His Turn: Is Your Partner Making You Fat?

Weight loss experts are fond of saying that being fat is a choice—that our daily actions, from what we select for breakfast to whether we make time to exercise—ultimately determine our belt size. If only it were that simple. Researchers at the University of Minnesota, for example, found that both men and women gain up to 8 pounds in their first two years of marriage. And the white coats at Regis University, in Colorado, concluded in a recent issue of the journal Obesity that people are less likely to exercise and eat healthy—and more likely to pack on extra pounds—if their friend network (read: wives and girlfriends) tend toward the portlier side.

What’s going on here? Well, there’s the excuse that you can publicly acknowledge: As a single guy, you could go to the gym whenever you wanted—before work, after work, in the middle of the night if the mood struck you. No one was waiting at home quietly fuming because the lasagne/babysitter/chimney flashing is burnt/late again/leaking into the playroom. And there’s the excuse that you can never, ever speak aloud: You’re no longer competing in the cage match of death that is the dating world, and as such, it’s simply not as imperative that you stay in fighting trim. (And there’s the third excuse, which is that two beers and an extra helping of guac and chips is the only thing that gets you through a night of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Private Practice.”)

But therein also lies your solution: Regain the romance and you’ll regain the abs. A recent study at the State University of New York at Buffalo observed that men downed 35 percent fewer calories when eating with their significant others than when they ate with their buddies. The reason: People tend to match their food intake to that of their dining partners, and women are more cognizant about how gluttonous they appear in public. And a study at Indiana University found that couples who go to the gym together—another quality-time routine that can help boost your romance factor—do a better job of sticking to their workouts. Ninety-two percent of couples that went to the gym together continued to do so after one year. Couples who worked out separately, meanwhile, had a 50 percent dropout rate—findings reflected by University of Pittsburgh researchers who found that the more active a man’s spouse, the fitter he tends to be.

Bottom line: the more you lean on one another, the leaner you’ll both be.

Want the female perspective? Click here for Her Turn.