3.7. Influence of Others
SAID
Participants reported that social influences from friends, family, and others had both a positive and negative influence on their ability to reduce indulgences. Participants reflected that others were supportive of their attempts to change their behaviour and held them to account if they were perceived to be consuming too much. “And it was like, normally once or twice a week, on the weekends I treat myself. I like cheese, but my daughter keeps telling me, “Mum, you’re only allowed two slices”. [laughs] “Now go away”. Or [pause], and I find it hard, and I love blue cheese.” Female, 60 years. There were also examples shared of the positive impacts of participants influencing others to change their behaviour and engage with the intervention. As one participant explained:
“I actually got my flatmate onto it as well. I just said well we’re going to go, and this is what we’re going to do for the next eight weeks. And they lost 10.5 kilos.” Male, 33 years. One positive influence mentioned was having young children within the house. Parents exert a level of control and responsibility over their children’s consumption, which meant that they tried to keep these foods unavailable in the home. Additionally, as the children were not consuming any indulgences, this made the adults reflect on their own behaviour:
“Really, the house is very healthy because of the young kids; they don’t get chocolate, they don’t get McDonald’s, so as long as I’m home I’m like, “Yeah, okay,” I won’t drink any beer, so I haven’t been drinking beer, so I haven’t been socialising. It’s pretty healthy. A bit boring.” Male, 42 years.As noted above, accessibility reportedly affected consumption; however, this also interacted with social pressures or expectations to consume indulgences. One example included the challenges of social expectations:
“And it’s interesting, like, you have, kind of find yourself in certain situations where it’s expected. Like, it’ll be, I was at work the other day and there was someone’s birthday, so we’re having cakes and stuff. And I just got handed a plateful of cake. And it would have, kind of one of those situations where it would have been rude not to have, to have said, oh, actually I don’t want it, and passed it along. Whereas the, one of my colleagues had already snuck out of the room at that point. And I thought, oh, I should have just snuck out of the room and that way I wouldn’t have had to coped with it all. But yeah. So I ate it.” Female, 43 years. 