The mysterious weight gain

by Russ Roberts on January 5, 2010

This is from today’s New York Times (and not The Onion):

It is widely known that women tend to gain weight after giving birth, but now a large study has found evidence that even among childless women, those who live with a mate put on more pounds than those who live without one.

The differences, the scientists found, were stark.

After adjusting for other variables, the 10-year weight gain for an average 140-pound woman was 20 pounds if she had a baby and a partner, 15 if she had a partner but no baby, and only 11 pounds if she was childless with no partner.

You can debate how stark a difference that is–fifteen pounds vs. eleven pounds is the relevant comparison. You can argue that’s a big difference–it’s 36%. Or small–just four pounds. But what’s more interesting is the mysterious nature of this finding. Is it just me? Seems pretty obvious. But I guess the Times couldn’t find anyone who could explain it.

The Times continues:

There is no reason to believe that having a partner causes metabolic changes, so the weight gain among childless women with partners was almost surely caused by altered behavior. Moreover, there was a steady weight gain among all women over the 10 years of the study.

No, it isn’t metabolism. It’s probably a change in behavior. But what could explain why single women add less weight than married women over time?

The Times did find a doctor who offered an explanation of sorts:

“It’s interesting and brings out some important points,” said Maureen A. Murtaugh, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Utah who has published widely on weight gain in women. Perhaps, she suggested, a more active social life may help explain why women with partners gain more weight.

“Think of going to a restaurant,” Dr. Murtaugh said. “They serve a 6-foot man the same amount as they serve me, even though I’m 5 feet 5 inches and 60 pounds lighter.”

That’s quite creative. I don’t think that’s it, though. But I do like her explanation as a further window into how doctors think–obesity is something that happens to people like cancer. Here’s the causal chain for the obesity victim: married women socialize with their larger husbands, restaurants give the same oversized portions to big men as smaller women, ergo, women who are married gain weight. So the restaurant industry is the cause of married women gaining those four extra pounds.

It is an interesting and important hypothesis but my guess is that single women eat out more often married woman which is an awkward fact. I do think there’s a simpler explanation.

Here’s how the article ends:

Dr. Dobson [one of the authors of the study] said the finding of weight gain among all the women, with families or without, was troubling.

“This is a general health concern,” she said. “Getting married or moving in with a partner and having a baby are events that trigger even further weight gain.

“From a prevention point of view, one can look at these as particular times when women need to be especially careful.”

Yes, it’s dangerous being around food. It can just jump into you and the next thing you know, you’ve gained weight. Especially these days. It’s sort of like terrorism, I guess. We need a Code Orange for married people in restaurants. Maybe an announcement about unattended food or maybe attended food being dangerous.

What I like about my explanation is that you don’t need a Ph.D in economics to figure it out. The Times could have walked out of the office onto the streets of New York and asked a construction worker or a lawyer or even a journalist if they thought married women of a particular age and height weigh more or less than single woman of that age and height. And I just have a feeling that there’d have been a pretty powerful consensus that married women weigh more. Maybe I’m biased about how easy a question it is to answer. But it seems pretty obvious to me. I wonder how much that study cost and who paid for it.

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health_and_wellness_tips

That's the great article! I just pass 'n read it, two thumbs up! ;)
aussieBComm

As an obese married 55 year old woman, married and with 3 children I will bite.

I think that there is an element of metabolism involved. I think it has something to do with hormone imbalance within the body. Not getting enough exercise is a part of the explanation.

My anecdotal evidence is the weight I gained during each pregnancy. For a variety of reason I could not control that gain, and when I did lose weight during a pregnancy I got into trouble :( ended up being hooked up to a monitor... and well.... what resulted is funny to me... let's just leave it there.
I lost the weight after my first child but failed to lose the weight after the third child.

There are some other factors involved. First of all, before I became pregnant the third time I was involved in a car accident and sustained an injury to my neck. It affected my exercise routine - I could not exercise. Second, when pregnant I could not walk very far because I would start being nauseous - not pretty. This nausea was no doubt due to hormone changes in my body. Third, with my third child my hormones did something weird and I had the presence of breast milk until the change of life.

Lack of exercise always remained a factor with my weight. Yet there were extenuating circumstances. No matter how much I tried to exercise etc something always prevented me from continuing with the momentum. Things like sprained ankles (all the time) having a difficult time walking because of puffy ankles in the heat, the onset of arthritis, were just some of the factors involved.

