Do Your Friends Make You Fat?

Jim Hill: Welcome to "Weight Loss and ..." where we delve into the world of weight loss. I'm Jim Hill.

Holly Wyatt: And I'm Holly Wyatt. We're both dedicated to helping you lose weight, keep it off, and living your best life while you're doing it.

Jim Hill: Indeed, we now realize successful weight loss combines the science and art of medicine, knowing what to do and why you will do it.

Holly Wyatt: Yes, the "and" allows us to talk about all the other stuff that makes your journey so much bigger, better, and exciting.

Jim Hill: Ready for the end factor? Let's dive in. Here we go. Well, welcome to another episode of Weight Loss and. Holly, we're tackling a big one today. Yay. Are your friends making you gain weight?

Yeah. And your friends impact your body weight. Are they to blame for your weight gain or the reason you can't lose weight? Are they the reason you're not hitting your New Year's resolutions?

Holly Wyatt: Yes. Timely, right? And I'm going to add to this question. I love this question. We talk about it a lot. Everybody likes to blame somebody for something, so it kind of makes sense. But I'm going to add if they do, how do they do it? Isn't on purpose? Is Trish your wife? Is she sabotaging you on purpose?

Yes, I knew that was the reason. And we're also going to end with a, what I like to call a secret strategy, something you can do. This is going to be a big pie in the plate episode where we give you some way. If you understand what's going on, you can actually push back and use this to your advantage.

Jim Hill: You know, Holly, the media loves this topic. They love to do stories about the reason, the external reason that you can blame something else for your weight problems, right? And this is a good one. When this area of social networks and this and that, you see headlines like, should you divorce your spouse or your friends making you fat?

Holly Wyatt: Yep. We love to blame someone else. And what better to blame our friends, right? That's where the media likes to go with this.

Jim Hill: Can you choose which friends you blame? There are some I'd like to blame and some not.

Holly Wyatt: Or I've even seen that headlines, lose your friends to lose your weight. You know, I mean, you know, who wants to lose their friends? But that's the media headlines. So I think it's a great topic because once you understand what's going on and we'll talk about that in a minute, once you're aware of what's happening, how it works, then you can use it to your advantage if you understand what's going on. So this is really key to understanding because you can do something with it.

Jim Hill: Wow. So Holly, there's actually some science behind this. In 2007, there was a really classic paper, love this paper, by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. What they did was simple. They followed people in a large cohort study. There were like 12,000 people that were being followed for something else. I think heart health or something. But what they looked at was how BMI and body mass index and these people clustered. And what they found is you tended to weigh the same as people in your social network. So there were these clusters of high BMI and low BMI. And this is where the media took this study and all went crazy with it.

Holly Wyatt: I remember that and it showed it literally showed like they made one BMI a certain color. And so you could see if you were friends, all these friends had that higher BMI and they, you know, they would label that. And then they actually showed the clusters with color. So people were like, oh my gosh, I'm in this cluster of people with a high BMI or high percent body fat.

Jim Hill: Yeah, it was really crazy. It was all over the media about people are saying, I knew it. It's not my fault. It's not what I eat. It's what my friends are eating.

Right. It's what your friends eat. And then you and I, Holly, worked with a, we worked with a mathematician in Colorado, David Barr. He was a really cool mathematician and he worked on social networks.

So we talked to David and says, let's model some of this. Let's just take some simple assumptions about how people interact in social network and look at what would happen over time. It was really scary because it suggested these BMI clusters would increase and people that were in high BMI would be higher.

Holly Wyatt: I remember that. That was just modeling. It was just a kind of what if, but it showed that it looked like it spread, right? It kind of like increased. So what that is, is it contagious? Is it a virus that's spreading out? You know, jokingly, should we wear a mask? I mean, there's an opportunity.

Jim Hill: Let's develop some anti-obesity masks and maybe we can make a lot of money.

