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Study Proves Having Fat Friends Makes You Fat
Xemu writes "Having fat friends makes you fat, researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California says after after examining 12,067 individuals and 38,611 of their relatives and friends. In same-sex friendships, people were 71 per cent more likely to put on weight if a friend of theirs became obese. "It's not that obese or non-obese people simply find other similar people to hang out with. Rather, there is a direct, causal relationship," says Harvard professor Nicholas Christakis."
This has been well known since the 80s
Just as people drive SUVs in order to feel safer sharing the road with other drivers in SUVs people gain weight in order to feel safer alongside other people who are big and fat and might otherwise crush them.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Eating is the new terrorist
When they took away my drugs I did not speak up.
When they took away my nicotine I did not speak up.
When they took away my food...
liqbase
it's better than nothing :'(
do phat friends make you phat?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
People's "intelligence" on this issue continues to amaze me. What does AA tell you to do? Stop hanging out with alcoholics because you are more likely to repeat your behavior if you do. What does NA tell you to do? Stop hanging out with druggies because you are more likely to relapse. If you go to OA (Over-eaters Anon.) I'm guessing they tell you something similar.
People follow their peers to a degree. People gain some weight, their friends see it and lose a little stigma of gaining weight, so they do, and the cycle repeats. If you are fat, you are more likely to hang out with other fat people. Thin people are more likely to not eat as much as you. They are more likely to give you a look for complaining about gaining weight while stuffing your face. Other fat people are likely to sympathize with you. After all, to tell you otherwise would be hypocritical (if they don't follow it) or "mean" (if they are working on it).
Do you wonder why when you see families at malls they are usually all thin or all fat? It's not genes. Maybe that contributes some, but mostly it is diet. If the mom cooks healthy most of the time, the family will be exposed to that very often. If the dad exercises a lot, the kids and mom will be exposed to that. If they just buy fast food and junk all the time and snack lots, the kids will learn those behaviors. I'd bet the relation between close relatives in the same house is about the same as the relation between adoptive parents and children. The habits the kids/family learn are a huge part of things.
I've lost a ton of weight. I didn't have a lot of tolerance for this before, and I'm losing what I have. The causes of obesity are not a mystery. They have been known for a LONG time. There are recent things that contribute (fast food, maybe HFCS, etc), but it is still no mystery. I'd peg it at mostly willpower and intolerance of anything that isn't fun or easy or doesn't feel good; an attitude that is becoming more and more common.
Our attitude has changed. Being fat is much more accepted now. People complain about the "unfair standard" on TV, but it's not like you have no choice. I'll agree the near anorexic models are not realistic, but more and more people seem to be moving into "the blob" territory. I've seen more than a few ultra-obiese people on scooters recently, something I don't remember seeing even 10 years ago.
It's people's fault. For most people it isn't fate. I see people who want to lose weight. Lots. Just about all complain. "I can't lose weight." Yet they continue to not exercise (or they do for about a week and then give it up). They either don't change their eating habits, give up the change after a week or two (which actually makes things worse for you), or change to eating "healthy" and end up eating constantly so the calories are just spread out over the day instead of in 3 huge meals. You don't need gastric bypass surgery. You don't need a miracle diet drug. You don't need a new diet food.
To use make my point in an extreme way, how many people in bad POW camps were overweight. How many in areas with food shortage problems? How many people in the old prison work camps or working in coal mines were overweight? Basically none because these people either got very few calories, or burned a ton. Now some of these fates are horrific, but it proves that basically anyone can lose weight. These days there are only a few people who I would excuse from this requirement, and those are some people on very serious prescription drugs that have strong side effects.
What does diet food do any way? As diet food became more common, people ate more of it. Each cookie may have had fewer calories, but a great many people made up for that with quantity. If someone did invent another miracle pill (something akin to Fen-Phen without the problems), I'm guessing most people would eventually start to gain weight again because they would start to eat more later. I think this is just like how many people who pay off debt with 2nd mortgages get back into debt.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
But I have no friends, yet I'm still fat ?
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It's truly dumb to make it sound like you're outraged because the study says your fat friends will make you fat if they touch you.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
This sort of attitude always bothers me.
First,glad to know that you have done your own extensive, scientific study. I guess it is a shame you just have not released it yet. We all await it eagerly, i can tell you.
Secondly, the real problem with the argument that everyone chooses everything they do is that there is some truth to it. There is more untruth, but that sliver is something people gasp and never let go. An example which you will like ignore follows:
25% of the population lack a gene. This lack means that it is harder for them to get enjoyment from smoking. It also makes it easier to quit when they try. By your logic that gene has nothing to do with it and it is merely a choice. However, without knowing ANYTHING else about a group of people except whither or not they lack the gene, i can predict more accurately how hard it will quit then someone who knows nothing. This is not a question of will power but of biology.
