In motivational talk, who you surround yourself with determines what type of person you are. If you want to be rich, surround yourself with people who constantly think of ways to create wealth and ideas for their businesses. It goes the same for weight.

Now, an article in the BBC according to this blog says that if you hang out with friends who are overweight constantly, there is a high chance that you will have problems losing weight.

Let’s look at it from a practical point of view. If you mix with them frequently, you will probably be having meals together. The pressure of not eating when your friends are ordering huge meals will be there. They will also try to get you to eat because they are extremely hospitable.

From a dietary point of view, if you are on a diet, looking at the food will simply trigger off the salivary glands and you can actually put on weight without eating because of the chemicals that are released in your body.

It might be a little surprising to know this, but there are societal reasons for this. If your family or friends are overweight, it is likely that you are in certain economical or environmental situations that do not allow you to eat healthily.

In the past, when people are really poor, you will not find many fat people because they do not have much to eat. At the same time, they are not in sedentary jobs. Many of the work hard labour, so they burn off a lot of calories.

Now, people may be richer, and a large number have access to better food and in greater quantity. However, the rich are no heavier than those in lower economic status. This could be due to fast food as they do not learn how important nutritional values are.

There are many complex reasons.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 9:31 am and is filed under diet, psychology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.