Holly Wyatt: Oh, that's scary. Let's not get that out there. That's probably what they'll think. So what do you think is going on? Why do you think we saw this modeling happen? Why do we think that BMI people with similar weights tend to be friends with other people of similar weights?

Jim Hill: Well, I think the reason is that we tend to behave the same as the people we hang out with, our social network. Again, take a group of people my age that might go to a poker game once a week. And at that poker game, we drink beer and we have pizza and everything else.

And we're doing the same things. We're hanging out and I want to be part of that group. I want to be included. So I'm engaging in the behaviors the group is behaving in. And unfortunately on too many of these groups, the kinds of behaviors that people are engaging in is the kind that leads to weight gain. Because, Holly, the majority of people in this country are overweight or obese. So again, you can see how that's influencing us in the wrong way. So it's not a virus. It's behaviors that tend to cluster together.

Holly Wyatt: So I think we can say it's not the body weight that's contagious. It's the behaviors that are impacting the body weight that's contagious. That you take on the behaviors that you're more likely to do the behaviors of the people you're around, that you're rubbing elbows with.

And we talk about this in terms of weight because that's what we talk about about body weight. But I think it's really true of any behaviors. You know, there's other behaviors out there that people will take on. So, you know, I always think about kids. If your kids start hanging out with kids that smoke or drink, aren't you a little nervous that it might be that they will take on those behaviors?

Jim Hill: Yeah. And Holly, it works both ways. And I know we're going to talk about this a little at the end. There are clusters that are doing the right things, right? That low-VMI. And a lot of times they're exercise groups and healthy eating groups and so forth.

Holly Wyatt: Yeah. I think we say we see this like, like I said, play out in so many different behaviors. Things like bringing your lunch to work versus going out. If the whole workplace that you're hanging out with goes out for lunch, you're way more likely to go out for lunch than if people are bringing a healthy lunch in.

You're more likely to, you know, bring that healthy lunch in. The big one that I love that I think is so timely is about Zoom meetings and cameras on or off. Have you noticed anything, Jim? A behavior, the behavior. So we all now do Zooms.

Jim Hill: The first person that turns their camera off, I turn mine off. But I don't want to be first.

Holly Wyatt: So they have a big influence on you, apparently.

Jim Hill: Yes. I want to turn it off, but I'm waiting for someone else to say it's okay. Yes.

Holly Wyatt: But I've noticed this, you know, there are some meetings I go to and everybody has their camera off. That's the normative behavior. So everybody does it. There's other meetings where the expectation and the behavior is to keep your camera on. And guess what?

More people do that. It's not 100%, but you can see them really big. I mean, that's kind of crazy. The other thing that I remember that was really interesting about behaviors is honking, like driving behavior. You know, when I went to New York the very first time and people were honking, I was like jumping around going, what's going on? Is someone about to hit somebody? What would and people like, no, we just honk.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, that's crazy. We don't do that in Birmingham. No, it's a big deal. If you honk the horn, you're about to hit somebody, you know, or there's a major problem going on, but not in New York, normal behavior. Let's just hit the horn whenever we feel like it, right?

It means hurry up or something else. So some of the great examples of how these behaviors are connected. And here's the other thing, Jim. It's stealth. I don't think you realize it unless you're aware and you start to look for it, which I look for it now, like we're talking about, but otherwise you don't realize it, meaning you do it, you follow the behavior, the behaviors contagious, and you don't even know you're doing it. Social, I mean, we call that the social environment. It's so powerful because it's like under the radar screen.

Jim Hill: You know, you and I both spent decades living in Colorado. And in fact, we wrote a book, State of Slum, that what, what sort of motivated that is every year when Colorado was the leanest state, I would, the media would call me and say, why is the Colorado the leanest state? And I'd make up something different every year because I didn't really know. Right, right, right.

But we started thinking about it. And I think part of it is exactly that social network because in Colorado, you, there were people who were eating healthy, running, exercising, skiing, hiking, much more so than any place I've lived. So it's much more likely you might connect with someone doing that than say here in Alabama where there aren't as many people doing that.

