A weighty new study released last week suggested that if you can’t make your podgy friends purge, you might have to purge your podgy friends. Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that having a portly pal increased a person’s chances of becoming obese by a whopping 57-percent. That’s right, the weight of your friend Jim matters more than how much weight you lift in the gym.