Guest Post: Sarah

Hi gang!  I should be home now and sleeping off the travel hangover!  Don’t worry, I’ll get you all caught up on my drinking, eating, and socializing, adventures of learning how to better improve my blog and recipes.  Today’s final guest post is from Sarah at See Sarah Eat!

The importance of accountability

Hello, Off Her Cork readers! I am thrilled to be doing a guest post for Andrea because I am a huge fan of this blog and I appreciate the opportunity to introduce myself to those of you who don’t already know me.


My name is Sarah and I write for the blog See Sarah Eat. Since 2008, I have been blogging about food, fitness and my experiences with weight loss. In 2007, I gave up my unhealthy lifestyle in favor of real food and regular exercise and lost 70 pounds in the process. There were many keys to my success, including food journaling, regular weigh-ins, etc. But the one I want to talk about today is accountability.

For me, in order to stay focused on my goals and not give up on the process, I need someone or something to be accountable too. This can take one or several forms and can change depending on what part of the process you are in.

When I first started losing weight, I went to a Weight Watchers-like support group where we weighed in weekly and sat down to have a discussion related to healthy eating or exercise. I was also accountable to my food journal – whatever I ate had to be written down, which really makes you think before you bite sometimes! But just knowing that I would have to step on the scale every week (in front of someone else) and have someone look through my food journal was enough for me to want to work really hard at achieving my goals.

Then when I started blogging, I felt a sense of accountability there too. For the longest time, I displayed my daily eats and trust me, when you have to put it out there for the world to see, you really think hard about not having that third bowl of cereal. But, keeping up with this style of blogging became stressful and too inauthentic for me, so I gave it up.

Today, I am in a different boat. While I’m no longer trying to drop 70 pounds, I do have the occasional 10 pound gain over the course of a few months, usually in the summertime when cookouts are abundant and I celebrate my husband’s birthday, anniversary, travel out of town and also get a little lazy with my workouts. I find myself dealing with the extra weight again now that we are nearing the end of summer 2010.

But thankfully accountability has re-entered my life in the form of a trusted friend who is going through the same thing. We’ve both lost a tremendous amount of weight but struggle at times to keep it off, especially when life gets hectic or we lose focus momentarily. At the end of each day, we email each other a rundown of what we’ve eaten, what exercise we’ve done, how we feel mentally, etc. We also have each other on standby for an emergency phone call or text message if we are feeling like diving head first into our temptation of choice.

It’s comforting for me to know that someone else out there is counting on me and I am also counting on them. Especially having someone who knows exactly what I’ve been through and exactly what I want to achieve. What about you?

As for your healthy goals, are you accountable to anyone or anything?

Thanks Sarah! Being accountable, even if it’s just to yourself, is a great way to keep track of your goals and to stay on point.

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