How Your Friends Make You Fat
Your Social Circle Can Cause Weight Gain (or Weight Loss)
Jul 27, 2007
Friends affect more than "just" your attitude, mindset, and goals. Friends make you fat, happy, sad, or even sick. Luckily, friends can also help you find your healthy weight.
How Your Friends Make You Fat (Weight Gain is Socially Contagious)
In a recent study of friends and weight gain, Harvard and University of California (San Diego) researchers discovered that you have a greater chance of gaining weight if your friends have gained weight. Weight gain is "socially contagious" (your friends make you fat) because it spreads from person to person in a group of people.
If your friend becomes obese, you have a 57% higher chance of gaining weight yourself. If you have mutual friends who are obese, the likelihood that you'll veer from your healthy weight is 171%.
Your family doesn't affect your weight gain the same way – nor do roommates. It's friends in particular who can help or hinder as you find your healthy weight.
How Friends Make You Fat
"It's not that obese or non-obese people simply find other similar people to hang out with," says Harvard professor Nicholas Christakis. "Rather, there is a direct, causal relationship."
Geography doesn't even play a role: even if friends are 500 miles apart they can influence you to gain weight! Even if you have different lifestyles, environments, and habits – your friends can still make you fat.
"What appears to be happening is that a person becoming obese most likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate body size. People come to think that it is okay to be bigger since those around them are bigger, and this sensibility spreads," says Christakis. Your friends make you fat because you perceive their weight gain or loss as normal and acceptable.
If you're hanging out with people who are gaining or losing weight, then you'll unconsciously adopt the same attitudes. If your friends don't mind being obese – or mind it but don't attempt to lose weight – then you'll start thinking the same way. When you think about it, it's easy to see how your friends make you fat.
How Your Friends Make You Fat: Your Social Circle Affects Your Food Intake
Your friends influence you when you're deciding how much to eat, how much to exercise, and how important (or not important) weight loss or weight gain is. Your friends make you fat or thin not by forcing you to eat or exercise, but by making their own thing normal.
How Your Friends Make You Fat: Your Social Circle Can Cause Weight Loss, Too!
It works the same way with weight loss: eating healthy, exercising regularly, and losing weight is also affected by your social circle. If your friends are healthy and fit, you're more likely to find your healthy weight and stay active, too.
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Source: Science Daily
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