The third of July marks a special day for two very dear friends of mine planning to tie the knot in 2009, and TIME magazine’s latest article on [young?] Women’s Health couldn’t have come at a better time for my dessert-loving cohorts.  Rochman, Bonnie.  “First Comes Love, Then Comes Obesity?: A new study links domestic bliss to serious weight gain“.  TIME 06 July 2009: Page 54

“New research shows that within a few short years of getting hitched, married individuals are twice as likely to become obese as are people who are merely dating.”

The article furthers its humor angle by including a picture of an “average” male holding hands with a continually expanding female.  In the end, you have your run of the mill guy and an overweight, or obese, gal.  Which is funny for a lot of reasons, but mostly because this isn’t what you’d expect.  I expect the male to grow and grow and grow, and the female to stay the same.  (And this probably says more about me than it does about married people in general, but it’s my blog, so it should always be saying something about me.)  And if you were to ask my friends entering wedlock, they’d tell you the same.  Dude aspires to become a fat bastard, and she doesn’t.

So, why then does this study claim women will end up the heavier of the two in a couple, and how does it work in a lesbian marriage?  Rochman doesn’t ponder the same-sex issue, but she does provide some theories (not her own) for the former:

• meal time may become more important
• gym memberships may not get the same workouts
• after months of wedding prep, it’s okay to give up or “let go”

These are all very exciting and seem to maybe miss the point entirely.  Sure, eating becomes more important, but isn’t this happy couple eating together?  Are they not consuming the same amount of calories at meal time? And sure, gym memberships are no longer being used, but isn’t the honeymoon period of rapturous love-making compensating for all those lost gym hours?  Walks in the park, Sunday bike rides through the village, and even more happily-married sexing?  There has to be some hint of burning calories to offset the increased importance of mealtime.  Right?  Anyhow, the third point I’ll concede because I have no idea what the pressure’s like to “squeeze into crinolined and cummerbunded finery.”  I usually just get whatever fits and I wear that.

Granted, not every couple is going to gain weight, and not all people are getting married for the wrong reasons.  But having said that, I want to make two more points, and you can do with them what you will.

1) The article makes no mention of the fact that childbearing often comes shortly after marriage, like say in the first few years.  Now whether you’re having children or not, I would argue that a woman’s mind set switches gears at some point into, what we’ll call, nesting mode, which is the period just before popping out a little life form.  There must be some physical change that goes along with that, say, gaining weight, to prepare for the life that will soon be growing inside of her, if it isn’t already.  After the bearing is the rearing — the baby hatches, and said couple burns many calories actively taking a role in parenting and chasing the rug-rat(s) for the following 18 years.  Obviously if you remove this element from the life-path equation, someone could have some extra pounds to carry around.

2)  I maintain that a couple who eats together, sleeps together.  But if meal time is happening alone and more frequently for one than the other, it’s reasonable to assume, as we’re so often told, that she might be using food to drown her sorrows.  Many of us have also been told, or even seen, that marriage and children neither mend nor save a broken, dysfunctional relationship.  (After getting hitched, eating did become more important, but for the wrong reason.)  Film at 11.

At the end of the honeymoon, if your spouse is slowly gaining weight, you either have a problem or you don’t.  In any event, the fact that TIME magazine shared such an article about keeping your new wife skinny makes me wonder why I read the publication at all.  Then I remember it’s because they offered me 80 issues for $20.  Well heck, why not?

And…we wish you the best happily ever after you could hope for!

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Getting Hitched, Become Obese was first posted to justinll.com on July 3, 2009.