09 - Peer Action: Is "Proximity to Thin People Makes You Thin" True?

 Hello, welcome to the "Scientific Weight Loss Course." I am Jessica.

In previous lessons, we've discussed in detail how to establish a

healthy lifestyle, from adjusting diet and efficient exercise to

managing stress and sleep. As the saying goes, "External cultivation

through action, internal cultivation through mind"—we've achieved both

internal and external cultivation.

But I must remind you that when it comes to weight loss, your own

efforts alone are not enough. You've surely had experiences like this—

Yesterday you made a resolution to go for a morning run, but this

morning your mom turned off your alarm; friends around you often

persuade you, "Life is short, you should enjoy it while you can. We

rarely get together, can't we eat something good?"; colleagues are

enthusiastically ordering bubble tea together, and when everyone else

is excited but you say "I'm on a diet, no thanks," over time, people

feel you're not one of them and stop including you in activities...

Humans are social animals. We can't lock ourselves away for six months

without seeing anyone or socializing, then suddenly emerge slim and

attractive, amazing everyone. Weight loss is naturally closely related

to the people and environment around us. Besides self-improvement, we

also need to make major changes to our surrounding environment.

Who Influences Our Weight Loss?

There's a study that began in 1971, investigating data from over 5,000

people, which helps us map the connection between social relationships

and obesity levels.

One obvious conclusion is that there's a clear clustering phenomenon

between obese and non-obese people. In other words, as the saying goes,

"Birds of a feather flock together." In life, we indeed find that fat

people tend to befriend fat people, and people with normal weight tend

to befriend people with normal weight.

Moreover, those who can influence our weight aren't just the people

around us. Let me show you some magical numbers—

> If your friend gains weight, your probability of gaining weight is

45%;

>

> If your friend's friend gains weight, your probability of gaining

weight is 20%;

>

> If your friend's friend's friend gains weight, your probability of

gaining weight is still 10%.

This is the famous "three degrees of influence." In other words, your

friend's friend's friend can also affect your weight.

Of course, from 45% to 20% to 10%, we can see that this influence

decreases as the social circles expand. That is, the closer the

relationship, the greater the influence. Now you can consider who the

people closest to you are.

If this influence isn't used well, it becomes an obstacle, a stumbling

block on our weight loss journey; but if you use it well, even "turning

crisis into opportunity," it becomes wings for weight loss that can

help us reach our destination faster.

Building Your Weight Loss Social Circle

Of course, I'm not asking you to exclude all the fat people around you

from your friend list. As I mentioned, humans are social animals, and

talking about weight loss while divorcing it from social attributes is

completely meaningless. We neither need to confront people around us

head-on nor is it easy to persuade them.

The truly clever approach is to find favorable factors in the

environment, combine them together, and establish a small social circle

that's beneficial for weight loss.

The simplest method is to establish weight loss role models in the

first-degree circle that has the greatest influence on you. The

selection criteria are simple: either they have urgent weight loss

needs like you, or they live healthily and maintain their weight quite

well. As long as they meet one of these two conditions, they'll work.

First to choose are, of course, the family members closest and most

intimate to us.

Family has the greatest influence on people, especially in forming

lifestyle habits. For example, the dietary control we mentioned

earlier—the success of this depends not only on how you choose food on

your plate, but more on how the person who shops and cooks in your

family selects ingredients and bargains at the market, how they cook in

the kitchen, and even how they nag you at the dinner table.

So, choosing this role model is very important. The most suitable

choice is your significant other; of course, parents living with you

also work. If they're not fat, congratulations—you've successfully

found your first role model; if they're also fat, have them listen to

this lecture too and lose weight together with you. Evidence shows that

weight loss with family member participation can result in losing 3

more kilograms.

Next to choose are our close friends.

This friend could be your roommate, a good buddy from college, your

best colleague, a girlfriend you go shopping with, or a dining

companion you have meals with. Find two or more from these people to be

your role models.

You can have meals together, but you all don't mind turning meals into

weight loss meals and will exchange weight loss experiences during the

meal; you can go to the gym together—having someone to supervise is

always better than hesitating alone; you can agree to meet somewhere on

the way to work in the morning and then walk briskly to the company

together; you can also agree to refuse together when colleagues are

ordering bubble tea.