People are not created equal, people have different needs and tolerances. Something YOU can control someone else can not. Not because it is a flaw, but because they are not you. You maybe able to eat or not eat as is your whim yet maybe you can not control your anger. We are a messy, wiggly species with the most convoluted lump of matter in the universe between our ears. And you think you control it.
You are not in control of everything in you life, you do not choose to do everything you do. Your heart beats, your feet sweat, your hair grows. People being made aware of the things that shape their lives is nothing but good. People who are social around each tend to do the same sort of things,in a natural and HEALTHY way. This study underlines that.
Your hard line stance is wrong, does nothing to help and merely contains a note of derision and contempt. I hope you learn to accept the things that are beyond your control.
I mod everyone down who says "I'll get modded down for this." I hate to disappoint.
I'm suspicious of this fat-friends-make-you-fat story. Heard 'experts' on radio this morning repeating this story, using words like 'infectious', 'contagious'. Smacks of Sensationalist Journalism, and Susy Public will go away thinking she'll get fat if she sits next to a fat person.
7 /1969924.htm
This on the other hand is a much better story:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/200
It's an interview with Dr Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. He says, yes, we're getting fat, but the question is why our bodies don't enact a defense against this. One of the culprits: Fructose (Corn Syrup) which food and drink manufacturers have been putting in everything. Your body has real problems regulating this. Fructose with Fibre is ok (an Orange), but without Fibre it's very bad (Orange Juice). Apart from the vitamins, you might as well be drinking pop. Very interesting link: transcript and MP3.
Being fat is a choice. You choose to start the day with bacon and eggs, you choose to drink soda and other high-calorie beverages, you choose to stuff those cheeseburgers into your fat face. You choose not to get up off your ass and get some exercise.
Comparing yourselves to minorities who have actually been oppressed is sickening.
"It was a billion times better than cobol, but still really retarded." -AC
That's because us fat people don't walk around. How do you think we got fat?
My brain is overly lubricated
They're arguing that there's a causal correlation -- not that individuals can't excempt themselves from being one of the cases acting in accordance with the trend. It's like as study that says that eating McDonalds once a day makes you fat. To use your logic, such a study would be BS because people who eat McDonalds daily can work out for a few hours and counteract the effect. Obviously, that study would not mean that people who eat McDonalds once a day can't possibly lose weight -- and likewise, this one does not in fact imply that people who hang out with fat people can't lose weight either; in claiming otherwise, you're setting up an intentionally easy-to-knock-down strawman.
As for me, my personal experience leaves me inclined to trust this study's results. When I was in college, I lost a lot of weight without consciously thinking about it (or changing my diet, which was dictated by my personal finances, and thus fairly constant, at the time) when I was chasing after a thin woman, to the point where some ex-roommates referred to me as "half of Duff" when meeting me in the library; that trend ended roughly when our friendship became more distant and I was less focused on getting her attention.
So -- I'm perfectly willing to believe that, in the absence of other factors, hanging out with thin people makes it easier for one to lose weight without making conscious decisions to do so, and that hanging out with fat people gives one a predisposition towards gaining weight. Obviously, neither of these is foolproof -- failing to exercise will have a bigger influence than hanging out with thin people, and planning one's diet carefully will have a bigger influence than hanging out with fat people -- but that's not to say that this isn't a legitimate influence, and well worth knowing about.
Oddly enough, obesity seems to be mostly a disease of first world societies. Could it be that human evolved to live in an environment of scarcity and that in 2-3 generations we haven't yet managed to rewire ourselves to adjust to living in an environment of plenty.
No, the U.S. has been mostly a nation of plenty for a couple hundred years or more. Depending on how you count, that's easily 6-8 generations. Mass obesity has only come in the last generation or so. Most people are obese not because of genetics, laziness, or overconsumption. Most people are obese because for years we've been taught to eat incorrectly and because the quality of our food has taken a substantial decline.
If the obesity problem were simply a result of us not being used to availability of food, we would have seen nearly constant levels of obesity for the past two or three generations. Instead, we're seeing an order of magnitude increase in morbid obesity (>40% BMI) since the mid 1980s. We weren't all struggling to find food in the mid 1980s. If this study were done in the 1950s comparing against the 1930s (Great Depression), I might believe that explanation, but it just doesn't make sense in this day and age.
In reality, the mass obesity problem coincides perfectly with the rise of processed foods. This got worse after the U.S. government started giving huge corn subsidies and putting high import duties on sugar to encourage use of high fructose corn syrup. Fructose is processed by the body very quickly, but does not trigger the same insulin response as glucose. Thus, your body A. does not feel satiated, so you consume more, B. does not gain the metabolic surge that normally occurs in response to elevated insulin levels, and so does not use all that energy, C. stores the resulting excess energy as fat. Replacing that same amount of fructose with glucose will cause a significant weight loss.
