Sitting down to have a bite to eat with friends and family is a common occurrence for most of us. Eating is a social experience, and many of our days are filled with fun, food and people — but they’re also filled with carbohydrate-laden dinners, sugary cookies, cakes and pies, and lots of fat. Are your food-centered hangouts causing you to pack on the pounds? Research shows that when you dine with another person, you consume 35% more than you would alone.
You can change your lifestyle to include activities that don’t revolve around food or you can identify those friends that influence your bad diet habits and take the necessary steps to prevent peer pressure weight gain.
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Food Friend: The Comfort Queen
You just lost your job. You broke up with your boyfriend. No matter what the crisis, your best pal can see you through — usually over a pint of mocha fudge ice cream or a package of chocolate chip cookies. “Guys have drinking buddies when they’re depressed; women have eating buddies,” says Daniel Stettner, PhD, director of psychology at UniSource Health Center in Troy, Michigan. “Unfortunately, what should be a supportive relationship turns into a situation where both women enable each other to eat — and eat and eat.”
Step away from the table: Instead of self-medicating with food, do some cardio. Thirty-minute aerobic workouts three to five times weekly for three months reduce mild to moderate symptoms by nearly half, finds a study from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Sign up for a Spinning class or start training for a 5K, and invite your friend to join you. In addition, stop the graze-and-gripe fests. If you need to spill, do it over the phone or when the two of you are on a power walk.
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Food Friend: The Party Girl
Your phone rings at 5 p.m. after a crazy day at the office. It’s one of your buds, suggesting you both blow off steam by meeting at your favorite watering hole. Three margaritas, a heaping plate of nachos, and an order of chicken wings later, you head home feeling ill.
Blame Your Friends For That Belly was originally published on blackdoctor.org