On the other hand I do think that happiness and self-esteem plays a role in weight gain and weight loss.

Also, the study might be flawed if there are single women out there who put on a lot of weight, and this is where I think that self-esteem plays a role in why we gain weight, as well as hormonal imbalance, including an imbalance of the hormones that cause diabetes.
Marcus

But Russ's post was on CHILDLESS women. In his post Russ was comparing childless single women to childless married women.
Weight Gain

The post is really very good and informative, thanks.
Dave P

Maybe they are socialist doctors who didn't expect to see bloat in a single provider system as opposed to a competitive one. *rim shot*
John

Perhaps the weight gain irrespective of child or marriage should be chalked up to the slowing of the metabolism as they age. There will likely be a decreased desire to fight that metabolic change because the older a woman gets the lower value she has in the dating market ceteris paribus. If a woman has to work harder and harder to maintain her dating market value, at a certain point the costs exceed the benefits and the waistlines start to slip. With a partner she has less need to maintain dating market value, and with children and a partner even less need than that. I doubt that many of the woman are trying to bulk up, but combining the natural slowing of metabolism with the increased costs and decreased benefits of maintaining their figure, it becomes a struggle not worth having for many.
johndewey

I agree that slowing of metabolism makes it much more difficult for men and women to maintain slim figures. But when the incentives are high enough, many middle-aged folks have found a way to do so. For me, losing the excess weight was a matter of life or death. I'm not as slim as I was in college 35 years ago. But I'm in decent shape. My wife seems appreciative. I think she wanted me to stick around a few more years.
Gil

Q. How to you turn a Fox into an Elephant?

A. Marry her!

As Pierce Brosnan found out . . .

http://www.beforeandaftermarriage.com/files/ima...
deweaver

All those times that a women actually goes cycling, hiking, running, skiing, etc. seems to decrease with marriage. There goes the energy output and on goes the lbs.
agnostic

It's probably not the quantity of food they eat, either in volume or calories, since that doesn't affect weight gain except in very extreme cases. If A eats 2000 calories of beef, eggs, liver, and spinach, while B eats 2,000 calories of bread, potatoes, corn, and Skittles, A will be lean, vigorous, and attractive, while B will be fat, sluggish, and deformed.

So what's going on is that married woman are eating more bad foods, not necessarily more food. When you're single, you abstain from a daily pint of ice cream, but when you're married, you won't be punished for dumping five pounds of sugar into your bloodstream in one sitting.
johndewey

"you won't be punished for dumping five pounds of sugar into your bloodstream in one sitting."

Perhaps not if one does that only once. But if overeating becomes a habit, the overeater - male of female - will eventually be punished. Anyone who has ever watched as a diabetic relative lost his eyesight or the bottom half of his leg knows what I mean. And it's not just the overeater who is punished. My mother had not expected to spend her golden years without my dad.
David

I know I care a noticeable amount more about my appearance when I'm single. That includes not only weight, but clothing, car, and anything else conspicuous. If it's ok to talk about animals trying to attract mates by doing something flashy and appealing, why is it so hard to talk about humans doing the same thing?
DouglasC

"Despite the study’s limitations — weight was self-reported, for example, and the sample size diminished over time because people dropped out — other experts found the results valuable"

_______________

Those severe "limitations" make that "study" totally unscientific and statistically invalid.

An amusing anecdote, at best.
Seth

I think Murtaugh is close, though I don't blame restaurants. Women and men have full control over what they put in their bodies.

Perhaps women should marry smaller guys. I do think married couples tend to mirror their partners' eating habits, but the larger appetite usually wins out.

While some might say that married women don't have as much incentive to maintain their weight, I think the shared eating habits is a bigger a factor.

For the couples I've observed who broke the connection, one or both spouses became aware of how much they ate and made a concerted effort to eat differently than their spouse.
johndewey

"But I do like her explanation as a further window into how doctors think–obesity is something that happens to people like cancer."

