How Friendships Change Your Weight

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You are who you surround yourself with. And that includes the people you hang around, the media you consume, the things you read, and the places you go. Your environment has a huge impact on who you are, and it’s worth taking into account.

Our personalities can change based on our environment. We’ll act one way around one group of people and completely adjust when we’re in another environment.

Just think about it…

When you meet up with your college friends for dinner, how did you act? You probably drank a little more than you wanted to and perhaps gossiped about people based on what you’ve seen on Facebook. 

Is this how you normally act? Or did that environment bring out old parts of you that you thought you left behind in your early 20s?

Probably the latter.

The truth is, our environment needs to be cultivated to bring out the best in us to unleash the champion within. We need to be surrounded by others who encourage us to put some OOMPH into our lives and be in environments that push us outside our comfort zone.

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Friends Can Change Your Fitness

Our friends and the people in our lives are a huge part of our environment. Therefore, our friends matter when it comes to our goals – especially our fitness goals. 

Fitness is one of the most challenging goals to achieve because it requires us to go against deeply engrained, ancient motivations. Going against those urges in the modern world is anything but easy.

It’s why we need to set ourselves up for success by creating an environment that’s there to serve our fitness goals… friends included.

Friends can change outcomes in your fitness journey by providing (or denying) strong accountability, tangible support, and an overall lifestyle that’s actually good for you.

However, keep in mind that it’s your responsibility to set yourself up for success. So, it’s important not to rely on your friends to make fitness easy for you. But, you can control your environment to make sure the friends in your life aren’t making it any harder.

Accountability

First of all, any fitness journey requires accountability. And the first place you can look for this accountability is to your friends.

Your friends (if they’re really your friends) should want to support you to reach your goals and can help you be accountable to those goals. 

While there are fitness apps and programs that can help you stay accountable, there’s nothing better than a friend who’s rooting for you every step of the way.

Support

Support from your friends (and we mean real support) is another essential factor determining your fitness success. Even if your friends aren’t on the same journey, they can support you wholeheartedly as you navigate yours.

In other words, if your friends are pressuring you to order pizza instead of the nourish bowl or they put you down for skipping wine with your meal, you should probably reconsider whether they support you at all. 

Of course, there are plenty of reasons for friends acting out – jealousy, resentment, problems of their own – so it’s important to remain compassionate. 

But, take note of these unsupportive actions and if you can, separate yourself from that friend if you want to stay in the best mindset for success.

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Lifestyle

Last but not least, if your friends live unhealthy lifestyles, it can be incredibly hard to manage your own fitness goals. Friends who are partying every weekend and who never go to the gym probably aren’t going to understand your choice to make a change.

Long-lasting fitness starts with a truly healthy lifestyle, and often, friends can hold us back from the lives we truly want to be living.

Again, navigating friendship can be tough in the best of times. But, when you make a big life change, it’s common to lose friends along the way. 

However, it’s also common to make friends whose values align more with yours. That’s why we’ve built a community within the OOMPH app to help you make new friends and feel supported by like-minded people throughout your journey. 

Our environment shapes us. Our friends shape us. So, pay attention to who and what you surround yourself with. It truly matters.

 


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