Friends influence your weight gain more than siblings or partners says a new report from the New England Journal of Medicine. Medical sociologists from Harvard studied a network of more than 12,000 people for 32 years and found that the chances of obesity increased by 57 per cent if they had a friend who also become obese.

Although we often assume our partner’s diet has the biggest effect on our weight, researchers found that the chances of weight gain for people with an overweight husband or wife increased by only 37 per cent.

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