A study eliciting the behavioral patterns of girls trying to lose weight revealed that peer pressure is an important factor in determining weight control behavior.

The researchers employed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which includes a countrywide sample of adolescents in grades 7 to 12 in 132 middle and high school.

Girls with the same Body Mass Index or BMI, studying in the same school were found to share similar weight control behaviors. The majority’s influence was seen to affect most girls.

The study supported the view that schools where the average BMI was high had girls who were less likely to take to weight control. On the contrary, there was a greater propensity to find average weight girls who tended towards losing weight, in schools where the number of underweight girls was high.

Lead study author Anna Mueller, at the University of Texas at Austin, evinces that weight control behavior of girls is more complicated than it is perceived to be. Patterns in different schools vary, with students in each school perpetuating a different body image.

Mueller says, "What our findings showed was that girls were more aware of what others like them were doing".