Holly Wyatt: Easier to come in contact with someone doing that behavior in Colorado, which then could have an impact on you versus a little bit harder, maybe in Alabama. You know, I think that's, that's interesting. So that may be one of the reasons why Colorado is the leanest state. I always say, do you think that people come to Colorado because of the behaviors? Or do you think that people are influenced by the behaviors?

Jim Hill: I think both, Holly. I think Colorado attracts people that like those kinds of lifestyle. But then I think having so many people doing that sort of lifestyle influences the other. See, it's like with, with obesity, the, the majority is doing the wrong things in Colorado. Actually, the majority is doing the right things.

Holly Wyatt: Right. So I think it's both. Yeah.

Jim Hill: Yeah. You know, I'll tell a quick story about my son, Alex. I hope he hadn't listened, but it wouldn't, he wouldn't care. He graduated from, from college. He's a chemical engineer and he went to work in Mississippi and he would tell that he would go running and people would stop and ask him what was wrong. Could they help him? Yeah.

Holly Wyatt: Yeah. Right. But in Colorado, that would never happen. Right.

Jim Hill: No. In Colorado, you just, just even if you were in trouble in running, people would assume you're running for exercise.

Holly Wyatt: Right. Totally. So here is the big question that I think probably some people are thinking about. So if we have this association, we see the fact that behaviors are probably contagious and you take on the behaviors of the people you're hanging around.

What happens if you change your friends, meaning you switch out your friends for friends that are doing maybe healthier behaviors or behaviors you want to do or behaviors that are going to help you change your body weight? Do you know if that works? Like is that an intervention we should, we should put out there? Change your friends.

Jim Hill: So, let's look at where the science is on that. I think the science is pretty clear that BMI's cluster and social network, that you're much more likely to be similar to BMI and the people you hang out with. What we don't know is if you can intervene and change that. I think it is really exciting to think you can.

Again, you know, we've talked over and over, Holly, there's not going to be one solution to solving the obesity problem. But the idea that you could actually intervene within a social network is interesting. And there are some people trying it, particularly with like children and adolescents, where you can go in and change the whole social network. But at present, it remains a intriguing idea, but we don't yet know that you can do that.

Holly Wyatt: Right, right. So, we see the association, but we don't know for sure if there's like a cause and effect, meaning you go in and make a change and you're going to see the impact. Although, I think when we look out at national weight control registry and a lot of the people have been successful, do you see them changing friends or changing that?

Jim Hill: We ask that, and I sort of hesitate to bring this up in the national weight control registry, but we ask them that to remind people the national weight control registry is a project where we followed people over time who had been successful in not just losing weight, but in keeping it off.

And we ask them about that. And surprisingly, a lot of them did say they changed their friends. And one of the things that sort of the media picked up on, a lot of people changed their spouses. Now, again, these are largely women who were in the registry.

Not that men don't have the problem, but women are doing something with it. And what we would hear over and over is, my husband wasn't supportive of my weight loss. My weight loss was important to me. So, I give up my weight loss or give up my husband. And a lot of people gave up their husband. Now, we are not suggesting.

Holly Wyatt: You can quote Jim Hill, not me. Jim Hill?

Jim Hill: Do not give up on your spouse.

Holly Wyatt: The media is all over this, Jim. It's going to be all the headline. I can already see Jim Hill says, divorce your spouse to keep the weight off.

Jim Hill: No, no. I'm reporting what people tell us. I'm not saying this is the right thing to do. But I do think, Holly, that there's some really take-home practical information for people. And there are a lot of strategies other than divorcing your spouse that people may want to consider.

Holly Wyatt: You know, one thing, just to go back to the National Weight Control Registry, because they did that and they didn't realize. Like, they didn't necessarily do it because they thought the behaviors are contagious. I think they did it for other reasons.

They just didn't fit very well or they didn't have similar interests. Or, you know, I don't know that they purposely knew what we're telling you that the behaviors are contagious.

