According to the story, friends can be a bigger influence than family...BD

If someone close to you becomes overweight or obese, chances are you will too, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine today. Friends of obese people were 57 percent more likely to gain weight, U.S. researchers found. The risk was 40 percent for siblings and 37 percent for spouses. Call it "peer pressure" in reverse! Ann Summers of Charleston has lost more than 40 pounds over the last two years. She's now in a support group, at work, to lose weight, but she says that peer pressure can work both ways. Ann says, "You have a tendency to eat more and want to eat more and they give you recipes and you go home and use them, you bake, you eat more and you put on more weight.

The study found that people who have heavy relatives are 40 percent more likely to be heavy themselves. But if they have heavy friends, they are almost 60 percent likelier to be heavy.

WSAZ - Cover Story

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