Similarly, when your body consumes a large amount of food at once, it can't use it all immediately, so much of that energy gets stored. That's why consuming proteins are better for you than consuming sugars and starches from a weight perspective. Note: you should not eat all protein. You do need other stuff to prevent lots of colon problems later in life, and many sources of protein bring fat along for the ride, which is even worse than (at least complex) carbohydrates.
However, without changing what foods you eat at all, you can significantly reduce your weight by spreading it more evenly throughout the day. Fix yourself a normal lunch, but instead of eating the whole thing, put aside a third of it and consume it in mid-afternoon.
Case in point, I've tried exercise and diet with no success as all. However, I recently lost a substantial amount of weight while consuming substantially more calories than before. I replaced my usual HFCS-sweetened beverage at lunch with an entire extra meal later in the day, drinking only water and fruit juices. I'm guessing I now take in half again more calories, but I weigh ten or twelve pounds less (depending on the mood my digital scale is in) and have kept the weight off for a couple of months now.
Your mileage may vary, but it has been my experience that total calorie consumption is only a very small part of the obesity picture, and not the most important part by any means.
Oh, yeah, and don't get me started on diet sodas. They're even worse than HFCS-sweetened sodas at causing people to gain weight. (Source: University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio.) If you're overweight, switching from "diet" sodas to regular sodas might actually cause you to lose weight.... Talk about false advertising....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Your body can only reduce the metabolism by about 20% (and it rarely ever gets to that point, generally only beneath 10% body fat), but there are post-diet refeeding effects as your bastard hypothalamus likes to maintain a body weight set point (which is actually composed of dynamic factors and isn't fixed, but it's too complex to get into here)
The most difficult thing is always, always the psychological factors. Starvation dieting with minimal protein intake and fruits/veggies etc to maintain lean body mass is actually incredibly effective. However, the adherence rate is quite low. Your brain only has so much self-control, and using self-control in one thing has been shown to diminish it in others in studies, thus making some behavior more impulsive/avoidant, which can certainly cause problems with diet and exercise.
Physiologically though? It can be quite effective. Psychologically, probably quite difficult unless you're railing a lot of coke.
One thing I have learned is that the physiology of weight loss is almost irrelevant; it is all about the psychology. Transforming like of bad food to not like, transforming not like of good food to like, transforming not like of physical exertion to like, transforming like of sedentary activity to not like. But at every turn, the brain itself resists change and makes this a very difficult struggle.
As the saying in KOTOR went, "passion gives me strength." I think passion for what you want, and passion for every step along that path is key, because if you hate it and just want to continue doing what you've always done, you will is going to fail and you won't be able to do it consistently.
But actually creating genuine passion for something you don't like, and diminishing that for what you do like, now that's a bitch.
haha! Eat all you want fatty! Your man boobs give you strength and vigor! Your own body will tell you when to lose weight when you start heaving after the first flight of stairs... it'll give you motivation to gain that muscle but retain that fat for that extra push!! You'll only grow bigger and stronger!! Sure, you'll look better to the little kiddies when you're slim and wirey but that's all bullshit when PUSH comes to SHOVE!!!! C'mon bitch push it further!!!
High fructose corn syrup is definetly part of the problem. But of course, so are portions. "Do you want to make it a mega-lard-ass size for 15 cents more?" A portion of McDonalds fries (regular size) was 230 kCals in the 60s, now its over 400. A chipolte buritto is about 2/3s of the energy a health 20-40 year-old male needs in a day (granted he is the typical office worker who gets 20-30 minutes of excersize 4 times per week).
EVERYWHERE foods potions have gotten larger. Few people realize that A.) It takes 10-15 minutes to feel full. B.) Thirst is often mistaken for hunger C.) What tastes awesome (like McDonalds, candy, steak, etc) isn't an acceptable meal choice. Eat a pack of star-bursts over 2-3 days, not 10 minutes.
Basically, people are either too ignorant, apathetic, or lazy to make good nutrition choices. You really shouldn't even give little kids that much juice, becauses its nutritional content (high simple carbs) is similar to soda-pop.
BTW, all this came from the M.S. nutrition teacher I had last semester.
It's just an easy way to get a general assessment. Body fat percentage, resting heart rate, heart rate during exercise, etc., are much better metrics of one's overall fitness and health.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Depends on how fat they are. Skinny chicks aren't attractive to me. Better for the wrong parts to be a little too big than for the right parts to be too small.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Being fat is a choice. You choose to start the day with bacon and eggs, you choose to drink soda and other high-calorie beverages, you choose to stuff those cheeseburgers into your fat face. You choose not to get up off your ass and get some exercise.