Jim Hill: A lot of husbands were supportive of weight loss. So, again, it's not husbands in general, but it shows the importance of having people around you that are on the same page of you. So, if you have two people in a marriage, one person is trying to lose weight, the other person's not supportive of that, that's tough.

Holly Wyatt: Okay. So, let's try in the plate. Let's give them some strategies. So, if you are aware and you now are, this is what we've helped just see, that your friends can impact your behaviors and by impacting your behaviors, they could impact your weight. What could you do? Are you doomed?

Jim Hill: You buy one of the anti, you buy an anti-obesity mask. We'll have those for $29.99.

Holly Wyatt: No, just kidding. Or you can get rid of all your friends or siblings. I mean, that seems hard. Is there any other strategies we could use?

Jim Hill: So, Holly, remember the name of this podcast, Weight Loss and. It's not weight loss or, it's weight loss and. So, getting rid of your friends, we're not saying you should do that. Get rid of your family, certainly something that not most people would consider, but you can do the and.

So, again, what I think you should think about is, what is the lifestyle you would like to live? Would you like to go out for a pizza and beer every week? Would you like to eat healthy? Would you like to exercise? Find groups that are doing that. Don't have to give up your friends. It's an and.

Holly Wyatt: So, you're saying add to your friends?

Jim Hill: I'm saying add to your friends. Now, I'm not, there may be some, if people are sabotaging you and they're in the friend group, you may want to limit that. But I'll give you one example from the Weight Loss registry and this was a male, one of the few males and he gained like 50 pounds over a period of time and he gained it because he hung out with a group of people that went out to bars and had pizza and beer like three or four times a week and he gained weight and and he realized that he lost the weight, but he realized he wasn't going, he was going to regain it if he went back into that lifestyle. And so, what he did, if I remember right, he joined a volleyball group. He said, I need to find a group where I can spend my time and get to know people who are living a lifestyle more in line with what I want to do. Now, maybe he went out for pizza and beer every now and then, but he realized that if he hung out with that group as much as he had before, he was going to regain the weight and he decided keeping the weight off was more important than necessarily being a part of that group. Right.

Holly Wyatt: So, it's about thinking about what behaviors are important to you and could you add some friends that are doing that behavior and that would make it easier for you to continue the behavior perhaps?

Jim Hill: Yeah, I agree, but Holly, what happens then if it's your family? What happens if your family is sabotaging you? You know, we don't want to tell people to get rid of their family or divorce their family, but what could you do short of divorcing your husband? Is there a way you could actually work with that?

Holly Wyatt: Well, yeah, we talk a lot about this in Stata Slim. In addition to adding more people to your network that are doing the behaviors you're wanting to do to make it easier, what do you do if you have a spouse or a boss? Because, you know, we talk about friends. It's not just friends. It's a boss or a sibling or your next door neighbor and their behaviors are not what, you know, are going the opposite direction of what you're trying to do.

So, it's making it perhaps more difficult to do the behaviors that you're trying to do, the healthier behaviors that you want to do. What do you do about that? And this is something that I absolutely love to tell people. You know, the fact is the behaviors we think are contagious, but it's bi-directional, Jim, meaning they're influencing you, but you are influencing them too and they don't even know it. So, one of the things we talk about is if you have those people that are not doing the behaviors, you can influence their behavior over time. The key is you don't tell them.

This is stealth. You know, I mean, it doesn't work good to go, I'm going to influence your behavior by, you know, hanging out with you. You don't tell them.

You don't say a word. You just simply do the behaviors. You continue doing the behaviors around them and especially in family units, we see it work all the time. Over time, that becomes a behavior they think is normal.

So, it kind of is a sneaky way. I call it be the change. Go in there and do the behavior. Change the behavior by doing the behavior you would like to see more of without telling them.

Jim Hill: So, it's really leading by example. And I've seen that in my two kids. One of them is, you know, very much wants to be part of the group, smart kid, but the other one is he didn't care. He just does what he wants to do and people follow him. And it's really interesting how this whole social dynamic works out.

