Do Our Friends Impact Our Health?
Good morning to you. Today, I'm gonna say it's more important than ever to be a light to not just yourself, but to your friends. Do you know why it's important that we show other people in our close knit friendship groups so that change can happen, that we can do it slowly, steadily, permanently. Right? Why is this important?
Speaker 1:Why should we be the light? Because the quote that Jim Rohn said was you are the sum of the five people you spend your time with. Right? Now this research by this Nicholas Christakis, MD PhD Sociologist said that if one person in your network gains enough weight to be classified as obese, your chance of developing obesity increases by fifty seven percent. And that's not just your friends.
Speaker 1:So friends of friends of friends all has a knock on effect. We may not even know the people in our last group, so the friends of friends of friends, but if they if they have obesity, your chance of having obesity goes up by ten percent. Right? That sounds nuts, but there's a video and I'll share it if you wanna when he goes over the research. Now, it's important to realize the social influence and actually, just because other people can influence us, why don't we become the strong anchor?
Speaker 1:We can influence them. Now you're not gonna influence them through talking. Doesn't work. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna lose weight.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. I'm doing this. La la la.
Speaker 1:It doesn't work. All of you know this doesn't work. But when they start seeing results in you and it takes time and they go, you know what? We have a fine left to gonna admit. Right?
Speaker 1:Admit that this person has lost weight. They've kept her off. They're smiling. They're happier. They're smashing it.
Speaker 1:Now it's time to actually ask them what they're doing. Now I'm influenced. I'm influenced by action. And if we can see this then, what this does to us is if you notice your why, you might be something maybe some people's whys are quite quite thin where, you know, I wanna look good on holiday. That's never gonna be long term.
Speaker 1:If your why can be something strong, like I wanna do this for my family long term health so I can go on holiday, can go and walk around town without being out of breath all the time, I could do this. But actually, my friends need me. If we play that game, my friends might need me. My friends might need that light in the group is gonna help them push forward and be healthier. And actually I can't do that with words.
Speaker 1:I can't logically tell them to do this. I must be the light for them. And if I can be the light for them and 57% increase for someone being obese, you being obese in your close knit group, then if you're doing the right thing, the turtle method, whatever it may be that's similar, you will eventually rub off on them and they might then be transformed. Now all of us here who have done a transformation, who are living healthy lives happy, there is no doubt we've had friends come up to us and ask us what we're doing, I've made fair play, you're doing amazing, la la la. So we're inspiring all the time, where we are influencing our circle all the time.
Speaker 1:And I think if we can realize that we influence our friends we care so much about because we are voluntarily being in a friendship with them. It's not like family bond or whatever. We like these people and we want them in our lives. Then if we can sense that we can change their lives through our own actions as well, that's another set of accountability, I think. 100%.
Speaker 1:So it's an interesting study. And they looked at the study looked at basically CrossFit members and who they worked out with and then people who are closer to them. And it wasn't really about the CrossFit people to change their behavior, it was more the people they they had deeper connection with who trust who they trusted, who not weren't necessarily in the CrossFit gyms. You might say, I'll go to gym and I'll be inspired by those people in the gym. Right?
Speaker 1:But that's not how it works. You are mostly inspired by those people, those friends that you trust and look up to and in your close group. They might not even train themselves, but they might be like, do know what? I'm I I don't believe in this working out game. I wanna go and enjoy myself fully and have a few drinks, enjoy my life life short.
Speaker 1:And because you trust them and you have a good strong connection with them that might rub off on you and you might think that's a way of life and then just be going to the gym once a day with these people is not going to do it. But we can all be those people in the group. That's what I'm saying. That's exciting. That's very exciting.
Speaker 1:The research was obviously limited like most researches. It was self reported data. It was a small study, but it it does show that one person and that the people they influence can have a huge domino knock on effect, that's important. And also mentioned about the importance of having a training log as a useful tool, so in the app if using a turtle app there is a training log in there, when you trained, what time, what did you do, you know, the intensity of additional notes. Just having those in there and then at the weekly review, we're telling you how many training sessions you did that week is, you know, reminds you of your goals, it looks like your engagement in the workouts, proof of your workouts and achievement, growing sense of confidence.
