A new study says that social support can help someone lose weight. They claimed that having more connections online can contribute to the success of losing weight. They added that their findings could help battle and curb obesity.
The researchers studied about 22,400 people who are part of an international online weight management program. Among the participants, they had chosen 5,400 people who were part of the program for six months. Also, they had chosen those subjects who posted their weight loss progress at least twice during the study.
They discovered that there is a significant association between the person's weight loss success and his or her social networking practices. For their findings, they found out those individuals who do not socialize or do not have any friends in the online world have at least 4.1% weight loss. However, those individuals who have at least nine friends had experienced more weight loss (5.2%). Subsequently, those who have more friends in social media sites (1,500 members) have at least 6.8% decrease in weight. Lastly, those who are engrossed with social media and has a lot of friends online experienced 8.3% increase in their lost weight.
Obesity has become an epidemic affecting millions of people worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, obese people are those with a body mass index of 30 or more while those who have a BMI of 25 to 29.9 are under the overweight category.
In 2014, around 1.9 billion adults' ages 18 years old and above are overweight wherein 600 million are already obese. Many reports say that around the globe, more people are dying because they are overweight or obese than those who are underweight.
According to Julia Poncela-Casasnovas from the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, "It makes sense that social connectedness is related to any goal people try to achieve. It can be AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), or just joining a gym with friends, or quitting smoking. Any of these behavior-modifying endeavors are more likely to succeed if you have some kind of social support."
She added that in the aim to help people combat obesity, an online weight control system should be introduced and established nationally. In this way, more people have access to these programs which are inexpensive and practical. Also, weight loss success rates will increase.
This type of program would help promote weight loss on a large scale. However, not everyone understands the importance and relevance of this program.
Poncela-Casasnovas reiterated and told Live Science, ""It has been known for a while that in-person support groups and interventions can help with the obesity problem, but it had never been shown before that an online system can achieve a similar thing, but at a way lower cost."
They are recommending people who do not have a lot of friends in the online community to start making friends because of the findings in the study.