Apparently birds of a feather really do flock together. New research shows that you're more likely to gain weight if your friends are heavier than you are.
Great. Just what we need, scientific reasons to be shallow.
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Researchers from Loyola University found that you are more likely to slim down or, at the very least, gain weight more slowly if you hang around with skinny friends.
The study published in the journal "PLoS ONE" was designed to figure out why obesity appeared in clusters in social networks. The study looked at two large high schools, calculating the body mass index (BMI) of 624 students at one school and 1,151 students at another. The question was whether growing obesity was due to friends influencing behavior, or if kids seek out friends with like body types. The findings revealed that even when the "friend-selecting process," was controlled, there still was a detrimental link between students' unhealthy BMI and their social circles.
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Turns out if a student was borderline overweight and had lean friends, he had a 40 percent chance of losing weight in the future. But if the student had obese friends, the likelihood of slimming down dropped to 15 percent.
So what do you think? While dropping your heavier friends might be easier than living on lettuce, you might lose your karma right along with those unwanted pounds.
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