Speaker 1:You can do these two, three workouts a week, may maybe more. Right? And you'll see that, you see the numbers. Wow, I did two hundred and twenty one minutes of workout this week and my intensity was like seven out of 10, you know, and you can see these correlations to the data. Right?
Speaker 1:And then the study looked at when it comes to health, all relationships matter, all of it. So they looked at another study as well, a 2016 study that showed the people who had more close knit relationships, more friends who lived nearby, and a larger and more interconnected social network were more likely to be physically active and eat vegetables even if individuals within the network didn't do those things. The above finding relates to the importance of what we call social health. So while people with strong relationships and bonds may be more likely to thrive and though than those with weak and toxic social connections. So those with weak and toxic social connections might suffer from depression, have higher risk of premature death and may experience intense discomfort.
Speaker 1:In the book we just read in Book Club, Play Well With Others, it showed that you can be lonely with loads of friends that are very, shallow. And loneliness doesn't mean you're not loneliness doesn't necessarily mean that person's alone. It means that you have got a sense of kind of purpose with people, a sense of what's the word? Sense of tightness with people. So that's the most important thing.
Speaker 1:How how good are relationships you have? Because all we are, if you think about it, we are just the relationships with things. You are nothing without relationships with things. If you had no relationship to people, things on your own on a planet and there's nothing there, you don't exist. You basically don't exist.
Speaker 1:There's nothing to you. The way we learn about who we are is obviously through how we look at the relationships we have with things. Now we can do this every single day. We can look at the relationship we have with food for first first and foremost. The only way you can notice your relation with food, you can't really look at it looking backwards because that's skewed by memory, but you can look at your relationship moment to moment with food.
Speaker 1:When a craving arises, can you watch what just happened or just is happening? The thought, you know, the trigger, all our stuff. Your relationship when you're eating something you feel is bad, look into the mind what's going on there, and you will learn a lot about yourself when you look into these things. If you can be aware and do those things, if you can eat mindfully, you can see where these things prop up. You can see that just these memories popping up saying that's a bad food, you're gonna get fat.
Speaker 1:And you look at it and you go, it's a bad food, you're get fat, that come from past diet culture or magazine or someone saying to me. And then you can see where it's propped up from. It's not a fact at all. It's just a random thought coming into your head. So when you look at your relationship with food, can learn a lot.
Speaker 1:You can look at your relationship with the people in your life, you can learn a lot, of course, like you look at how you are reacting or look at how you are treating your close friends, strangers, people who are rushed, even when you're rushed you can see a relationship there with different things. So you've got the people, you've the food, you've got work, you've got the relation with the gym. Are you always negatively approaching the gym? Is the relation with the gym a bad one because you can't be bothered? Or is the relationship you got with the gym a good one?
Speaker 1:A really good example of this is people's relationship with run with running changes a lot, right, over time. So people will be like, I'm not a runner, my relationship with running is terrible, I hate it, I can't do it. And then I do a few more runs and the relationship with running is more so running is my is my friend, it makes me feel free, mental health, so the relationship changes. So the only way to look to understand all these things is to like be really aware at the moment and I'm not saying you have to be like completely in the zone twenty four seven, but if you wanna start learning about yourself, the only way is to look at your relationship with things day to day. So you can start today with food.
Speaker 1:Like I mentioned on the radio last week, like if you wanna see what your relationship with food is like, always have a notepad with you and write down those automatic thoughts and feelings that arise and potentially the feelings turn into like strong emotions and write down all the details about it, like where you were, what happened, what did you see, what did you smell, why did you think that, where's that thought come from, you know, how did it make you feel, all that stuff, you write it down, and then after a day you can have all this data of in the moment thoughts that it will trigger you, and then you can start learning why does that thought happen. And if you remember the thought comes from memory and memory is you know stored experiences and all that stuff, you start to put the picture together. You know most of these beliefs aren't factually correct, they're not based off research, are based off nonsense social media magazines and stuff like that, but as long as you take these thoughts as facts as opposed to these thoughts are just a product of my memory. Right? Then you can think about the thought which is slightly different, you can actually start critically thinking about the thought, but most of us in the moment don't critically think, we think through with emotions heightened or hate ourselves negative think in, and then that random memory that says that that Mars bar is gonna make you fat and you've just eaten a Mars bar therefore you are now fat, go why am I so fat, why am I such it.