Perhaps that's how doctors who are quoted by the NY Times think. My relatives who are and were physicians in Louisiana and Texas seemed confident that obesity was a choice. As Republicans, they would never have been contacted by that paper.
123

"my guess is that single women eat out more often married woman"

If for no other reason than to be less distracting to those of us with a childish sense of humor, you should really fix both typos in this sentence:

"my guess is that single women eat out more often than married women"
Joe

I cant believe that the people who did the study dint think of the simple answer.
Simon Lvov

If they did, how would they justify funding for their highly scientific study?
Incentives, incentives...
Matt

I'm not religous, but I always get a kick out of it when the bible has something to say about a modern issue, "There is nothing new under the sun."

For thousands of years people have known that married gained weight, even before restaurants. We've also known that carbs make us fat and exercise can help cure depression.

All of a sudden, we have scientific studies of the obvious, which is fine, but they lead to all new dangerous and idiotic conclusions. Like, it's OK to eat bacon for every meal, or we should pump our kids with mind altering drugs (that don't appear to be that much better than sugar pills), or restaurants should be forced to serve smaller portions to smaller people. If you don't think that last one is possible in America, you haven't been paying attention to New York's health department.
mel

Did they mention in the recommendations that we only have to ban marriage (and cohabitating) and children to beat obesity?
mark

I am 30 years old, and like the rest of my family, baldness is in my future.

a friend of mine likes to humor me with the line "you know mark, you are supposed to go bald until after you get married."

Same thing as the female weight gain issue.
Guest

I'm 31, married, have a large bald spot and used to teach. When my students gave me crap about it and told I should use Rogaine my reply was always "Why? I'm already married, what do I care?"

See also the dust on my bicycle and my hardly-used running shoes. I haven't looked at the article, but I would be surprised if there wasn't a similar loss of fitness for men.
Economiser

This is a fascinating conundrum. The New York Times can't figure it out, and now we have Russ's "duh" theory as an alternative explanation.

I move that we allocate massive amounts of EESA stimulus funds to explain and fix this pressing public health crisis.
Ike Pigott

I love how simple behavioral factors get completely ignored in studies like these.

For instance, why do MEN gain weight during their wives' pregnancies?

I used to think "sympathy weight" was a crock, until I found myself putting it on. It works like this:

"I'm having a craving for __________"

"okay, here you are."

(two bites later)

"I don't want it anymore. You finish it, I don't want it to go to waste."

...and instead, it goes to my waist.
russroberts

Ahh, couvade. I liked the idea of it just so I could say the word. I like your microanalysis.
Methinks1776

eh? What couvade? The man just told us his wife used him as a human garbage disposal.

Ike, for Pete's sake, man. Next time do what my husband does and toss the bloody thing. It still goes to waste, but inside you it becomes much more dangerous waste. This whole eating because you don't want it to "go to waste" is a dangerous road leading to years of hoovering up your children's abandoned dinner scraps with your mouth.

And with this kind of behaviour by parents we are still alarmed and mystified by weight gain in married mothers?
Ike Pigott

Russ, it has been a long time since I had to look up a word. That's not why I frequent the Cafe, but it's a perq.
danielkuehn

Obesity is considered to be a major problem, so you're going to have studies churned out on the parameters of the problem. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Take the impact of education on wages. If we leave aside from the nifty econometric tricks that motivate a lot of these studies, you're still going to have these studies produced on a regular basis, despite the fact that it's obvious that more educated people earn more money. The point isn't to pretend that this finding is exciting. The point is that the exact parameter may change over time, so if it's an important issue it's worth updating so you know how the scope of the problem changes. I'm sure biologists are still out there measuring finch beaks - not because it's exciting or surprising, but because the regular cataloging is important.

As for the explanations - I think you're getting a little too worked up over them. You're treating this as a "nobody takes personal responsibility anymore - they blame the restaurant industry". I think the point was just to think of a few potential causes.

I would have thought the most obvious causes would be:

- When you're with a partner, you eat more as a social ritual, as opposed to just eating when you're hungry when you're single. This only increases with children - a lot of people have set dinner times to interact with children, regardless of whether they're hungry or not. When you're single this isn't very common practice I'd imagine.

- Single women probably make more of an effort to keep their weight down in an effort to... well... to not be single any more. That isn't meant to be sexist - men do that too.

Those struck me as the most obvious reasons... the first one I listed I suppose is similar to the restaurant point, but I don't think you have to appeal to things like portion size. Your eating is simply less determined to your metabolic need to eat when you're in a family, and more attached to social practices.
Alexei

"Single women probably make more of an effort to keep their weight down in an effort to... well... to not be single any more. That isn't meant to be sexist - men do that too."

