Going to the gym? Well, don’t forget to bring your friends. Exercising with a friend or family improves weight loss claims a new study.

Professor Shiriki Kumanyika and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, conducted the two-year trial where it included 344 men and women.

The volunteers’ goal was to achieve and maintain a 5 per cent to 10 per cent weight loss. The volunteers were educated about healthy diet and physical activity, given pedometers and enrolled in exercise sessions, reports The Telegraph.

A total of 63 people enrolled in the program alone and 281 enrolled with a friend or family member.

The groups were split into three sections, those who trained alone, those who had a partner that received little coaching and those who were with a friend who also had a high level of coaching.

Their progress was then measured at intervals of six, 12, 18 and 24 months, according to the research, published in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine journal.

After analyzes, researchers found that the participants with a partner in the high support group lost the most weight at all the measurement periods.

Kumanyika said: “We evaluated family and friend social support as a specific cultural adaptation strategy.

“Beneficial effects on weight loss were linked to actual rather than assigned partner participation and to partner success in losing weight.

“Further studies may elucidate ways to facilitate effective family or friend participation and to improve absolute weight losses.”

Weight and health are strongly related to each other. Disease risk goes up slowly as weight gain pushes you out of the healthy weight range and into the overweight range. Your risk of disease and death increase significantly if extra weight puts you in the obese range. One study reported that obesity in middle age reduces life expectancy by seven years.

The list of weight-related diseases continues to grow. Increased weight raises blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides) and blood pressure, which are heart disease risk factors. Weight gain impairs the body’s ability to handle glucose (blood sugar) and contributes to a prediabetic condition called insulin resistance. Other medical conditions that are associated with increased weight include certain cancers, osteoarthritis of the knees and other weight-bearing joints, gastrointestinal tract disturbances, interrupted sleep and sleep apnea, and reduced fertility. To date, obesity has been linked with more than thirty medical conditions.

As weight goes out of the healthy range, risk increases for
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Stroke
• Diabetes
• Several forms of cancer
• Metabolic syndrome (Syndrome X)
• Gallbladder disease
• Gout

It is not just big gains that carry ill health effects—the consequences of gradual or modest weight gain add up quickly. Even 10 or 20 extra pounds increases the risk of death among adults, as shown in a large study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.A recently published study found that just a 5% increase in the BMI over time had a negative impact on simple body functions like walking. Research on women, weight gain, and cancer found that women who gained 21 to 30 pounds since age 18 and were not on hormone replacement therapy were 40% more likely to get breast cancer than women who had gained no more than 5 pounds. The risk increased as the women’s weight increased. Similarly, another study found an 8% increase in the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer for every 11 pounds gained.