Using Facebook To Help You Reach Your Fitness Goals

Facebook first started in 2004 and little did many people know that it would one day turn into the world's most dominating social networks. It started off as a simple website that allowed you to post on the walls of your friends, comment on pictures, and add, or decline, new friends. Facebook is now a website that has become so addicting, that it is very commonly given up for Lent, which is a tradition where people surrender a transgression of theirs for forty days. "Do you have a Facebook?" used to be a question repeatedly asked, now everyone just assumes you have one. With all of our updated technology, there is no wonder why Facebook is so popular. With a few taps or touches of our phone, we can share, tag, and broadcast anything and everything. Facebook also allows us to keep up to date with all of our friends, family, television shows, movies, celebrities, and role models. I know what you are pondering, how does all of this fit into obtaining your fitness goals? Let's break it down into two imperative steps.

Step number one: occupy your news feed. Facebook has the ability to 'Like" just about anything on its website, and you need to use that to your full advantage. Liking the page of your favorite role model allows you to keep up to date with anything and everything they post. If you missed out on their post because you were working, or even training like a mass machine at your gym, you can click on their page and catch up on all the latest and greatest updates. All of this might be nothing new to you, but what you need to focus on is filling your news feed with positive, motivational, and successful role models. These role models will share their trials and tribulations about how they got to where they are now, post motivational advice, and occasionally give shout outs to their dedicated fans that courageously follow them over the years. Surround yourself with positive, powerful, and motivational people, not just in your every day settings, but also on social networks like Facebook.

Step number two: control your environment. Facebook can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. Here is how you control your Facebook environment. Now that you have your news feed set up to feature oodles of information and positivity, it is time to weed out all of the negativity. Unfortunately, Facebook has also become a playground to some of the worst cases of hatred, complaints, whining, and obnoxious behavior. Don't let this negativity affect your mindset! While you are browsing your news feed and you see examples of this, unsubscribe from that person by clicking on the right tab of the status posted. From there you can confidently click on 'Unsubscribe from status updates by Miss Negative Nancy'. Their negativity will no longer flood your steady stream of positivity. Another alternative is to just remove that person as a friend. You can decide for yourself which option better suits your needs. I'm sure you know about that person who just vents and complains to everyone and you despise dealing with them, say, at your job. Why deal with them when you don't have to? Out with the old, in with the new. This step will guarantee that you only see what you want to see in your news feed. Control your environment, and don't let your environment control you. In this case, your environment is your news feed.

There you have it. Follow these two crucial steps and you are on your way to fully immersing yourself in the process of reaching your fitness goals. Who would have ever thought that a social network could be such a powerful tool. Saying the average user checks their Facebook 500 times a day would be an understatement. Use all of those visits to constantly think and remind yourself of your fitness goals. As six-time national bodybuilding champion Skip La Cour says, "The more a person thinks about anything in life, that person can't help but become better at it. It's inevitable."