Marriage Makes You Fat

Posted by: Cathy Arnst on June 12

While you and your spouse look lovingly at each other across the dinner table tonight, take a moment and look at what’s actually on that table. Chances are you are sharing one unhealthy meal. According to a study in Nature, both married men and women are twice as likely to become obese as the general population. And the longer they live together, the greater the risk.

By the way, women should not think they’ll escape this fat trip if they forget the marriage license and live in sin with the one they love. Women co-habitating with a romantic partner have a 64% greater risk of obesity. However, men co-habitating with a romantic partner have no increased risk at all—proving once again that life is damn unfair.

The researchers, from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, aren’t sure why marriage might make you fat. They do note that the marital state confers other health benefits, including decreased smoking and longer life. “But we also see greater weight gain than in others of the same age, and greater risk of obesity,” said Penny Gordon-Larsen, an associate professor of nutrition at UNC and co-author of the study.

According to Gordon-Larsen, when people are living together – married or not – they tend to share behaviors and activity patterns. They may chose to eat meals together, possibly cooking bigger meals or eating out more often than they did when they were single, and may watch TV together instead of going to the gym or playing a sport. Gordon-Larsen said that in subsequent interviews with both romantic partners, they found that couples who lived together for more than two years (especially those who were married) were most likely to display similar weight/obesity patterns and physical activity behaviors.

This particular marriage penalty could be part of the same trend picked up in a study reported two years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine—that obesity tends to spread among friends and family. If one of your friends becomes obese, the risk that you will also become obese in the next two to four years increases by 57%. The siblings of that friend have a 40% greater chance of becoming obese, and the spouse, 37%.

Nothing like being fat, happy and loved, I suppose. I’m not sure what the solution is here. The UNC researchers suggest that, just as spouses share unhealthy behaviors, they could learn to share healthy behaviors. Would the couple that runs together be as likely to stay together as the couple who shares a late night pig-out? Any thoughts, short of mass divorce?

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