout buddy and can’t afford or don’t want to hire a personal trainer?

Now, I’m well aware that many people reading this site are busy professionals who just may not have a reliable workout buddy and don’t want to spend the cash on hiring a personal trainer. Or perhaps you’re on the road so much for work that you simply can’t ever coordinate your schedule enough to put those two things in place. Even if that’s the case, there’s still an EASY way to ensure that you get the social support that you need to lose weight.

Are you ready for it?

Get it online! Do what you’re doing right now and use the internet to provide you with the social support that you need. Read blogs and articles that motivated you. Join fat loss forums and participate with other people who are going through the same things you are. And of course, don’t be afraid to reach out to experts and professionals online who are experienced coaches that can always offer you helpful advice and motivation when you need it most.

Heck, at the very least – please reach out to me whenever you need to! I’m always more than happy to help out anyone who’s looking to improve their life and their health and I’ll always do whatever I can to provide you with the best advice and the best motivation I can give to help you along.

I’m serious about this. Don’t feel shy or reluctant. If you need help with your fat loss plan, I WANT you to connect with me. Drop me a comment at this blog or shoot me an email anytime (losefatatwork@gmail.com) and I promise you will ALWAYS get a response from me. And even if I don’t know how to help you, I’ll refer you to someone who will.

Is This Online Weight Loss Social Support For Real Though?

You bet it is. In fact, a study in the August 2008 Scandinavian Journal of Public Health showed that online support is actually the BEST model for weight loss.

And I believe that one key reason why the internet offers such an amazing opportunity to get social support is because right now we are experiencing an age of communication and connection like never before. For those of you who are internet savvy, you may have heard the buzzword that’s going around about the ‘social media revolution’. What that’s referring to is the new generation of websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, where users can interact with each other in real time to help communication span time and distance like never before.

The amazing aspect of this is that it allows all of us to communicate so quickly when we need to reach out to others. Instead of having to wait hours or even days for an email reply, you can now simply send off a message on a social media website and instantly be communicating with your network. It’s truly remarkable, and I want you to start using these technologies TODAY to connect with me and other members of the Lose Fat At Work community.

The 3 Step Process To Getting Your Social Support Online

1) The first step is to sign up for my newsletter in the box in the top right hand corner of this website so that you get regular updates from me with my email newsletter. As a little welcome gift to say thanks for joining the community, I’ll send you a copy of my ebook – The Functional Training Guidebook – for free.

2) The second step is to post a comment below or shoot me an email (losefatatwork@gmail.com) if you have any questions that you need answering or need some help getting your fat loss plan into action. Tell me what’s frustrating you, what you find hard, what you need more help with…or just ask for some motivation. It doesn’t matter, just get in touch and bring me into your network of social support so that you can start achieving the results you want.

3 And the third step is to start using online social networking websites that will allow you, me and all of the other members of the Lose Fat At Work community to stay in touch with each other and keep motivating each other to achieve our goals every day.

I’ll address this topic in detail in my next blog post, which will be on Friday, so make sure to keep tuned to the blog for Part 2 of the #1 Success Factor That You’re Overlooking In Your Fat Loss Program.

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