This post comes to us from Ariane Hundt at Brooklyn Bridge Boot Camp. She fills us in about the importance of having someone to hold you accountable for your workout routine.

Last week I got a rather urgent text from Myrna, our butt-kicker extraordinaire. She told me she was going to be featured in the Daily News – photo shoot and all – with a story. Super exciting! This woman has had it coming, I’m telling you. She’s been plugging away, bit by bit at creating the live she wants and the response she’s getting is beyond positive. That old saying – you reap what you sow… It’s true.

Anyways, as it goes with big events, we want to look and feel our best and since I have a deadline coming up to look and feel my best too, we made a pact: We would text each other our meals and promised to keep it clean. For more than a week we have been sending each other our breakfast eggs, our lunch salads and turkey meatball dinner or chicken with veggie dinners.  It was inspiring to have someone to report to (reporting to myself all the time gets boring….). It made me more aware of what I was eating and stopped me from making haphazard choices. Myrna felt the same way about sharing her goals and steps she was taking to get to it. I was thinking twice about ‘treating’ myself with things that weren’t really treats because they would in the end just punish me. So, I decided not to ‘punish’ myself at all after committing to Myrna. There was just one incident where a massive amount of apple cobbler made by my friend Erin was put in front of me and I decided to nose dive into it. I did report it to Myrna and made up for it. Not by beating myself up or calling myself names, but by adding an extra workout and lowering my carbs the following day.

Having someone to share your intentions and goals with is crucial to your success. It makes you feel that you’re not in it alone. It helps you realize that your actions have consequences – on your body and health and on the other people you shared your goals with. I pride myself on doing what I say I will do, so when I tell someone I’ll commit to something and then don’t do it, I know that I’m not only letting myself down but also change the other person’s view of me. In the Slim & Strong program I always have my participants share their goals with their team mates and I encourage them to stay in touch and share struggles, successes and ideas throughout the month. It works. I hope you’ll give it a go and make that commitment to a friend, co-worker, trainer or other person in your life whose view of you matters to you.