Friends Help You Recognize that it's Okay to Be Fat

[bcholmes]

It's not that people who are overweight or obese seek each other out, but rather that friends are growing fatter together.

"What appears to be happening is that a person becoming obese most likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate body size. People come to think that it is okay to be bigger, since those around them are bigger, and this sensibility spreads," Dr. Christakis said.

— "Are your friends making you fat?", The Globe and Mail

Comments

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

I look at that and wonder how much is socializing and "acceptance" of body size, and how much is actually that people that associate a lot tend to be of the same economic class, and therefore tend to eat the same kinds of things. Eighty years ago, the rich had cream sauces and butter for their bread while the poor lived on subsistance farmsteads and ate mostly fresh veggies, and now the poor get to eat peanut butter sandwiches and Kraft Dinner instead of chicken breasts and out-of-season fruits.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

the study apparently says that a far away but close emotionally friend influences you more than your partner, who in many cases you live with.

i'm just all excited because the first person who mentions this study to me, i'm gonna rub myself all over, since the headlines are all "fat is contagious" and not mentioning how they think it works.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

If it's contagious, I want to hang out with her (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kightp/881074473/in/set-72157600944963148/).

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Hey! I mentioned it to you! Are you gonna rub yourself all over me?

<eyelash flutter>

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

How about the second person? Hey, Betsy, there's this study in the newspaper that says fat friends make you fat....

<waits hopefully for a Betsyrub>

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm being cynical, but I find it hard to believe that it's that friends are helping each other feel okay about being fat.

What I would find more plausible if we need a causal relationship here is that people go on crash diets together and the cycle of yo-yo dieting causes everybody to gain weight.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that you're going to get a lot of people who read this comment mentioning this study to you.

Speaking of which, I heard about this study that claims that fat is contagious...

[silentq.livejournal.com]

Huh, the Framingham Heart Study data is in the process of being added to an open source data base that I work with (nbirn.net). It's interesting/scary how innocent data can be used by the media. *wry smile*
I was a bit surprised by the statement that 59% of Canadian adults are over weight (esp. after spending a weekend in Montreal and noting how healthy everyone looked), but then realised that they're probably using BMI which puts me at the low end of overweight. It would be so so simple to add a flag for activity level and adjust the ranges to better account for muscles versus fat.

[lcohen]

does this smack of "knowing about gay people causes people to be gay because they think it's okay" to anyone?

i think i do carry myself around like it's okay to be fat, the nerve of me!

[okoshun.livejournal.com]

I mentioned it first. I think she should rub herself all over me first. :)

[redbird]

Either they're barking mad, or they've decided that Quebec isn't really part of Canada (which I very much doubt is within their authority).

[I'm also just back from Montreal, and it seemed to be full of healthy, cheerful, mostly relatively thin people. Maybe it's all that good food.)

[hazelsteapot.livejournal.com]

Can we not imply that fat is unhealthy? "Scientific" studies and weight guides about fat and health are really written in the service of fatphobia, and reflect the prejudices of the authors more than reality...

[silentq.livejournal.com]

I wasn't implying that fat was unhealthy, just that fatty tissue is less dense than the equivalent mass of muscle tissue.

[hazelsteapot.livejournal.com]

I was referring to hearing that people were overweight and being surprised 'cause people looked healthy. "Overweight" people *are* healthy.

[silentq.livejournal.com]

I think that you're making erroneous assumptions about my definition of healthy.

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I've always been, at best, on the "overweight" borderline by BMI since I first saw tables, even though I wasn't really close to overweight at those best times. I've got a lot of muscle mass, and as a result I weigh more than most people my height who are moderately active. But in the last couple of years my metabolism has gone out of whack, and in trying to adjust I did put some fat on. But while my weight would put me at "obese" or "morbidly obese" on the BMI charts, I'm not close to that.