Maybe it’s the 20 years I spent working in Division I college athletics. Or maybe it’s that I just cried my eyes out watching Avengers: Endgame for the second time. Regardless, the fact of the matter is I love a good team.

If you’re going to undertake a project as daunting as long-term weight loss, you need to pull together your personal dream team to make it happen.

The concept of “team building” is another weight loss trope that is often used but rarely explained. Let me take a shot of correcting the latter and shedding a bit of light on just how important a tool this can be in your weight loss battle.

While I know many people want to keep their weight loss struggles to themselves, there’s an argument to be made that the burden is a lot lighter if carried by more than just one person. And when it comes to weight loss, lighter is goal, right?

How Do You Choose Your Team Members?

There is no specific class of person perfectly suited nor automatically ill designed to be part of your weight loss team. Mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends, sisters, brothers, coworkers, neighbors, friends, Romans, countrymen… anyone willing to lend an ear can be a great teammate.

The key is to focus on the important day-to-day aspects of a weight loss program, and target those areas in which help would be most appreciated.

Food Shopping and Menu Planning

Start with the obvious: if you’re trying to lose weight, and you’re NOT the person in your home who is responsible for the food shopping, you’re certainly at a disadvantage. Especially if you’re trying to make small, smart targeted changes to your diet — a lot of those begin during food shopping. And while you can provide the shopper with a list of your new food requests, if you haven’t shared with them that you’re trying to lose weight you’re making things far more complicated than they need to be.

The person who does the food shopping can be an invaluable ally in your weight loss process. Not only buying you what you want, but helping to limit other foods that might be triggers or temptations for you. The kinds of foods that they would have no reason to avoid if they were unaware you were trying to lose weight.

The same arguments apply to whomever does your meal planning. It’s one thing for you to just “decide” you want to start eating a more healthy diet, but if you eat your meals with other people, then the person planning your common meals should be aware of your goals. It’s no different than being aware of a food allergy, or even someone’s intensive dislike of a particular food.

So right off the bat, you should consider either bringing on board whomever shops and meal plans in your home, or at least make sure that you handle those duties yourself.

The Social Politics of Food

Food is closely associated with times of celebration with friends and family. There’s no birthday party without cake. When we think of Christmas our thoughts turn as much to our holiday eating traditions as much as they do towards gift-giving.

Even with regard to our day-to-day life, food is a big part of the social structure. Your workplace may celebrate Taco Tuesdays at a weekly lunch, or a group of co-workers look forward to their chance to pick the weekly Friday local restaurant trip. At school it might be pizza, beer and wings to celebrate the end of a semester or just the end of a week. Or perhaps your neighborhood or apartment building has a block party to meet and greet the new residents each summer.

As you being your new weight loss program, you might decide that you aren’t comfortable being around those kinds of food triggers, so you may start to beg off and make excuses as to why you can no longer attend.

Having a team member who is part of that group is invaluable in helping you navigate any social pitfalls. Without over simplifying things? It’s like you’re a superhero and they’re protecting your secret identity. They can back up your excuses as to why you can’t come to events, they can help steer restaurant choices towards ones you’d be more happy with, or suggest more healthy additional items for common menus. Whatever they can do to make your life a bit easier.

And when you’re not there, they can keep you appraised of any potential social landmines and hurt feelings of which you’re unaware. Losing weight is tough enough. No reason to have to deal with these additional complications without someone having your back if you can help it.

Whatever Motivates You

Beyond the practical, sometimes it’s helpful to have a team member for the purposes of motivation. What kind of motivation really depends on your specific personality.

If you’ve been overweight your whole life, you probably don’t have to go far to find someone with a history of nagging you about your weight. No matter how nicely they think they’ve been doing it, of course. If, for some reason, that motivates you? By all means, bring them onto your team.

If you know someone who has gone through the experience of losing weight themselves, you might want them on your team as a sounding board and as inspiration… even if that person isn’t in your day to day life.

What motivates you, though, is really up to you. Do you need someone to challenge you and push you? Do you want someone wholly supportive and just telling you that everything you’re doing is great? You might find motivation from a great online weight loss forum, or a well-written blog with a goofy fruit-faced logo. You never know, is my point. It’s your team. If you think they’ll help, bring them on board.

The Most Important Team Member

I sort of buried the lede on this one. But the most important member of your team, of course, is you.

In fact, you can have a fantastic team with you as its only member. There are plenty of sports like tennis and golf which are geared to individuals. And even in team sports, there are moments where it all comes down to an individual’s singular efforts.

So if you are someone who feels that their weight loss has isolated them, and you don’t have anyone to add to your team right now. That’s fine. All you need is you.

However, you actually do need to BE on your own team.

If you haven’t done so, I recommend reading my blog post on the importance of food tracking. To make that work, it’s essential that you are honest with yourself. That you can rely on yourself. In other words, you need to be the textbook definition of a good teammate. And if you can’t do that, there’s really no reason to even discuss adding other members to your team.

The Changing Lineup

Assuming your commitment, you should know that the remainder of the lineup for your weight loss time will be quite fluid.

Not unlike pregnancy, you may get to decide WHEN to tell people you’re trying to lose weight in the beginning, but eventually everyone will know whether you tell them or not.

So the people you have on your team in the beginning will not be the people you have on your team six months later. For me, it started really with just me and my wife. We’ve been on this journey together since the start, each supporting each other’s weight loss Our son was next, then a few friends and family members… and by then it was obvious and it now it feels like everyone is on our team. Which actually is kind of nice.

The current level of attention would have been overwhelming and too much pressure right from the start, at least for me… but everyone is different. So just start with yourself, and go from there.

The biggest takeaway is that you’re facing a major lifestyle shift. It impacts all phases of your life and the people in it in some ways. So be smart and seek help from those who can make the load a little lighter, if only you’d make them part of your team.