By LEE BOWMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
If you're trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, you need to watch the company you keep along with the calories you consume, researchers are finding.
Using computer model simulations of social structures, scientists at several Colorado universities looked at how people's family and social circles can influence their weight, for bad or good.
"With a few exceptions, our research model shows that if you are more likely to go have a beer and pizza with your friends than go for a bike ride or hike, you'll eventually become overweight," said Raymond Browning, a professor of health and exercise science at Colorado State University.
"How you spend your social time with friends and family, and their influence on your behaviors, has a tremendous impact on your weight and activity level. That's why most weight loss interventions don't work," he added.
The models show that normal and even underweight individuals who are surrounded by overweight people will eventually become overweight. And they demonstrate how even people who successfully lose weight are likely to put the pounds back on if family and friends are overweight.
However, the power of a social network can also have a positive effect if key people within the network successfully lose weight and maintain a normal body weight while remaining within the social circle. "Those individuals influence their friends to be healthy and active," Browning explained.
The models suggest that having just 1 percent of such "social celebrities" within a community encourage the rest of the group to take part in more active pastimes and veer away from high-calorie socializing could make a difference, particularly if combined with weight loss incentives from employers, health insurers or the government (say, a tax break for lowering your BMI).
With up to two-thirds of Americans aged 20 to 74 counted as overweight and a third as obese by government standards for body mass index, many experts are looking for ways to cure our herd instincts to eat more and move less.
Browning says getting your gang to be more active is crucial for everyone. "You can be lean and inactive and you are at greater risk of death from a chronic disease than if you are active and overweight. I would like to see America focus on our levels of physical activity rather than our weight."
But there's also evidence that the stigma attached to being overweight in the United States can itself pose an obstacle to getting help to change, even from professionals.
One study, published in the March issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, looked at attitudes toward the obese among 182 students studying diet and nutrition.
Researchers found weight bias and fat phobia based solely on the body mass index of patients was common among the students, including beliefs that obese individuals are lazy, lack willpower and are less likely to comply with treatment compared with thinner patients. Only 2 percent of the students expressed positive or neutral attitudes toward the obese.
"These stereotypes are similar to negative attitudes reported by a range of health care providers," wrote co-authors Rebecca Puhl and Chelsey Heurer of Yale University and Christopher Wharton of Arizona State University. "Our findings are worrisome because the quality of patient care can be compromised by negative provider attitudes and bias. There is a clear need to address this in training."
Surveys in recent years with registered dietitians and obesity researchers found similar attitudes.
Puhl noted that when doctors and other caregivers treat obese patients disrespectfully, it leads patients to avoid and cancel preventive care and screenings and leaves them at even greater risk for major health problems.
On the Net: www.adajournal.org
(E-mail Lee Bowman at bowmanl(at)shns.com
