Your BFFs can help you lose weight
Picking the right friends to dine with can help keep your weight in check.

Your BFFs could make an impact on the way you lose (or gain) weight. Depending on their eating and exercise habits, they could very well put you on track to being slimmer and fitter. Here’s how to capitalise on that friendship:

If you’ve got a friends with healthy diets, eat out with them

And let them order first. Their calorie-conscious choices will rub off on you. That’s according to a US study, which found that when people eat together at a restaurant where they have to say their order out loud across the table, they tend to make similar food choices. And it’s the person who orders first who has the most influence. So eat breakfast with a friend who loves egg-white omelettes and it’ll make it easier to forego that bacon.

Join forces with friends who are trying to lose weight

Support from your social circle makes you 20 per cent more likely to hit your weight-loss goals. Don’t have any “real-life friends” trying to change the number on the scales? Then go online. Friendships made via internet-based weight-loss communities are just as effective at helping people lose kilograms and the more online friends you connect with, the better. People with more than 10 online weight-loss buddies lost more than eight per cent of their body weight over six months, which is three per cent more than people with only one or two connections.

Spend time with friends who enjoy exercising

Women mimic the exercise behaviours of the people they socialise with, finds research from Deakin University in Australia. This means healthy lifestyles really can be contagious. Plus, if you actually join your friend for a fitness session, you’ll enjoy it more. Research proves that compared to working out alone, doing it with a BFF means you’ll be happier at the end of it as a result.

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Text: Bauer/Good Health/Karen Fittall
Photo: 123RF