This summer, we learned some enlightening and also depressing news about weight gain. An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine claimed that fat friends can make you fat, even if you live thousands of miles away from them. Now comes another study that adds another confusing caveat to the whole subject. If you hang around thin people who overeat, you’re likely to copy them, too, concludes a recent article published in the Journal of Consumer Research. For those of us trying to watch our weight, who can we break bread with?
The first study about overweight friends got so much attention that it was seen as an important example of the emerging science of social contagion in which people “infect” one another with their good or bad behavior, in the same way a virus spreads. It is a commentary on friendship as much as weight gain; we mimic the people we know and love. But the second study suggests another powerful factor that doesn’t include that same footnote on friendship and love. Subjects in the study tended to mimic whatever the size zero woman in their midst was doing. The point is that we care so deeply about body image that we lose sight of our own cravings and appetite signals. The even more unsavory message is the strong prejudice young women have against their overweight peers.
In the “fat friends” study, researchers looked at the social ties among the 12,000 participants of the Framingham Heart Study over three decades, and found that a person’s chances of becoming fat increased 57 percent if they had a friend who had gained a significant amount of weight during a given period. How that happens isn’t clear. Do fat friends share more unhealthy food? Give each other permission to make another round at the buffet?
However, the “thin peers” study suggests that others influence what we eat based on how they look. Researchers at the University of British Columbia wanted to observe whether women would adjust their snacking behavior depending on whether the person next to them was thin or obese. In a series of experiments, 210 college undergraduate women who mostly had a normal body-mass index were told they would be participating in a study about movie-watching. During the fake screening, they were paired with a hired actress posing as a fellow student, and offered granola or candy. The actress, who was 5 feet 2 inches tall, weighed 105 pounds, and wore a size zero, always helped herself first. When she took a large portion, the majority of students copied her, regardless of whether she took the healthy or unhealthy food. But when the actress wore a fat suit, which made her look as if she weighed 180 pounds and wore a size 16, the students generally consumed a much smaller amount.
The conclusion: Women look to one another for social cues about eating, yet they take into account body size, adopting the behavior of the person whose physique they admire and distancing themselves from the behavior of the person they don’t. “They think, If the [thin person] eats it, so can I,” says assistant marketing professor and lead author Brent McFerran. “But if the person is heavy, they think, I better not eat so much.” Therefore, a person is more at risk of eating too much when she is around a thin person with a big appetite.
Sarah Elizabeth Richards is the author of Motherhood Rescheduled: Five Women, Five Quests to Stop the Biological Clock to be published in summer 2010. Get the latest by joining the mailing list at www.motherhoodrescheduled.com.
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Comments
I'm not fat but I have a weight problem
By: getadavid.com | Mon, 10/12/2009 - 12:56
My problem is not what I weigh but how I view myself. I can look back at times when I have been "thinner" and know that I never thought then that I couldn't look better. Looking at those pictures I only wish I had appreciated my body's look and more importantly it's strength at that point in time.
I'm learning to accept my body as it is today. I am also focusing on making it stronger. It's a process like everything else I'm going through these days. I just wrote about how I think we should get rid of our scales. That thing seriously does me more harm than good. If you are interested you can read it here: Ditch the Scale
www.getadavid.com
I'm fat, but healthy
By: Drie76 | Fri, 10/09/2009 - 12:46
I'm fat. I know it. I eat healthy and exercise (walk 2 miles/day, 5 days a week, and practice yoga 1-2 times a week), but not enough to shed the unwanted pounds. For my 5'10" frame, I'd love to weigh 175, but I'm currently hovering around 230. The thing is, I'm healthy. I've had my cholesterol levels checked and they always come back in an excellent range. Same with a diabetes check. Samy with my thyroid. My heart is doing well. I don't eat a lot of unhealthy items, but my body is one of those that really can support the extra weight. I'm so tired of fat people being blamed for bad food choices or taxing the health care system.
I appreciate this article. I know there's no magic bullet when it comes to weight loss. I'm trying to just be positive about myself, and forget the rest of you who are going to judge me by my weigh alone.
self control?
By: LindsayDianne | Wed, 10/07/2009 - 18:33
We always see these studies focused on finding the answer to our obesity issues....
I want to see a study that shows self control is the only thing that's going to help you lose weight.
I know you don't want to do it, but if you don't you're not going to lose weight. So everyone just has to get to that point where they either realize this or they don't and they die of heart disease.
Thyroid, Shmyroid!
Mindfulness
By: glowend | Wed, 10/07/2009 - 16:20
I've been overweight ever since college. When I was 41, I decided to go on a diet by calorie counting. I ate whatever types of foods I wanted, but on a weekly basis I could exceed a certain number of calories. I'm 5'9", used to weigh 210 and was eating about 2600 calories per day. By cutting back to 2000 calories per day I was able to lose about a pound a week (a pound of weight is roughly 3600 calories). I'm now 43 and I weigh 170. In order to keep my body burning calories I also exercise for 15 minutes a day (more now that I weight less)
Ultimately, the diet made me much more mindful of what I was eating and disconnected me from the temptation to mimic my peers eating habits. I enjoy those 2000 calories much more and feel that blood sugar is much more stable. You don't even have to be that accurate in assessing the caloric value of foods, just consistent.
I think these studies just
By: buggie | Tue, 10/06/2009 - 19:26
I think these studies just show what I've been saying for most of my life: thin people can have bad habits and fat people can have good habits. Thin people can be unhealthy and fat people can be healthy. All of us (including doctors and public health officials) need to STOP blindly using fatness or weight (not the same things) as shortcuts for behavior and health. Otherwise, thin people are going to wind up sick and nonthin people are going to continue to be discriminated against. The fact is that bad habits don't manifest themselves as fat in everyone, and some people who are "fat" have such small bone structures, they go around assuming they are thin and healthy.
In the "fat friends" study, I'm glad they defined fat as people gaining a significant amount of weight over a period of time, rather than just weighing a certain arbitrary amount or having a certain arbitrary BMI. But couldn't the correlation stem from how these people became friends in the first place? If they lived far away from each other, obviously they can't influence each other's eating on a daily basis. Maybe people became friends, or bonded at some point, because they had similar eating or exercise habits OR similar body types. And that's another thing- exercise would have major implications in this- people who like to play sports or run or ride or bikes or whatever probably also hang out with some people who do the same.