Birds of a feather - Can your friends make you thin?
There was a nice article in the Daily Camera yesterday, “Birds of a feather - Can your friends make you thin?“ * The title of the article asks the same question that we’re checking out with 120 Days: “What happens when a group of folks all get together with the express purpose of getting into the best shape of their lives?” The theory is that through group identity, mutual support, and bi-weekly metrics and photos, we’ll all re-calibrate and change our patterns around exercise and nutrition.
It reminds me of an experience I had over a decade ago. I was at a weekend “Empowerment” retreat and the leaders, David Gershon and Gail Straub, shared a story about getting past limiting beliefs around money. A participant in a past class had expressed worry that his friends would all abandon him if he became wealthy. The turn-around that he eventually came up with was,
“All my friends are wealthy, too!”
What I like about that turn-around is that you can read that either way: either you get some new friends who are loaded or (perhaps more interesting) you figure out how to bring your friends along on the financial gravy train.
What do I get from this?
“All my friends are in amazing shape and inspire me to get there too.”
If that ain’t true now, it will be soon enough!
- Rich
[* Note: The Daily Camera article references a study published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine, “The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years.” The study was really well designed and found that obesity can spread through social networks. One notable quote towards the end speaks to what we’re about with 120 Days:
“The spread of obesity in social networks appears to be a factor in the obesity epidemic. Yet the relevance of social influence also suggests that it may be possible to harness this same force to slow the spread of obesity. … Smoking- and alcohol-cessation programs and weight-loss interventions that provide peer support — that is, that modify the person’s social network — are more successful than those that do not. People are connected, and so their health is connected. … The observation that people are embedded in social networks suggests that both bad and good behaviors might spread over a range of social ties. …”
Yep. This is gonna be fun.]