Speaker 1:And that will take that feeling of eating a Mars bar into a full blown emotion and then potentially self sabotage. Now can you see the the the chain? If you see the chain, the chain can stop, but you can't stop the chain if you don't see the chain. Most of us don't want to see the chain. We don't wanna know who I am, think what I am la la la.
Speaker 1:But honestly, for me is a breakthrough. If my memory, if my thoughts come from my memory, it's just a mechanical thing, it's a mechanical process. Didn't get it for a while and I was like actually it is, it's just my random thoughts, these 90% of my thoughts just randomly popping into my head from past experiences, me walking about the same things I'm seeing and the same triggers happening in the mind. But then if I take any of those seriously, or if I start fighting any of them, then that creates a real struggle in the mind as opposed to just looking at what's happening, you know. So that's it really, like if we look at recapping this podcast episode, it's about understanding that having one person in your group that comes to the level of obesity can will there's a lot likelihood that if you trust that person and they're really close to you, that it's gonna impact you and your eating, but we can flip that and we can be the light.
Speaker 1:We can be the people that look up, they look up to us even as our friends or family, if you've got kids, all our stuff are hugely important. So can you see the importance of that? Log in your training is very important. Do it in the app so you can see at the end of the week how many minutes you've done and all this stuff, and that's gonna motivate you to do more training or at least stick to the training plan. Right?
Speaker 1:Social health matters, how good are your relationships right now? If you're feeling lonely, it doesn't necessarily mean you're not surrounded by people, it might in fact mean you are surrounded by people, but there's no meaningful connection going on. So can you start looking at your social health? Like are you spending time with the people you care about? Are you making plans with them?
Speaker 1:Are you putting your career ahead of everything, which might be the wrong move? It might be that you need to you need to stop spending every single night on the career or working away flat out and actually look at social health properly and importantly and like where can you fit in your friends and family to give time because time cannot be paid back. So that's the most important thing you can give someone. Right? So you're giving them the time means you care.
Speaker 1:So the meaning is there with the time. So that will improve your overall health as well. So when you look at total health, social health is a big factor behind it. So make sure that you do look at that today. And then you're you are who you are based on all relationships.
Speaker 1:All your relationships is things and people, that is who you are. So if you look at how your relationships arises and the the actual relationship you have healthy, unhealthy, all the stuff, we can start putting together how you are, how you are. Does that make sense? So you can start with food, you might start with your relationship with the gym and training and all that is a negative one, your relationship with certain people, what pops in your head and just take a notepad or a journal and start writing down in the moment, not looking back in the moment and then you can start seeing where your your relationships are formed and in that scene of those things you can maybe make changes and improve those relationships and you can start there and let me know how you on. But as always, live one day at a time.
Speaker 1:Enjoy the heat. Stay safe. Put your feet in water apparently is a good way to cool down. Put your feet in cold water. And we got our three week mental health challenge starting, August 1.
Speaker 1:It was gonna be short fifteen minute workouts in the morning with followed by a five minute stretch, followed by all of us going on the macros app and putting our daily morning entry in as an important part of it. And then turtle radio will remain, then a weekly, every weeknight 7PM, I think that's gonna be the time we're gonna talk to a different expert on psychology and mental health so we can cover different topics. Obviously, you don't have to do everything as always the turtle, but the option is there. A lot of podcasts to listen to whilst you're walking, so happy days. Now enjoy your day, get your one big thing done, use this as a prompt, I'll speak to you tomorrow.
