T’other morning I was chatting to Becca, one of our newer ninjas, but a former 1:1 client we’ve known for a while.

 

Hey Becca 🙂

 

She’d been reading last Monday’s blog ‘You made me do it’.

 

She’d found it useful but was expressing that it, even if it was your choice to do something, it was often hard to say no without offending people.

 

You know – when they bring some birthday cake in to work or something they’ve ‘made especially’.

 

Or they’re cooking a meal for you.

 

Or ordering one.

 

Or choosing where to eat.

 

I told Becca the same two things I’ll share with you now:

 

  1. They probably won’t be as offended as you think.

 

  1. They’ll stop doing it when they know you’re serious.

 

When I first decided to change my life (I was fat, remember), I went through the process of having to say no to stuff for the first time.

 

People may have been mildly put out the first time but, as far as I’m aware, I haven’t lost any friends over it.

 

And they soon got used to it.

 

No one offers me cake, biscuits, crisps, etc anymore because they know I won’t eat it.

 

When I first stared seeing my girlfriend, she served me a meal with a load of potatoes.

 

I left them.

 

She asked what else I do and don’t eat.

 

And has only cooked stuff within that since.

 

Sometimes she’ll have a bit of something extra with her meal that I won’t have.

 

That’s cool – I respect her decision and she respects mine.

 

She hasn’t dumped me either.

 

Not yet, anyway.

 

Me having abs makes it worth her while 😉

 

Couple of other points to make too.

 

  1. What’s more important to you?

 

Your body and how you feel about it.

 

Your healthy and longevity.

 

Or mildly offending someone once or twice?

 

 

  1. In some cases, offending them might be the only way to make them stop

 

Last year I was out for a curry with some old school friends.

 

Had the healthiest curry I could see, with some rice.

 

No naan, poppadoms, etc.

 

G&T instead of the beers.

 

One friend kept going on about it.

 

“Stop being such a f***ing loser and have some” he said at one point.

 

“Mate, you’re the one who’s spent the last hour complaining about how fat you are whilst doing something you know will make you fatter. Let’s not start a competition on who the biggest loser is” I replied.

 

Shut him up that did.

 

And a few hours later he was asking me for some advice on how to lose weight.

 

 

You get the point.

 

Don’t worry about offending people.

 

You do what you need to do.

 

 

Much love,

 

Jon ‘Mildly offensive’ Hall and Matt ‘Also mildly offensive’ Nicholson


Jon Hall
Jon Hall

When not helping people to transform their lives and bodies, Jon can usually be found either playing with his kids or taxi-ing them around. If you'd like to find out more about what we do at RISE then enter your details in the box to the right or bottom of this page or at myrise.co.uk - this is the same way every single one of the hundreds who've described this as "one of the best decisions I've ever made" took their first step.