Ha, i came across this random article while sufting the net.
Pretty interesting.

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Friends Can Make You Fat! Is Obesity Contagious? Next Article >>

An interesting twist regarding the "obesity epidemic"...obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, researchers just recently reported. When a person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight as well.

A study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved a detailed analysis of a large social network of 12,067 people who had been closely followed for 32 years, from 1971 until 2003. The investigators knew who was friends with whom, as well as who was a spouse or sibling or neighbor, and they knew how much each person weighed at various times over 30 years. That let them examine what happened over the years as some people became obese. Did family members or neighbors grow fatter also? The answer, the researchers report, was that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. that increased a person's chances of becoming obese by 57%.

The influence of the friend remained even if the friend was hundreds of miles away. The greatest influence of all was between mutual close friends. The same effect seemed to occur for weight loss, the investigators say. But since most people were gaining, not losing, over the 32 years of the study, the result was an obesity epidemic.

According to Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a doctor and professor at Harvard Medical School and a principal investigator in the new study, one explanation is that friends affect each others' perception of fatness. When a close friend becomes obese, obesity may not look so bad.

These findings, according to the researchers, can help explain why Americans have become fatter in recent years. In effect, each person who becomes obese was likely to drag some friends with them. Their analysis was unique because it moved beyond a simple analysis of one person and his/her social contacts, and instead examined an entire social network at once, looking at how a person's friend's friend's friend's, or spouse's sibling's friends, could have an influence on a person's weight.

This may mean that something in the environment seeded what many call an "obesity epidemic", leading a few people to gain weight. Then social networks let the obesity spread rapidly. It also may mean that the way to avoid becoming obese is to avoid having fat friends.

The calculations show that, on average, a person who became obese gained 17 pounds, and the newly obese person's friend gained 5 lbs.. But some gained less or did not gain at all, while others gained much more.

The data Dr. Christakis needed was contained in a large federal study of heart disease, the Framingham Heart Study, which followed the population of Framingham, Massachusetts. The study's records included each participant's address and the names of family members. In order for the researchers to be sure they did not lose track of their subjects, each was asked to name a close friends who would know where they were at the time of their next exam, in roughly 4 years. Since much of the town and most of the subjects' relatives were participating, the data contained all that Dr. Christakis and his colleagues needed to reconstruct the social network and follow it for 32 years.

Many say the findings is are groundbreaking, and can shed new light on how and why people have gotten so fat so fast. However, Dr. Stephen O'Rahilly, an obesity researcher at the University of Cambridge, said the uniqueness of the Framingham data will make it hard to replicate new findings. No other study that he knows of includes the same kinds of long-term and detailed data on social interactions.

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Aww. this is so sad.
No wonder i am losing friends.

But on the other hand, if its true, its good too.
It just means that standing beside them wont make me look as fat.
Cause of the lesser contrast.
Hahaha!

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The 12 Types of Emotional Hunger

By: Dr. Roger Gould, M.D.

Below are the 12 types of emotional hunger that fuel emotional eating. In order to lose weight for life, you will have to conquer all 12 types. Look over the list -- which type of emotional hunger derails your diet?

Type 1. Dulling The Pain With The Food.

If you get really hungry when you feel angry, depressed, anxious, bored, or lonely, you suffer from Type 1 emotional hunger, and you use food to dull the pain that these emotions cause.

Type 2. Sticks And Stones May Break Your Bones, But Cake Won't Heal What Hurts You.

According to Dr. Gould and Mastering Food, if you react by getting hungry when others talk down to you, take advantage of you, belittle you or take you for granted, then you suffer from Type 2 emotional hunger. You eat to avoid confrontation.

Type 3. A Full Heart Fills An Empty Belly.

If you crave food when you have tension in your close relationships, you suffer from Type 3 emotional hunger. You eat to avoid feeling the pain of rejection or anger.

Type 4. Hate Yourself, Love Your Munchies.

If you tend to become hypercritical of yourself, if you label yourself "stupid," "lazy," or "a loser," you have Type 4 emotional hunger. You eat to "stuff down" self-doubts.

Type 5. Secret Desires Have No Calories.

If your hunger gets activated because your intimate relationships don't satisfy some basic need like trust or security, you suffer from Type 5 emotional hunger and you use food to try to fill the gap, according to Dr. Gould and Mastering Food,

Type 6. Forty Gulps And The Well Is Still Empty.

If you eat to make up for the deprivation you experienced as a child, you have Type 6 emotional eating.

Type 7. It's My Pastry, and I'll Eat If I Want To.

If you eat to assert your independence because you don't want anyone telling you what to do, you have Type 7 emotional hunger.

Type 8. I Can't Come To Work Today--I'm Eating

According to Dr. Gould and Mastering Food, if your appetite kicks in when you're faced with new challenges--if you use food to avoid rising to the test, or to insulate yourself from the fear of failure--you have Type 8 emotional hunger.

Type 9. Aroused by Aromas, Not by the Chef.

If you stuff your face in order to avoid your sexuality-either to stay overweight so that nobody desires you or to hide from intimate encounters--you suffer from Type 9 emotional hunger.

Type 10. I'll Beat You With this Éclair.

Emotional eaters often eat to pay back those who have hurt them, often in the distant past. They use their bodies as battlegrounds for working out old resentments. If you do this, you're really battling type 10 emotional hunger

Type 11. Peter Pan and the Peanut Butter Cookie.

If you eat to make yourself feel carefree, like a child, you have Type 11 emotional hunger. You eat to keep yourself from facing the challenges of growing up.

Type 12. That Stranger In Shorts Wearing Your Face.

If you overeat because you fear getting thin, either consciously or unconsciously, you have Type 12 emotional hunger.

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I think that i am suffering from nearly all the 12 types of emotional hunger.
Haha!