Finally, you can continue expanding by actively seeking circles of

people who are losing weight.

The above two layers of relationships have basically filled the

important points in your life, but there's still some uncertainty. Let

me give you an example—

Xiao Man finally couldn't stand his weight and decided to get a gym

membership near his company for regular exercise. His dining companions

at work, Xiao Yang and Xiao Zhang, were also very enthusiastic when

they heard about it. So the three of them got memberships together,

hired a trainer, and agreed to meet twice a week without fail.

But before even a month passed, Xiao Yang said he was suffering from

severe pollen allergies recently. After pausing a few times, he never

went again; two weeks later, Xiao Zhang got a new project and started

going intermittently, then stopped too. So after Xiao Man went alone

twice, he also stopped going. I'm sure you've encountered similar

situations often.

In nature, there's a very famous phenomenon called "swarm

intelligence." Scientists have found that individual bees are small and

powerless, but when millions of bees gather together, they produce

enormous collective wisdom. In this group, the bees' thinking and

actions are surprisingly consistent—closely following the companions in

front, keeping pace with surrounding companions, and maintaining

distance from companions behind.

Referencing this model, we can also actively seek weight loss social

circles and let others in the circle constrain our behavior.

Finding weight loss social circles wasn't very easy ten years ago. Back

then, we could only rely on small weight loss groups of friends and

family, or traditional offline models like weight loss clubs and

training camps. Today, the rise of social software like WeChat, Weibo,

and QQ makes it easier than ever to find like-minded weight loss

communities. What we gain from them is not just more professional

weight loss advice, not just mutual behavioral encouragement, but also

spiritual support and affirmation.

If your first-degree circle—that is, the weight loss companionship

from family and friends—isn't sufficient or firm enough, you can

consider choosing online communities. It could be a professional

weight loss app, or a weight loss group of three to five friends on

WeChat. In any case, include them in your weight loss social circle.

At this point, we've created the perfect weight loss social circle. On

the weight loss journey, this circle will exert beneficial influence at

various levels of your family, work, entertainment, and even spiritual

sharing.

Making Your Social Circle Support Your Weight Loss

How can you make good use of this circle to support your weight loss?

Actually, you only need to do two things well—

First is immersion—sufficient immersion.

For anything related to weight loss, such as eating, moving, sleeping,

stress relief, etc., spend as much time as possible with your circle's

role models. Put aside your original life concepts, feel, and accept.

In this process, you hardly need to do anything—all changes happen

subconsciously.

For example, you can only see your college best friend once a year, and

when you meet, you find she's lost weight. Although seeing her once

won't directly change your weight, subconsciously, you'll reset your

body standards. After going home, you might still think "she looked

really good," and then you might eat less and exercise more.

Social critic Eric Hoffer once said: "If people can freely choose what

they like to do, they usually imitate each other." Imitation is human

nature; this habit exists in our genes. It stems from both biological

empathy and morality, as well as human social biological

characteristics—what we call "behavioral norms."

The second is active output.

Output what? Output personal sharing. Share your weight loss insights,

progress, failures, and even yesterday's achieved exercise, meals

eaten, unclear questions... anything related to weight loss can be

shared with people in the circle.

Doing this, on one hand, makes you also become a role model, gaining

the circle's approval and thus more firmly changing your body; on the

other hand, active communication also makes this circle connect more

tightly around you.

By achieving immersion and active sharing, we use the Tai Chi principle

of "using four ounces to move a thousand pounds," turning resistance

into motivation for weight loss. If you master this technique well,

you'll approach what the Shurangama Sutra says: "If you can transform

things, you're like the Tathagata."

Most beings in the world generally change with their environment, being

transformed by things; but if one day we can use environmental forces

for our own transformation, we'll generally approach acting according

to our heart's desire.

Key Points

1. When losing weight, don't submit to pressure from people around you,

and don't confront them head-on either. Instead, build a weight loss

social circle.

2. Find one or two weight loss role models each from family, friends,

and online communities for peer action.

3. Immerse sufficiently—try to spend time with role models for

everything related to weight loss.

4. Share actively—share everything related to weight loss with friends

in the circle.