with friends like these...

[arguchik]

scratch that previous post (little lolcat pun there). it's neither diet nor regular soda that causes obesity. it's your friends and family.

:::yawn:::

if they ever settle this question, wake me up, ok?

i don't mean to sound all disdainful, but...like...duh. eating is a social activity. if you eat with your family and friends, you will probably be following similar eating patterns in terms of what, how much, and how often you eat. for example, my mother found it impossible to lose weight when she had teenagers living at home. why? because teenagers eat garbage, and they eat a lot of it. our house was always full of soda, chips, cookies, sugary cereal, ice cream, etc.--even if my mom didn't buy it, the shit was always around because we would buy it, and we were constantly snacking on it. once i was in college (i'm the youngest) and started eating with my friends more, and also started eating more healty stuff, my mom found it easier to lose weight.

added later:
but what i really find annoying about all of this is the normative, fear-mongering rhetoric. the NYT article i linked to above actually compares obesity to a virus. it's a contagion, so...like...if you know any fat people, you'd better quarantine yourself so you don't catch it!

gah! our culture already valorizes thin bodies and marginalizes (understatement!) heavier bodies. do we really need to heap more freight onto that dichotomy?

Comments

WTF

[superannuated1l.livejournal.com]

My family members are fat because we share the same fucking genes. My friends are disproportionately likely to be fat for three reasons:

1) A lot of thin people are abusive and shitty toward fat people, and that's really not what I'm looking for in a friendship, thanks.

2) The eating-disordered subset of thin people tend to be almost visibly distressed by fat people, and therefore they don't want to be friends with me.

3) As a fellow fat person, I'm less likely to judge other fat people, and more likely to reach out to them socially. We have something in common.

But yeah, social contagion, lock up the fat people. Boo!

[wondrousbeauty.livejournal.com]

One merit of the article is that it recognizes that habits/commitments are better kept when you feel like you've got company (for instance, a friend who also jogs so you either jog together or talk about jogging). It's not necessarily surprising, because as you said, eating is a social activity in many ways, that people form habits similar to the folks around them--but making this explicit does add some motivation to join some sort of fitness/exercise group (as opposed to trying to go it alone).

Of course, there is the other side of it, which is that you will feel ridiculed or uncomfortably conspicuous in a group setting (regardless of body type)....