Overweight?

Spreading The Fat
(except from Reader's Digest, January 2008)
When one person is overweight, close friends can pack on the kilos.
A recent New England Journal of Medicine study declared that people can actually 'catch' obesity from close friends.
When researchers followed 12,067 people over 32 years, they concluded that those of us with very close friends who are obese have a 171 percent highter chance of becoming obese too. The theory goes: you're influenced by your friends, and if they overeat, you may unwittingly follow their lead. Surprisingly, spouses have less sway over the belly than close friends of the same sex. The good news is that it may also work in reverse. Hang out with thin people and you might lose weight.