“Show me who your closest friends are, and I’ll show you who you are,” is one saying that runs rampant in my family.

Well the same adage applies to almost every aspect of our lives it seems. A new research study has found that after comparing students of two high schools, students who tend to hang out with heavier friends ate more, compared to students who were leaner often had friends who lost weight.

The Huffington Post examines the study, which was published in the Journal Public Library of Science,

“They found that overweight students who had lean friends had a 40 percent chance of dropping weight within a year, versus only a 27 percent chance of gaining weight during that time. But if borderline obese students had obese friends there was a 56 percent chance that they’d gain weight during the year, and only a 15 percent chance they’d drop some pounds.”

I often notice that trend among friends, when one is gung-ho about a fitness, he or she can often bring others in as well.

What do you think? Do birds of a feather flock together?

around the web

2 Comments

  1. I find this to be very true!. I consider myself fairly healthy and compete in fitness competitions regularly. However, if I’m around friends or family who are going to town on fast food or heavy southern foods I can’t help but partake. I think the best thing to do if you’re trying to lose weight is to have your food program written down and plan ahead for social occassions where people might tempt you with high calorie foods by filling up on lean protein before you get there.

  2. I find this to be very true. though I am the heaviest of my friends we all often in the past would spend time together over meals every week, from appetizer to dessert. Now we all take a zumba class together. This has cut down our eating out get together to about once a month! Instead of catching up over a meal we meet up for class and talk in between catching our breaths during class lol

Leave a Reply