A friend passed this article on to me to read, and I completely understand why. Being 29 (a third time) and on my second marriage, I’m in a perfect position to prove this theory right, or wrong! Marriage and divorce makes women fat? Really? I’ll put down my curly wurly and investigate!
It wasn’t the title that annoyed me, but the actual content. The Beeb reported on research recently presented at the American Sociological Association. In a study of over ten thousand people, conducted over twenty years, they apparently found that there is an increased risk of piling on “large amounts of weight that pose a risk to health” after a marriage begins or ends.
With my track record, at my age, I should be auditioning to be a roly poly girl right about now!
Fortunately, I’m here to prove them wrong. I may be an exception to the rule, but in my experience, (albeit only life related), they are talking out of their well-researched behinds.
I would suggest in both occasions the contrary is typically the rule! The initial two years of marriage are exciting, fun, and most of all energetic. They don’t call it the honeymoon period for nothing! So whilst burning off all those calories in the bedroom, their studies must have been stuffing themselves with lard to gain weight significant enough to pose a risk to their health!
I can completely understand why some women would gain a little weight a few years in, pregnancy, not having time for the gym, quick fix meals and having a partner that doesn’t mind the extra pounds means some can settle into a comfortable pattern where night time nibbles are a necessity to compliment the bottle of wine of an evening. Yet, I myself am 20 days away from my second anniversary, on my second marriage, and can quite smugly declare that I am three stone lighter than the day we married. (Yes, you’ve read my mind; I would love a second wedding day just so I could burn all the photos of the first time round!)
The discoveries about divorce merely back up how absolutely ludicrous this study is. With divorce comes anxiety, stress, for most women a double workload of childcare, a busy professional life, not to mention maybe moving house, and then of course dating all over again, which brings butterflies of a different kind. I lost a lot of weight as my divorce spanned eighteen months from start to finish, and I emerged an exhausted wreck. I didn’t have time to gorge on said lard or bathe in butter, and the constant knots in my stomach meant that food was not appreciated anyhow!
So with the new findings, what are we to do? As women we are constantly attacked for being bad parents, for gaining weight, for plastic surgery, for letting ourselves go, and we are always encouraged to do better no matter what the circumstance. Our monthly magazines are bursting with advice on burning the blubber, dropping the pounds, and managing our lives better, yet magazines aimed at dudes feature nothing of the sort.
And now, with this new investigation, we’re being told that marrying, or divorcing can be dangerous for our health! Just what are they trying to prove and why? What exactly would they like the females of the world to do armed with this information? Stay spinsters forever (when we’d undoubtedly be labelled a lesbian or frigid), stay in a unhappy marriage, risking our mental health rather than our physical? Or quite simply immigrate to some undiscovered island so the males can have the earth to themselves and parade around with their six packs. Because quite frankly, if this is the drivel they are preaching now, they better be practicing it!
I have some information to add to their research. Eating MacDonald’s makes you fat, being a couch potato makes you fat, thyroid problems make you fat, and pregnancy can make you fat, sitting on your bum for twenty years collecting irrelevant data to punish women that have no control over it – MAKES YOU FAT!