A recent study has suggested that you need to stop hanging out with people who are obese and hang out with people who are healthy if you want to lose weight.
Professor Kylie Ball, from Deakin University in Australia, who led the research team, said these findings suggest that healthy behavior may be contagious.
From in.news.yahoo.com:
The researchers tested the extent to which a fashion for healthy behaviour among a person’s friends and family could influence their own lifestyle.
The women who took part in the study were asked to rate how much they agreed with statements such as “I often see other people walking in my neighbourhood” and “Lots of women I know eat fast food often”.
“The importance of social environmental influences on health-promoting behaviours such as physical activity and healthy eating has been increasingly recognised,” Ball said.
“Ours is one of the first studies to demonstrate the association of both social support and social norms with physical activity and eating behaviours.
“The potential to modify social norms as an intervention lever for promoting increased engagement in physical activity and healthy eating is worthy of further investigation,” she added.
These findings have been published in scientific publisher BioMed Central’s open access International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.
Tags: healthy behavior, healthy eating, lifestyle, lose weight, physical activity