I didn't really "choose" to be fat. I did choose to take medicine whose side effect was major weight gain but the alternative was death, and I'd rather get through the issue and work off the weight later than be worm food. After gaining 110 lbs, I've seen exactly how fat people live life and the work required to get that weight back off.
As a fat person, you can still vote, still have a job, still do generally "everything" you expect. Except be comfortable in airplanes, or ride some of the rollercoasters at the amusement park. Oh, and be listened to as attentively as the thin person next to you. Or be taken as seriously at a job interview as the next thin person. It's subtle but real, and my thin friends don't see it at all. In that way it is similar to being a middle-class black person at a white-collar job.
(Of course the "oppression" isn't nearly as bad as actual black middle class experience these days. But it mirrors the lighter end of it, and for many middle-class white people it's the closest they'll come to it. See Ellis Cose's excellent book "The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why Do Prosperous Blacks Still Have the Blues?" for good discussion covering the entire spectrum of black oppression including the "not being taken seriously" part.)
As for losing weight, once your body has gained a huge amount of weight and kept it on for more than a few months, losing the weight becomes a real challenge. Dieting means not eating with friends and family anymore which here in America means instant social isolation. No more potlucks at church, no more barbecues, and no more food at parties. Your life is literally: work, exercise, count calories, and find individually fulfilling things to do in the 2 remaining evening hours of the day while your friends are out having a life.
Exercise also requires a lot more thinking than most people are used to. For instance, if you weigh more than 300 pounds you simply cannot run or use a stairmaster machine because you risk permanent knee injury, and you cannot really "walk" on the treadmill either as that doesn't burn enough calories to benefit you. However, you can use an elliptical trainer, stationary bike, and punching bag to kick the heart rate up. A personal heart rate monitor only costs $70 and goes a long way to ensuring the workout intensity remains high.
Losing serious amounts of weight requires the kind of dedication we normally associate with martial arts. A fat person who is seriously losing weight (and I've lost 30 of my 110 extra pounds so far) needs to know as much about fitness as an amateur bodybuilder. It requires money to buy healthier food, gym membership and/or personal training, and equipment, and it also requires enough free time to actually use those fitness resources and shop for food correctly. Finally, it requires a lot of not fucking caring about the world because even your closest family might not notice the first six months and 30 pounds and you'd better stick with it despite all the negative reinforcement around you. The world will always think I suck (because I "chose" to eat crap) until that magic moment I stop looking fat and people start seeing me as a real person again.
Having been in the fat shoes, I have a lot more sympathy for people who have little free time and money and aren't quite introverted enough to handle the social isolation.
Comparing yourselves to minorities who have actually been oppressed is sickening.
Now that's rich: here on Slashdot, the enclave of middle-class white privilege, we're finally told that minorities really are oppressed!
The study is talking about probabilistic causation.
= 300 about indeterminism= 228 about causal analysis
Read on wikipedia about regression, gaussian distribution (central limit theorem) and explained variance and it should become clearer.
A good book about causal modelling is: http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-2K/
It's not like we experience determinism in the real world. here are two of the many papers patrick suppes wrote on this topic:
http://suppes-corpus.stanford.edu/article.html?id
http://suppes-corpus.stanford.edu/article.html?id
Not being a minority did stop women from being treated that way for millenium...
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that fat people are th elast socialy acceptable peer group to abuse. The main reason for this is because it is perceived to be a lack of will power or moral fibre that got them that way in the first place.
I am ALL FOR making fat people feel pressure for being fat. I am fat myself so you might wonder why I say this... when I was growing up in the 1980s, my elementary and middle schools participated in all of those fuzzy feel-good programs like "DARE To Keep Kids Off Drugs!", various sex-education programs, and of course the self-esteem building programs. I think the most damaging thing ever taught to me in school was that "It's OKAY to not conform to the ideals of beauty! Be happy with your own body!" We were given books filled with fat girls and boys and adults and told "There's nothing wrong with being fat! Don't make fun of them for who they ARE!" and all that.You know what? Being fat is not okay. It sucks. It ruins your youth (and I'm sure the rest of your life too). If you are fat, try to change. Don't accept it and feel good about your body. Lose that weight and THEN feel good. That stupid self-esteem program should have said "You can lose weight! You don't have to be trapped under 40 extra pounds of fat!" That's good self-esteem.
Yes, some people have medical problems that cause them to be fat. You know what? I feel sorry for them, just like I feel sorry for people who have lost a limb. If there is no possibility for them to lose weight, then obviously you shouldn't make them feel bad about that. But I don't celebrate it. It's horrible to take that tiny exemption and apply it to all fat people, because you are helping to ruin the lives of people who do have a choice.