Probably not surprising to anyone who’s ever grappled with weight issues is this week’s finding from the New England Journal of Medicine that obesity spreads through our social connections, especially those of close friends. The researchers note:
A person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57% if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given interval.
Among pairs of adult siblings, if one sibling became obese, the chance that the other would become obese increased by 40%.
If one spouse became obese, the likelihood that the other spouse would become obese increased by 37%.
While of course you can’t blame your friends for being overweight or grappling with eating issues, it does seem that there is a friendship- and close relationship influence that should be taken into account when trying to lose weight. The researchers attribute this finding to a social contagion — that seeing others overweight makes it seem more okay. This makes sense and has a rich history of peer-influence research to back it up.
The researchers further suggest that if a group effect is helping to influence a person’s eating behaviors and making it seem acceptable to overeat, then perhaps group treatments (such as group psychotherapy) may be one way of combating this.
Is this result really surprising? People smoked because other people smoked and made it seem both cool and acceptable. People do drugs for much the same reason. People get up and dance when they see others get up and dance. And I’ve never been to a dinner with friends where if one couple was having dessert, the rest didn’t follow with their own dessert orders.
(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)
Loading ...You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Links to This Article
To gain The Weight? Your Friends Blame | Latest news about herbal remedy (7/26/2007)
5 Comments to
“Gaining Weight? Blame Your Friends”
Blame lack of self control and an appetite than nothing satisfies. Lack of caring about one’s body and keeping it healthy and slim.Lack of caring about wasting food and the energy needed to produce it.Lack of caring about the hungry people all over the world.
Inability to feel shame for the exta pounds we carry and that it is an indication of a careless attitude to the world and the people who live in it.
Gluttony used to be a sin which means wrong to do.
The extreme consumption of food and bad food actually is an epidemic.
Making exception for those who suffer from a gland disfunction or other disease it is a shameful action to overeat.
Thank you so much, Dr. Grohol. I just love how you’ve now equated being overweight as something on par with problem drinking, smoking, drug use, and other “vices/sins” (yes thank you also for the enlightening comments “Lee in the US”).
Obviously Dr. Grohol and Lee have never had to grapple with obesity, or else the topic would have been subjected to a more sensitive consideration of the phenomenon. I’m fairly disgusted with you for this, Dr. Grohol. Being overweight and not being able to control your eating should not be seen as “socially unacceptable” any more than any other mental disorder is. Should we now say that being depressed is unacceptable, too? That having schizophrenia is a condition that brings shame and burden to everyone around us?
Has it ever occurred to either of you that obesity can be influenced by things besides being unable to control one’s “greedy impulses” and rationalizing an increased caloric intake?? What about injury, depression, psychotropic antidepressant/anti-psychotic medications, contraceptive pills, all of which pack on the pounds faster than a “lack of willpower” ever could. Obesity comes part and parcel with the TREATMENT of many mental illnesses, and so many mental health patients end up trading one stigma for an even worse one.
Please keep your bigoted attitudes within your private life, Dr. Grohol, as you do your profession a disservice by sanctioning this sort of attitude toward people who struggle with their weight in a public blog. I don’t think I’ll be returning to read any more of your comments.
And Lee - there’s a place for people who are as intolerant and bereft of compassion as you - and it’s not above you, it’s below.
If you think drug or alcohol abuse is simply a vice, then you’ve never been to a rehab program. They are both classified as mental disorders, so my comparison to them was as other mental disorders, not as “vices.” And only to illustrate how there is an existing behavioral precedent for this research finding.
I mentioned nothing of it being social unacceptable, but only commented on the research findings of this study. The rest of your comment appears to be driven from something other than this blog entry, since much of what you accuse me of saying, I didn’t say.
The keywords, one could say, in Dr. Grohol’s blog are “overeating” and “ordering desserts”. One is free to interpret and distort at will, of course, but reality is what it is and can only be accepted as such.
Especially if one takes such words out of context of where they were used. The eating desserts phrase was used in a list of anecdotal examples of where friends or peers influence our behaviors.
And yes, overeating is one of the causes of obesity, sorry to say.
Join the Conversation! Post a Comment:
Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 26 Jul 2007
