Making friends on the internet can help you lose your weight significantly–sounds weird? Yes, but a new Northwestern University study suggests that those who actively use social media, lose significant percentage of their body weight as compared to those who seldom talk with friends on social media.
The research was published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface in which the scientists has studied a data from the people paying a membership fee on CalorieKing.com, an online place for giving weight-loss tools.
The researchers had access to the age, gender, height, initial weight, and time stamped activities. They had also the right to monitor members’ recorded weigh-ins, fiend requests and the community engagement. But they had no access to the conversations happened between the users.
The researchers observed that the users who recorded their weight and engaged with other members were more likely to achieve their goals of losing pounds.
The most active users lost more than 8 percent of their body weight in a six month period. The least active users, those with the fewest online friends and social interactions, lost around 5 percent of their body weight in the same span of time.
Those with very less or almost having no friends lost less than 3% weight, compelling the researchers to conclude that the engagement plays a vital role in weight loss because it offers an always accessible network of support.
Effectively, they found that members who had friends online, shared updates more frequently, and stayed on the website actively lost more weight than those who didn’t practice socializing on the internet much.
image: reddit
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