Are Your Friends Making You Fat?

I know that I am influenced by many things that my friends do. It is that old "peer pressure" tactic. I am not sure, in some ways, that we ever outgrow it. A groundbreaking new study recently gave me some information to think about.

While there are already many factors that contribute to weight gain including less activity as we age, our "drive through" society and our love of alcohol and fast food, we can now add our friends to that list!!! The study found that when a sibling gained weight, the study participants' risk of weight gain was 40% higher and similarly the risk was 37% higher when a spouse gained weight. However, our friends are overwhelmingly the biggest influence on our weight gain from a social standpoint. The study indicates that when a friend gained weight, the risk of the participant gaining was increased by 57%...and a staggering 71% if the friend was the same gender! When we see our friends gaining weight, we are more accepting and eventually even conform and gain with them. It's the old "keeping up with the Jones" idea.

I would like to challenge you to make the opposite impact on your group of friends. If we all want to conform and do what our friends are doing (for whatever reason...to be cool or accepted...yep, we still deal with that stuff as adults!) then why not be the leader of the pack? Be the one that your group of friends wants to pattern themselves after. If our friends can make us fat, then why can't we make our friends lean? I would be the first to say that this is possible. After undergoing a year of transition in my life with workouts and diet, I KNOW that you can influence your group of friends in a positive way. I have friends who email me regularly now with successes in workouts, clean eating consistency and all sorts of small changes they are making to move in the right direction. "I am not going to have alcohol all week, only on the weekend"; "I am including protein with all my meals and snacks now"; "I switched from granola to oatmeal for breakfast" are all comments that I have gotten from my group of friends over the past few months.

So...let's prompt a new study from the medical community about a turn around in the obesity epidemic and making our friends lean! I would love to see the Tweightloss group be the first to get the study going!