The other day, a friend of mine asked me a question as she was preparing a health class for her students:

What do you think makes the biggest impact on your health: Your genes, your lifestyle choices or your environment?

I quickly jumped to “lifestyle choices”. Yes, your genes and family history may impact things about your health that you have little control over, but with a healthy lifestyle and conscious choices, you can lower your risks significantly. Same with your environment. You may not be able to control the amount of pollution in your city, or whether there’s a suspicious chemical lurking in your coffee mug, but you can make up for those things with regular exercise and a healthy diet, right?

I still think that lifestyle choices make the biggest impact on one’s health, but in the past month or so I have realized how much your environment in terms of the PEOPLE you surround yourself with can have a huge impact on your health and how easy it is to stick to the decisions you know are best for you.

Many of us know that loneliness and boredom can lead to “emotional eating”, and some of you may be lucky enough to not fall victim to that impulse, but for me, it’s nearly impossible. In the past year and a half or so, as I have reflected on my happiness and healthiness levels in different situations, there is definitely a correlation.

In times of feeling stressed out, bored, unhappy, or lonely, I have a significant tendency to overeat or reach for comfort foods to fill that void. If I’m feeling happy and surrounded by people I care about and who I know care about me, healthy food and exercise feels more like a nice thing to add into my day rather than something I dread and then counteract immediately with junk.

My first home stay was good, and I wasn’t unhappy there, per se, but I don’t think I realized how lonely I was feeling until I switched families. My firsts hosts were extremely nice, good people, but their alternative schedule (eating dinner at midnight, staying up until 4AM on a regular basis, and not getting up until 4PM) left me sleep deprived and spending many, many hours alone and bored. Combining their schedule with how difficult it has been to make friends here led to lots of Netflix binges accompanied by my dear old buddies – potato chips, chocolate, and way too much pasta. The fact that vegetables were a rare component in their daily diet definitely didn’t help things, either.

My new family has a more conventional schedule, eating dinner around 8:30PM and going to sleep by 11. We eat regular meals with a great balance of vegetables, meat and starches, and they love to be outside and take advantage of the awesome outdoor activities that this amazing city offers. These basic shifts in my mini “environment” have made a HUGE difference on my overall happiness and wellness in the three short weeks since I moved. I feel lighter, healthier and more balanced. And since I’m surrounded with positive company (yet still have a good share of alone time), I haven’t had one chocolate/wine/potato chip overdose extravaganza in my time here, a major improvement from how I was spending many Friday nights in my previous apartment. My first hosts’ insane nocturnal schedule only fueled the fire on my lifelong habit of staying up too late for no logical reason. Now, since the whole family has gone to bed by 11pm, it makes me go to bed significantly earlier, too, realizing how ridiculous it is to stay up until 2AM on a Tuesday night.

Obviously, YOU and you alone are in charge of your own eating, sleeping and exercise habits, but being surrounded by positive, balanced and organized people who share your goals and outlook can make it SO much easier to stick to healthy choices.

This will be one of the many factors I will be consciously examining when I move back home in a few short weeks and begin building my life again from scratch. Those who you spend time with DO impact your routine and your choices more than you may realize, so its good to keep that in mind when you choose to spend time with. If you surround yourself with positivity, you may find yourself emulating those good vibes more than ever before.