Want to Exercise More? Make it Social

One of the most common tips forstaying motivated to work out consistentlyis to have aworkout partner谁使您负责并保持您的公司。好消息是伴侣可以是虚拟的。Researchers note that there’s an easy hack when it comes to staying on track: Tap into your community.

A recent study in Nature Communications looked at data from a five-year timespan, with more than a million people in a global social network of runners, andfound exercise is “contagious”因为在小组中的动态。研究人员指出，那些受到网络中其他几名跑步者的鼓励的人更可能不仅增加了运动的持续时间，还可以增加距离和步伐。

您如何将“社会传染”理论付诸实践？考虑以下策略：

Although it can be helpful to recruit a friend as a gym buddy who’s at the same level as you are, it’s even more effective to hang around with those you feel are more accomplished, the recent study found.

“不要害怕将自己与您认识到经验丰富的人，具有良好的职业道德，并且拥有您渴望获得的技能。”30 Minute Hit。“We become what we surround ourselves with. If you’re next to a person who never quits early and does that one extra rep, you’re more likely to do that yourself.”

她补充说，这也可以转化为您的在线社区（您好，Instagram）。跟随谁庆祝他们的胜利可以使您感到更有动力。

六个月来，来自40个城市的约600人参加了一项体育锻炼计划，以进行一项名为UP的研究。所有这些都被归类为超重或肥胖，并选择了他们的daily step goals。They were separated into four groups, with one focused only on personal goals and self-tracking with wearable devices, while the other three were set up with different types of game strategies.

一个小组有一个指定的领导者提供鼓励，而另一个小组则更加协作，三人团队共同努力以取得更多积分。第三组更具竞争力，三人团队相互竞争。

After six months, it was that third group who came out way ahead. That group increased its activity by 920 steps more than the control group, and was hundreds of steps higher than the support and collaboration groups.

但这是比赛结束三个月后的登机手续表明competition can fuel motivation。尽管挑战已经完成，但这些参与者的每日步骤仍比对照组多近600个步骤，而其他两个小组的步骤计数下降了。

“This shows that efforts to increase physical activity are more likely to succeed if they combine the use of a wearable with an effective behavior-change strategy,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Mitesh Patel, MBA, director of Penn Medicine’s Nudge Unit. “That includes friendly competition, telling others in a group about their goals and accountability from that group when goals aren’t being met.”

Social connections can yield benefits beyond amping up your fitness goals, too. Tapping into online communities can help you feel like you’re not alone when it comes to food tracking, sleep, work stress, even how relationships might be affecting your healthy habits.

For example, MyFitnessPal has a robust online community, with users talking about everything from weight-loss plateaus and macros to strategies for losing stubborn belly fat and using the app for more features beyond food logs.

Much like the advice to gravitate toward people who are closer to the goals you want to reach, surrounding yourself with others who have similar nutrition habits can be helpful, too.

According to arecent study, people tend to eat based on their对社交媒体网络中其他人的饮食方式的看法。If you think others are all aboutmeal prep，蔬菜和瘦蛋白, that’s likely how you’ll eat, too, according to the study’s co-author, Lily Hawkins of Aston University in Birmingham, U.K. And if you think all your friends and acquaintances are indulging in junk food, you’ll likely be more tempted to stray in that direction.

“The main message here is that social media may be influencing our eating habits more than we think,” says Hawkins. “Because of that, we may want to think about what we are posting online since this could be influencing other social media users’ food choices.”

Social media, in-person connections at the gym and online communities can all boost motivation, but when used incorrectly, they can also be de-motivating, says Dreger.

“You know you’ve gone overboard in the competition department when you start feeling discouraged,” she notes. “That means you’re doing more comparison with others, rather than competing with them in a healthy way. That’s a slippery slope.”

最终，她建议，您唯一真正的竞争就是您自己，而您唯一的目标是成为您最好的版本。但这并不意味着您必须一个人到达那里。