Holly Wyatt: Yeah. You know, why do we take on those behaviors? Like, what's the reason behind it? Why are they contagious?

Jim Hill: Well, animals, we want to belong to a group. And so, you're willing to modify a little bit what you do to fit in in the group. Yeah.

Holly Wyatt: So, I think it is connection. I also think it's kind of a survival thing. You know, people have talked about like a long, long time ago as you went over there and if everybody was eating the red berries, it was the safe berries to eat. And then the blueberries, you know what I'm talking about, Jim.

Jim Hill: Berries? Come on. You're losing it.

Holly Wyatt: No, I'm not. I mean, it used to be taking on the behaviors of the people around you used to be a safety issue, you know, doing the things they were alive. If you go over and eat something or do something no one's doing, it could hurt you. I don't think that's true anymore, but I think we're wired to look at the people around us and we want to belong.

Jim Hill: And if the only groups that are available to you are the ones doing the wrong things. And there again, if we compare Mississippi to Colorado, you have many more opportunities in Colorado to join a group that allows you to maintain a healthy lifestyle. In Mississippi, you don't, but you still want to belong so you understand why people belong to those groups even though they're not necessarily living the lifestyle that you would want.

Holly Wyatt: And I think that what you just said is the key and is another actually kind of pie in the plate for people. If you recognize this, then it doesn't matter where you live because you can be strategic about it, right? You don't have to live to Colorado.

You could move to Colorado, but you could live in Alabama if you're aware of that and then make some specific decisions. So you join some groups. It's not as easy, but you can still find them.

They're out there. So you specifically say, I know what's going on here. I understand this and how this is working.

So I am going to find a running group or I am going to find a group that gardens and does healthy eating and make that type of thing. You can do that if you understand it and you can kind of beat the system here, so to speak.

Jim Hill: That's one advantage of the internet. You can google these groups and try them out to see even in where we live in Alabama, there are bicycle groups, there are gardening groups, there are hiking groups, and try some of them out. If you don't like it, find it. Try some other ones.

And again, it's an and. So don't necessarily just give up your friends. Look for, could I find a group that I began to interact with? If it works out well, these may become my friends. This might be my tribe and it works out well.

Holly Wyatt: And it'll make it easier. That's the key. It'll just be easier. It just becomes what I do. I don't have to think about it as much if I hang out with those people.

And then the second one is be the change. And I'm really going to challenge people to do that because I have heard some amazing stories. We hear these stories all the time where my wife or my husband never went out and walked after dinner, but I just kept doing it. I would go out for a walk every day after dinner and you're not going to believe it, Dr. Holly.

After three months, he came to me and said, let's go for a walk after dinner. Who would have thought, right? But it just was that self-influence. That's what we do. We go for a walk after dinner. You can influence them just as much as they influence you. And I'd love to see it. I do it all the time.

Jim Hill: So bottom line is social networks can influence your weight. We've talked about, there are many other things. It's not just social networks. It's something you should pay attention to. Take stock of the people you hang out with. What are they doing? Look for the end. Maybe creating, joining some groups that are doing the things you value, healthy eating activity, and then the big one from Dr. Holly, be the change.

Holly Wyatt: Yes. I love this because there's some things you can do to make a difference. So this is a good one.

Jim Hill: All right. Well, thanks everybody. We've had fun with this one and we will talk to you next time on Weight Loss and. Bye. Bye. And that's a wrap for today's episode of Weight Loss and. We hope you enjoy diving into the world of Weight Loss with us.

Holly Wyatt: If you want to stay connected and continue exploring the ands of Weight Loss, be sure to follow our podcast on your favorite platform.

Jim Hill: We'd also love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, or topic suggestions by reaching out at [weightlossand.com](http://weightlossand.com/). Your feedback helps us tailor future episodes to your needs.

Holly Wyatt: And remember, the journey doesn't end here. Keep applying the knowledge and strategies you've learned and embrace the power of the and in your own weight loss journey.