Success Stories - more variation?
I get the CC newsletter and read the success stories now and then. CC says it is about "healthy and sustainable weight management", so I would like to request some more variation of the success stories. All the ones I have read have been about weight loss - no surprise once I checked out the submit-your-story form and saw how the questions were formatted.
All the questions make it clear that weight loss is the only kind of success story they are interested in - "What made you decide to lose weight this time?" "What was most challenging about losing weight?" etc. I know that many people are on CC to lose weight, and I'm sure the weight loss stories are very inspiring for those people and should be kept on. I'm definitely not dissing those people or stories - they are great!
But there are also plenty of people using CC to maintain their weight, improve their health or fitness, gain weight or recover from an eating disorder. I would have thought these people also fit the criteria of "healthy and sustainable weight management." I have recovered from severe anorexia and am pretty proud of the hard work I put in to get to this stage. I thought I would submit my story to encourage people in recovery that they can recover, despite how hard it can be sometimes. However, I wasn't able to submit anything because I couldn't answer any of the weight-loss questions required.
I think CC is missing out on a lot of fantastic people and motivating stories because of the way the forms are set out. I vote either change the wording of the existing form or get people to pick from a range of forms depending on what kind of success they'd like to share.
Hear hear! I for one have been EXTREMELY inspired by meryl's story (it helped me immensely in my own recovery - which is mentally ongoing), and I think that it would likewise serve to help a great deal many others who are struggling with ED.
I love reading success stories, but also notice that they seem to be all people who have lost a lot of weight. Now, since I need to lose a lot of weight, these are inspiring to me, but I would also love to read about people who have found healthier ways to maintain their weight, or improve their fitness, or cure their ED, or solve a medical problem. The more, the better as far as I am concerned.
