I feel lucky after so many years alone, to find my husband Mark. He’s as health conscious as I am, and I think he looks better than me, too. I feel sorry for the waiters when we go out to dinner. “Can you prepare that without oil?” “No dairy, thank you.” Our dinner conversations center around our latest counseling visit or office call and the associated health discussion we had with our patients. We pour over our exercise plans. Many of our friends are the same way. Saturday morning running group starts with a great run and ends with coffee, black, or herbal tea.
Now this may seem annoying. Why would I surround myself with people who are stronger than me and look better than me?
Studies Show Your Social Group Often Determines Your Habits
There was a fascinating article in The New England Journal of Medicine a few years ago (Christakis NA, Fowler JH. The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. N Engl J Med 2007;357:370–379) that basically showed that social groups or cliques tended to have similar weights. Other studies have shown that zip codes can have similar weight and health. In other words, we tend to mimic our peer groups’ behaviors and in so doing share their successes and their failures.
I bring this up because when seeing patients going through weight loss, I find that their peer group often becomes a stumbling block. I find that when my patients begin to lose weight, their friends and family start to resent them. They are commonly told that they are losing too much weight, or that they look too skinny. Weight is an issue on everybody’s mind and when a spouse sees his/her partner changing their life, they become concerned about their own health and worth. This can be seen with spouses, friends, and in the workplace. People are threatened when somebody actually changes the course of their life and becomes healthy.
The sad thing is this jealousy can actually lead to divorce or peer group isolation. I have had patients tell me some of their friends will take them to dinner and insist they eat a hamburger or some other junk food, purposely trying to sabotage their success. After all, more people in this country are overweight than normal weight, so your friends and family are likely to be overweight. If you lose weight, you are doing something they consider “abnormal” and therefore threatens their comfort zone.
“Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.” – Mark Twain
I am not saying you have to leave your spouse or your friends, but you do need to have a discussion with them about the importance of this journey you are taking. You need to ask for their support and understanding and let them know that while your body and health may change, you are the same old person inside. However, sometimes the improvements in mood or energy level or self esteem with weight loss may make you want to change your friend groups up a bit. Also, we luckily have so many ways to build new supportive peer groups. Facebook is filled with excellent weight loss group pages. Most surgeon’s practices have support groups that meet regularly. Joining a gym or a zumba class can expose you to many new friends that share your common goals.
Look around at the people in your life right now. Do any of these people strike you as someone you would like to spend more time with? Do they look like they’d like to do some of the things you are working on doing more frequently, like going for a hike or bike ride? Maybe you could ask them if they are interested in joining you in an upcoming fitness opportunity, or just a yummy meal and a movie. The presence of this peer support is a critical factor in your success. Just showing up to a class each week is building that support system that will be so critical in manifesting the results you are looking for.
My friends are a bit fanatical in their fitness, but that drives me. If my peer group sat around drinking wine and doing their nails every weekend, I would be doing the same. In fact, before I focused on my health, I did do the same thing, and it didn’t contribute to my health goals. Now, my friends and my family challenge me to become better and healthier and I owe a lot of my success to their support.
