The bad
As a kid you may have heard your mother saying thousands of times, “If all your friends were to....would you do it?” The honest answer is: probably. There is a lot in psychology about conformity and doing whatever a group goes, but does the health of the group also rub off?
The closest friends in our lives have a tremendous impact on how we live. If you have an overweight or obese friend you are programmed to find that weight as acceptable and will probably gain weight. Then you gain weight and that becomes acceptable to someone else, and eventually the waistlines are expanding and everyone sees that as normal because of the spiral created within friends. This spiral effect is felt throughout society. The closer the person is, the more accepting we become.
The best example of this is when you are out to dinner with someone who eats and eats, you probably are able to eat more and not feel bad about it. Meanwhile, if you are out with someone healthy, you will tend to eat less. This might be a slight cue, we need to watch who we are around and be aware of what is happening in the world around us.
The good
The change
The change is the simplest of all. When you go out into the world, do not judge. Be aware that most people are unaware that they do not blend into the environment as it should be, but instead the overweight population has identified with each other into a subculture. The power of individuals to change a group needs to happen, bring people out of a subculture and into the healthy life of the mainstream.