As none of us live on a lonely island or somewhere deep in the woods, knowing how your social circle impacts your health and fitness is extremely important. Here is why your social circle matters and how to utilize it to your advantage.

 

Benchmarking

We as social beings always look at the people around us to benchmark ourselves across all categories. That can be the money you make, the house you live in, the car you drive or how big or skinny you are. Now, some of you might say “I don’t compare myself to others” and you might not do it consciously or to a great extend. However, it is extremely difficult to completely remove it from our subconscious.

Also, they set the bar for what is normal. If you 90 kg while all your friends are skinny guys at 60 kg, you’ll feel fat. Now imagine yourself in a group of morbidly obese people at 120 kg. All of a sudden you are the skinny guy. Your social circle sets the reference point of a normal and acceptable weight.

 

Your social network can make or break you

Recent studies show that if your family members or people in your core social network are obese, your risk of becoming obese increases drastically. But how? It’s not a virus or a disease, right? It’s simply from spending time with them and accepting their eating, drinking and overall activity patterns as normal. If your friends invite you to binge drink and slam down a huge pizza followed by ice cream because that’s “normal” it can be difficult to resist without becoming an outsider.

So even if you are trying to get in shape, it’s difficult to resist when your friends are less active and don’t eat healthy. It also shows that it’s not genetics but simply bad social influence from your family who you spend a lot of time with especially when you are young.

Lastly, if the people around you are not into fitness and healthy diet, you won’t get exposed to new innovations, ideas, theories etc. and no one will hold you accountable if you get a bit too loose on your diet.

 

How this can ruin your progress

Let’s say your friends are really nice and they only want your best. They don’t intentionally sabotage you but they still need someone to grab a pizza together or go out for drinks with them. It can be very tempting to give in even if you are trying really hard to stay on track with your healthy diet.

In addition to that, there’s also something really nasty in a lot of people and that is pure jealousy. Again, this might be conscious or subconscious. But when people see your progress, first of all it makes them look worse next to you and it also shines a light on their imperfections. If you can do it, they should be able to do it too. However, if they can’t, they feel bad about themselves. This might lead to destructive behavior to derail you.

 

What to do about it

It’s extremely difficult to fight against the norm in your social circle. Just an example, let’s say you go all vegan and your friends are big meat fans. You will get into fights every time you go out for dinner or you end up not joining them anymore. The same with a healthy diet. I personally have been on a no carb diet for about a year and it seriously impacted my social life. No invites for dinner and drinks anymore.

The only option you have is to find a social circle of likeminded people. They can either be on the same track or just be very open minded and health conscious like yourself. This will have the following benefits

Positive reinforcement

They will acknowledge your progress much more without sabotaging it. That will help you maintain or even increase motivation instead of battling against your social circle

A new point of reference

If you change your social circle from a group of obese individuals to fit and healthy people, you will use them as a reference point and with you being now the bigger one in the group, it will help you stay committed in order to be “normal”.

new ideas and recipes

Your healthy friends will most likely be able to share information about good and healthy restaurants instead of that new cake shop. Also, they might be able to share some of their recipes with you just like I share my protein recipes here.

 

Powerful rules

Even if your close social circle is full of health and fitness fanatics, it’s impossible to avoid situations in which you are tempted. Sometimes you can’t resist at all for social reasons. Here are some rules you can set for yourself though to guide you through those situations.

If I drink alcohol, I will have 1 glass of water in between drinks.

If I am offered cake and can’t say no, I will at least share that piece of cake with someone.

If I am going out for pizza, I’ll order a small one and not a regular size.

It’s these little changes that can have a huge impact in the end.

Disclaimer

I want to make this very clear. If you really want to make drastic change in your life you will have to take drastic measures. In some cases that can mean changing your social circle and cutting ties with certain toxic people. This will hurt and it will be painful. But, ask yourself what matters more: spending some time with your unhealthy friends now with a lot of chronic disease coming soon or embracing the short term pain to enjoy a long and healthy life with a set of new friends that you’ll make along the way?