Strategies for getting loved ones to support your healthy lifestyle & ways to deal with negative peer pressure and sabotage.

By Alex Picot-Annand

Changing your eating and exercise habits is hard enough. Getting loved ones to support your healthy lifestyle changes? Prepare to grit your teeth. The company you keep can & does affect your progress toward healthier living. Here’s how to reduce negative peer pressure and get the social support you’d like to have.
Scenario: you beam as you gather your family ‘round the dining table, where you’ve lovingly assembled a colorful and nutritious meal. Everyone takes a seat. You serve the grilled chicken, the sautéed broccoli, the pumpkin seed-studded salad. You nervously watch for reactions.

It’s really delicious…You swear! Then, within moments: A floret of broccoli makes a perfect arc across the room after your toddler daughter catapults it from her fork. Your preteen son slumps so low that only his furrowed brow and the top of his phone peek above the table. Your partner, trying to be polite and supportive, has been chewing his first bite for a good two minutes. Without swallowing. Even the dog, usually hovering shamelessly, sniffs at a spinach leaf and then flops down in the corner with a sigh. You feel… alone. Now what?
To change your eating and exercise habits, do you have to convince your friends and family to change too? Would getting loved ones on board with your healthy lifestyle changes make the whole endeavor easier? And if so, how the (bleep) do you do that?

This really matters to you. You’re excited about your experiments with lifestyle changes. You’re eating more vegetables. You’re walking on your lunch breaks and seeing a trainer on the weekend. Your bod feeling, working and looking better. You feel sparks of inspiration and hope, and you want to keep going.

You desperately want loved ones with you. Why? Well, because you love them. You want your family and friends to be healthy and safe — to feel good. You want to protect them from the pain and ravages of poor health. You want the best for them. And frankly, you it helps to have support from the people closest to you. It seems hard, very challenging, to make these big changes alone.

If you’re feeling these things it’s important to know: The thoughts are really, really normal. It is hard to eat and move in ways that support your own health goals when, in your social circle Fridays mean beer and tacos, Saturdays mean a Jenga tower of bacon & fries at the greasy spoon, hanging out means meeting at the bar to shoot tequila instead of at the park to shoot hoops, etc. In some ways, you are the sum of your social circle. Habits can be contagious.

Research shows that we are affected by the body composition, habits, and lifestyles of those around us. The more people around us are doing something, or living a certain way, the more likely we are to do and live the same — whether that’s what we eat, how we eat, whether we move (or not), how we move, and so on. If your friends and family are fitter and healthier, you’re more likely to be fitter and healthier. And the reverse is true, too.
Research shows that:

The weight of those closest to you can factor into your own weight. According to one large-scale study, having a friend, an adult sibling, or a spouse who is obese increases your own obesity risk by 57 percent, 40 percent, and 37 percent respectively.

Even your friends’ friends matter. Two degrees of separation between you and someone who is obese increases your own chances of being obese by 20 percent. You don’t even have to have met them for this to be a factor in your own weight.

Your social network affects your obesity risk exponentially. Each obese person you know is correlated with a 0.5 percent increase in your risk of obesity, so having 5 obese social contacts more than doubles your risk of becoming obese.

Your weight is more influenced by people of your own gender. For women, this means that a girlfriend’s or same-sex partner’s weight may have a larger effect than a guy friend’s or opposite-gender partner’s; and vice versa for men.
Weight convergence likely happens subconsciously. Researchers believe that we change our habits to match those of our social group without talking or even thinking about it.

The amount you eat can depend on who you’re eating with. Dine with a big eater, and you’re liable to consume more; sit down with a light eater, and you’re likely to take in less. This effect has been observed even among strangers. When asked, the diners usually attribute the mirroring effect to taste and hunger as opposed to the behavior of others around them.

How much you eat can also depends on the size of the group you’re with. Eating with one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven or more other people is associated with a 33, 47, 58, 69, 70, 72, and 96 percent increase in energy consumed, respectively.

Your social network can also have a big impact on what you eat. People whose friends generally meet the guidelines for produce intake are more likely to eat at least five servings of fruit and vegetables per day.

Your impression of social norms help determine what you eat, how much you eat, and your physical activity level. If getting a light salad for lunch seems “normal”, that’s what you’re likely to do, even if no one’s going to see you eat it. Conversely, if eating a bag of Ruffles for lunch seems “normal”, you may do that, even if you know the salad is more aligned with your health goals. Those who report a high level of physical activity as the social norm are also more likely to be active themselves.

As you can see, much of this happens subconsciously. We often change our habits to match those of our social group without talking or even thinking about it. It’s not just how you eat and move, of course. Research indicates that you’re influenced by family and friends for other big-deal game-changers, like whether to get married or when to have a baby.

Of course, all of these findings are correlations — researchers are still working out the why of it all. Is it possible be a lone wolf or a unique individual? Of course! But, aloneness can be scary or may make you feel vulnerable, as though life is more difficult.

“Aloneness” take the form of a young woman who chooses to stay in to eat a healthy dinner and get a good night’s sleep when all her roommates have gone out for pizza and partying. “Aloneness” can also be a feeling, like the way a guy feels when all his buddies are drinking beer and he’s got a seltzer. If you’re the only one at happy hour ordering a side salad instead of fries, you might feel like you’re outside of the campfire circle of social safety, just waiting for the lions to attack. Swimming against the current can be challenging.

But, of course, it is possible to go it alone. (Terms like “pioneer” and “trailblazer” exist, after all.) But let’s face it: It’s easier to eat better and get more exercise when your social environment — the behavior of your family and friends — supports your goals. As with all things, the laws of physics come into play. When you’re trying to change, you may encounter either friction, or momentum. Friction can make you feel stuck.

Friction makes things harder to do. Eye-rolling coworkers, spinach-resistant kids, and chili nachos-loving friends — people who explicitly disagree with you or simply engage in opposing habits — create environmental and emotional barriers as you try to move toward your goals. When you’re dealing with friction, lifestyle change is like climbing a steep mountain with gravel moving underneath you — complete with cursing, tripping, and slow progress.

Momentum helps you keep rolling. Momentum boosts you and replenishes your energy. Willing and/or like-minded loved ones can help keep you accountable, connected, and supported, bolstering you as you work to change your eating and exercise routine.

You can have friction and momentum, together. In other words, even if you encounter resistance, you can still get support too. Even if your loved ones aren’t super-enthusiastic about your nutrition and fitness experiments, or will never love pea sprouts like you do, it doesn’t mean they don’t care, or won’t help. You can pursue your goals in the face of wavering, stingy, or even non-existent support.