From Tuesday's post:
Really?
Dumbest piece of advice in a weight loss tips article: "Get new friends. If your friends prefer pizza, wings, nachos and beer on a regular basis, find one’s who are like-minded and want to be healthy. Research has suggested that friends enhance (or can hurt) success."
Really? This is what you suggest? Really? First "friend" to go is this writer.
This is what I see right with this advice: If your friends make your life miserable, then you really do need new friends.
That's it.
I've written and deleted several paragraphs, several times. Why is this such a huge trigger? As I type I find myself becoming angrier and angrier.
The writer is a narcissist. Their way is the right way. Do what they tell you to do because they know what's best. People are expendable. No, the writer didn't suggest that people should be permanently done away with, but they did state clearly that people are interchangeable and that friendship is all about eating and nothing else. What other people do is why you're having a problem. Such a narcissistic thing to say.
Actually, I feel really sorry for this writer. If that's how they see people, then how sad for them. They don't really understand friendship and probably don't really have any friends.
Had I read this article a few years ago, I would have trashed the whole thing as nonsense because of this one glaring red flag of narcissism. I'm able to be more discerning now. I'm able to pick out what is good and recognize what is unhealthy.
No, I'm not saying eating pizza, etc, on a regular basis is healthy. It isn't. However, the food choice is not the problem here. The writer is advising others to ditch friends because of their food choices. Following the path the writer has laid out to it's idiotic conclusion: I'm allergic to bran. All my friends like going out to eat and regularly order whole grains, be it whole wheat, oatmeal, brown rice, etc. So, I should ditch them... I'm going to end up with no friends.
What the advice should have been: If your friends like going out for pizza, etc, then find something healthier on the menu. Exercise some self-control and don't match them bite for bite. Grow a backbone, accept personal responsibility, and find alternatives that work for you.
Friends want to gather together; what do they do? Somewhere in the mix is food. Food is great for bring people together. It's an ancient tradition to break bread together. It isn't a bad tradition. Treating it like it's an unhealthy tradition is ridiculous and quite frankly unhealthy.
Oh. This is leading to a whole new post of its own. :-) How fun.
I like where this is going...Oh and I agree. That's a bullshit thing to write. I do agree that if your friends don't support you it can be hard to maintain those friendships. It gets tiring defending your eating choices over and over again but then again are they true friends to begin with if they give you a hard time at all? Can't wait to read more!
ReplyDeleteExactly! True friends may good-naturedly tease you because they're uncomfortable with the change, at first, but they support you. If they're out to sabotage you, then they aren't friends.
DeleteActually there is some research that indicates that your social milieu affects your diet and exercise habits. I.e that friends tend to reinforce one another's habits and hang out with people whose habits are similar to theirs. The media presented this as "obesity is contagious" or some rubbish, but there was legit research behind it. (This is also true of other behaviours. It boils down to "birds of a feather flock together".) I wouldn't be surprised if that is where this writer got it from and then presented the idea in a really hamhanded way. Plus, there are such things as toxic friends who will try to sabotage one's self-improvement efforts, whether it is diet or something else.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, just another perspective.
I agree, Anonymous. I appreciate that you brought this to the table because it allows me to tackle a huge hot button for me, but not here. I find myself running off in tangents. :-)
DeleteSuffice it to say, I agree that the friends who make you miserable are toxic and needed to be let go, but basing the definition of toxic on what someone eats is a setup for failure. As I said in the post, the eating habits are a symptom, not the core problem.
Thanks for your comment.
But the writer didn't say one should define a toxic person by what they eat. The writer's topic was *weight loss* and advised becoming friends with people who have healthy eating habits. This is pretty standard advice for a variety of issues. E.g. if you want to save money, it doesn't make sense to hang out with spendthrifts. That doesn't mean the spendthrift is a toxic friend.
DeleteYes, the topic was weight loss, and the writer chose a poor sound bite. "Get new friends." Still a dumb piece of advice. Why not "Choose to be healthy?" or "Change eating out habits" or even "Cut eating out."
DeleteI objected to the writer placing the blame on friends.
What kind of person blames their friends for their problems?
They aren't really friends, then, are they?
Friends watch out for each other and want the best for each other.
If a "friend" doesn't want what's best for you, then yes, you need new friends, but again, I said that in my original post.
And since you've now also brought up spendthrift, the question begs to be asked: Do you really make friends for what they can do for you? Take a class. Now, you may make friends in the class with the same interests...
We may be arguing semantics, or we may have different definitions of friends. I disagreed with the writer's definition of friends being interchangeable and if they're flawed in the same way you're flawed, then you need to dump them.