My Friends Made Me Do It

The rising obesity rate in our country is a cause for concern. I heard of a husband who asked his wife, “Have you seen my belt around the house?” She said, “You mean it will reach around the house now?”

Expanding waistlines have led to the introduction of all kinds of diets. I recently heard of the chopstick diet. Using this diet you can only eat the amount of food that you can balance on one chopstick. On the other hand, I heard of the “A” diet. On this diet you can only eat foods that begin with the letter “A”–for instance, a piece of pie, a bowl of ice cream, etc. This latter diet is very popular.

Although more people are overweight, being overweight is frowned upon in our society. Erma Bombeck always struggled with her weight. As she prepared to attend a high school reunion, she made it a matter of prayer. She prayed, “Lord, if you can’t make me thin, make my friends look fat.”

Many studies have been done on the problem of weight gain. The newest one points to our friends as being part of the problem. A study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that your friends may be more important than your genes in determining whether you gain weight. The study, which followed a group of Americans for more than three decades, found that a person’s chances of becoming obese increase dramatically after a close friend or relative fattens up. The study speculates that the reason is the spread of norms from people to people. People change their minds about what constitutes an acceptable body mass as their close friends gain or lose weight. The study concluded that people’s chances of becoming obese increase by 57 percent if someone they consider a friend becomes obese.

Now, what are we to make of this? It offers strong corroboration of what the Bible teaches and what we have always believed. Your friends have a powerful influence on your life. That influence can be good or bad, and it affects a lot more than your weight. It influences your sense of values and your ability to live the Christian life. If you are always around people who model an immoral lifestyle, it becomes increasingly difficult to know what is a Christian lifestyle and to practice that lifestyle.

Paul warned that we must avoid being conformed to the world. It is far too easy to allow the world to force us into its mold. Instead of yielding to that external pressure, Paul said that we should be shaped by an internal dynamic. He said that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

When George Burns celebrated his 100th birthday, he was asked if there were any advantages to being 100 years old. He said, “Yes, one of the advantages is that there is no peer pressure.” During most of life there is considerable peer pressure. Not only do our peers influence our weight, but they also influence even more important areas of our lives.