Now I Can Get Fat

At first glance this week's meme made me groan because joking about women and weight is really only funny anymore if delivered by Amy Schumer with a critical jab toward our culture.

However, as a life-span developmental psychologist, I began to wonder...do women and men gain weight after they say "I do"?  Apparently the answer is yes - although the amount is debated.  Some studies, regardless of other factors that influence weight, find a gain of about 5 lbs (2.28 kg) amongst young adult newlyweds and others estimate the gain to be up to 20 lbs (9 kg) if we follow those married young adults through midlife.

Meltzer, Novak, McNulty, Butler, and Karney (2013) devised a study to evaluate this weight gain against two competing theories to explain this trend.  The first theory is the Health Regulation Model: the argument here is that marriage encourages us to take care of each other.  If our marriage going well, we would be more likely to go to the doctor, floss, eat well, and by extension maintain a healthy weight.  Because marital satisfaction tends to decline within the first few years, that health maintenance would also decline leading to skipping the doctor, forgetting to floss, eating junk food, and by extension gaining weight.

The alternate theory is featured in our meme:  it is supposed to be funny because the bride has snagged her man and no longer has to worry about looking a certain way to attract a mate.  This is the premise of the Mating Market Model: if our marriage is going well we may gain weight because we are not interested in finding a new mate; if our marriage is going poorly we may lose weight because we are gearing up to attract a new partner within a culture that values thinness.

Meltzer et al. tracked more than 100 heterosexual young adult couples (average age 24 - which is younger than the average age of first marriage in the U.S.) for four years after their marriages.  These participants were asked to complete questionnaires about their marital satisfaction and to self-report their heights and weights to calculate their Body Mass Indexes (BMIs).  After controlling for pregnancy and childbirth, the trend of weight gain after marriage was confirmed: both men and women gained some weight after marriage, but weight gain was not in the unhealthy range.  So our meme may be correct about weight gain but incorrect to imply that only women may experience this after marriage.

Lending strength to the Mating Market Model and to our meme, the authors also found that participants who reported greater marital satisfaction were more likely to report weight gain.  If our bride (and groom) match the demographics of the Meltzer et al. study, perhaps they have the right to be smug: if they are happy with their marriage they may gain some weight and not care a bit.  The Mating Market Model was further supported by another trend in their data: when participants reported that they were "thinking of divorce" they also tended to report a lower BMI than usual.

Interestingly, unlike thoughts of divorce, levels of overall marital stress did not correlate with changes in BMI.  Using the Health Regulations Model we would have expected the couples who reported less marital stress to have steady or lower BMIs, but no such relationship was found.  The authors note this as further evidence on the side of the Mating Market Model.

However, is marriage a leading correlate of weight gain?  Currently about 51% of American adults are married (happily and otherwise) while 69% of American adults are overweight.  Thus, there must be other factors involved.  Also, if the majority of American heterosexual adults get married at some point and the majority of American adults are overweight, it also stands to reason that you don't have to be thin to get married in the first place.  If you find happiness with another person just count your lucky stars instead of counting the numbers on the scale.

Further Reading:

The Meltzer et al. (2013) study can be accessed through your local college library or as a free pdf via Research Gate.

A piece by NPR that casts a critical view on the use of BMI as an accurate assessment of weight and health.

Information about body image from the National Eating Disorder Association.  Their website has links to lots of excellent resources including this one about Size Diversity.

Find good information about health, food, and fitness from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
A post by Samantha Joel on the Science of Relationships blog:  What makes a good spouse based on psychological research.  See if you and your partner have what it takes.

Saying "I love you"...

For this post I have to revert to preschool scatological humor for just a moment...

so if a brief, funny reference to poop is offensive...

read no further.

I have often thought that diarrhea is really the perfect excuse if you want to leave a boring situation.  If anyone tries to stop your departure, whispering, "I have diarrhea," will be the instant get-out-of-jail-free card because everybody has been there and -- for goodness sake -- nobody wants you to stick around in that state.  

With this shared human experience we introduce this week's meme:

When I searched this meme on the Internet I found a curious thing:  like this version starring Optimistic O'Connell, the other versions display a male making this statement.  Ignore the diarrhea part for now - what interested me was that this is a meme of about a confession of love.  And some versions -- like this one -- convey that this confession is being expressed to a female.

Past research suggests that, in heterosexual dating relationships, men tend to tell their partners, "I love you," earlier women do.  A pair of studies by Ackerman, Griskevicis, and Li (2011) confirm that trend, and demonstrate that this reality is the opposite of our stereotype.  Sixty-four percent of college students (who were stopped on a street corner and offered, "candy and juice drinks" (p. 1082) for their insights - I guess that is all it takes...) actually believed that the reverse was true:  that women say "I love you" first.

Ackerman et al. (2011)  includes other laboratory studies about how people feel when their partners just can't hold it in and blurt out "I love you."  Not surprisingly:  they like it.  But does the timing matter and what do we interpret that "I love you" to mean?  Because the authors come from an Evolutionary Psychology point of view, they were particularly interested in the variable of sex.

The authors' final studies determined that men are happiest when their female partners say "I love you," before the relationship has become sexual; women are happiest when that confession of love occurs after sex has been initiated.  This gender difference meshed well with the participants' reported interpretations of "I love you" at different points in the relationship:  men interpreted women's pre-sex "I love you" to mean, "I will probably have sex with you in the future;" while women interpreted a pre-sex "I love you" to mean, "I am trying to convince you to have sex with me."  If instead men's first "I love you" occurs after sex is introduced into the relationship, women interpret that same phrase to mean, "I will stick around for you."

Ackerman et al. invoke Evolutionary theory to interpret these findings.  The basic idea, put forth by researchers such as Buss, is that men have evolved to look for baby-makers - so they would like it if they get the signal that sexual reproduction might be possible.  Women have evolved to look for a mate who will stick around when they are pregnant and nursing babies - so they would like it if they get the signal that a guy is in it for the long-haul and not just looking for one night of reproduction of the fittest.

Evolutionary theory is one way to look at gender differences.  An alternative point of view, Social Role Theory, comes from Eagly and Wood (1999).  They suggest that today's gender stereotypes may have their roots in the long history of men having more power than women.  This inequality came from some biological differences (men are stronger and faster; solely women contend with pregnancy and breast feeding) that gave way to common roles that men and women took on in society.  Seeing thousands of years with more men in leadership positions we still leap to conclusions that all men are better leaders than all women; seeing thousands of years with more women than men caring for children we still leap to conclusions that all women are more nurturing than all men.

So it may be that evolutionary reproductive urges are guiding the timing and interpretation of "I love you."  It could also be that Social Role Theory is guiding these behaviors.  In that case, men's history of greater power and our stereotype of them as being leaders allow them to take more risks in relationships by saying "I love you" first and not being scared off if women say it before sex has occurred.  Likewise, women's history of less power and our stereotype of them as caregivers might encourage them to hold back that "I love you" until they have evidence (like sex) that their partners will be glad to hear this.

At this point we cannot say which perspective is right.  But what you can know for certain is this:  if somebody tells you "I love you," and you don't feel the same way...just tell them you have diarrhea and they will get out of your way.

Further Reading:

A post on a related topic from the Science of Relationships blog:  "Who Falls in Love First"?  This study is also explained using Evolutionary theory; can you imagine how Social Role Theory might interpret the same findings? 

Click here for home remedies for diarrhea and for a broken heart.

You can find a version of this article on Joshua Ackerman's website and obtain the published article through your local university library:  Ackerman, J.M, Griskevicius, V., Li, N.P. (2011) Let's get serious: Communicating commitment in romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(6),1079-1094.