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Betrothed Canadians might want to add gym memberships to their gift registries if the latest findings on marital weight-gain are any indication.
According to a study presented this week at the annual meeting of the Obesity Society, there's scientific basis to the old yarn about marriage making you fat. Obesity researcher Penny Gordon-Larsen reports that recently hitched men and women in their late teens and early 20s gain more weight on average over five years than their single counterparts in the same age group.
A typical married man packs on 30 pounds during that period, compared to the 24 pounds amassed by his bachelor buddies. Wedded women incur a marriage penalty of 24 pounds, compared to the 15 gained by singles in the same age bracket.
"Weight gain doesn't occur in a vacuum," says Guy Faulkner, an assistant professor of physical education and health at the University of Toronto.
"Rather than just focusing on individual change, we're now seeing research that looks at the ways that social context promotes obesity... As this study suggests, it's not just one person that gains weight. It's the whole family unit, or the couple."
Common-law relationships gave men a reprieve from newlywed poundage, with the average cohabiting guy gaining the same 24 pounds over five years as single men. The same was not true for women, however, who accrued an average 18 pounds over five years when living with a lover -- three more pounds than their single girlfriends, but still six less than if they had legally tied the knot.
The findings are based on data from nearly 8,000 subjects in their teens and 20s, including a sub-sample of 1,200 couples.
According to Gordon-Larsen, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, contributing factors to newlywed weight-gain include having children, cooking bigger meals, having less time to exercise and not feeling the same incentive to be thin as when dating.
Faulkner says the results lend further support to the idea that expanding waistlines are socially contagious. "If we're married and overweight, we tend to have married friends who are also overweight because we have similar norms," he explains. "People of similar backgrounds and interests connect and reinforce one another's sedentary behaviours."
Joel Rivero, a lab technician from Edmonton, gained about 20 pounds within three years of getting married at 25 -- far less than the average, but enough to inspire a change of eating and exercise habits for the better.
"When you're preparing for marriage, all you think about is losing weight before the big day. You don't think about keeping the weight off afterward," says Rivero, who now runs marathons to keep fit.
"The next thing you know, you're looking at an old picture of yourself and going, 'What the hell happened?'"
By Misty Harris, CanWest News Service
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