Women have been in community with one another for centuries. One of my favorite books is,“The Red Tent” by Anita Diamant. The book tells the story of four women who share their struggles, their fears, their thoughts and ultimately how they become vulnerable with one another. Through this community of trust, they find solace in each other and realize how much they need one another.
Why do I love the community aspect of the boot camp? Change is hard and we cannot do it alone. I love the connections we make with one another. Through the community, you start to sense a mind shift within the group. At first, everyone is excited to lose weight, quickly. Then, after a couple weeks, the women start to see their progress and begin sharing their stories, their journey. We learn about each other’s struggles and desires to overcome such battles. The women in our groups start to trust one another and we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. The conversations shift from losing the weight to struggles with eating healthy and consistently. And, the group shows up. We support one another to fight the urges and take it one day at a time. Ultimately, we start to feel stronger, healthier and in control of our overall health and fitness and we celebrate our successes. There will be barriers and bad days, but we pick ourselves up and start fresh tomorrow.
The accountability group is just that, we hold one another accountable in a loving, supportive way. I cannot tell you how many times we divulged that we ate sugar or had cravings that were uncontrollable. Yet, we share it with the group and we do not hide it. Whether is a hormonal thing or just having abad day, we all fight the food battles and we learn how to overcome them through the Nutrition portion of the program. We share from weight issues to finding the time to work out and eat properly. In addition, we learn WHY we have such food cravings and how to overcome them. We have weekly challenges to curb those cravings and a little healthy competition goes a long way. Once you have started making changes in your health and nutrition, it starts to become habit or second nature. When you have “sisters”in your tribe encouraging you to choose the right foods, do the workouts and push to become a healthier version of you, then you can release all the lies and believe in yourself. Collectively, we start to transform from an individual struggling alone each day to an empowered, strong, healthy woman in this tribe and choosing a healthy lifestyle. Sisters, gather around- we are in this together!