Cha-CHING!

Nailed it right there. No further study required. Single girls want to meet guys, and they know that being thinner makes it easier. So they focus (and stress) about it more. Not that married women don't focus on it (my better half has worked her tushy off, literally, to get rid of the post-baby weight and is looking good! :) ), but they have less incentive to do so than singles.

This is definitely NOT a big mystery.
Economiser

We should all congratulate Daniel for taking only 5 paragraphs to reach the patently obvious conclusion, while also (1) engaging in fence-sitting, (2) redefining the grounds of the debate, (3) chastising the author for making a big deal out of nothing, and (4) proposing an alternate theory.
johndewey

Daniel's response was predictable, wasn't it?
Methinks1776

*golf clap for Danny*

(as I sit on my thin, married and childless butt).
Marcus

"but they have less incentive to do so than singles."

Actually, THAT's the answer that I believe Don was getting at: incentives.

Single women have more incentive to stay thinner.

That is a very different explanation than, they serve a woman the same size serving they serve a man. That explanation doesn't work at all.

Incentives is why the single woman either a) doesn't eat the whole meal or b) works harder at working it off.
Methinks1776

Maybe it's incentives. Maybe it's lifestyle.

I grew up on the European eating plan - fresh fruit, yogurt, vegetables and meat. That's what I prefer and it's really tough to cram enough veggies in your gob to really inflate your thighs. My friends in the U.S. grew up on frosting from a can (by the spoonful - eww) and boil-in-bag white stuff over boil-in-bag rice and McDonalds. You don't have to eat very much of that to gain weight and they seem to have no palate at all for real food. And what do tired, busy mothers tend to feed themselves and their families? Fast food.

Plus, single, childless women have the option to only think about food when they're hungry. Mothers have to think about sticking something in somebody's mouths practically all day. Childless women can take a walk or go out dancing at night any time they want. Married women with children pray they can make it past their children's bedtimes so they can collapse on the couch and fall asleep on their husband's beer guts as they suck down comfort food in front of "The Real Housewives of..."
Marcus

But the issue being discussed is why childless married women as a group gain more weight than childless single women. Presumably we are discussing groups of women who have been born and raised in the same culture. I assumed, in fact, we we're discussing American women but it now occurs to me that was an assumption.

Still, you're right, for any particular woman, there could be any number of reasons why she does or doesn't gain or lose weight. But that misses the point of the discussion which is concerning two large groups of women in general and that they, I think, have different incentives.
Methinks1776

Although...it's interesting how differently men's minds work.

Although I've never heard a woman say that marriage provides no incentive to be slim, plenty of men have said that to me. I notice all the men here think women's behaviour is incentive driven.

Yet, married women with children have a lot more incentive to be more attractive because they are far more economically dependent on their mate. Men seem to lose incentive to resist the slide into slovenly obesity when they get married and have kids because their mate is so dependent on them that she will have to accept him in any condition.

I wonder if I can get a giant grant to study this crap.
Sam Grove

I notice all the men here think women's behaviour is incentive driven.

I think EVERYBODY'S behavior is incentive driven.
Methinks1776

Poorly worded on my part, Sam. What I mean is that the men here think that the women's weight changes are all a matter of incentive. I think it's difficult for some men to truly understand how pregnancy trashes your body and mind. Women who have had children may have every incentive to lose weight after childbirth but lack the time and energy to do so.
vidyohs

This is just pointing out the obvious, but consider that weight gains and weight losses actually are the result of the sides of the incentive coin. The first you all have already addressed, but the other side is lack of incentive.

I think it might be going overboard to lay unsightly and unhealthy weight gains or losses on incentive, rather than lack of incentive.

In my lifetime I have certainly see many people who need to gain weight to be attractive to the opposite sex. I have seen people on the weight loss quest and watch them go right through the point where they look good (IMHO) and continue on to unattractiveness on the opposite side.
Methinks1776

Betcha what I as a woman consider appropriately thin is far skinnier than what you as a man find appropriately thin.

Let's do a study which will undoubtedly tell us that tastes vary and that the average man pretty much likes the average woman. Do you have time to write a grant proposal to the national institute of Orwellian government departments? This a great use of tax payer's money. Of course, we'll need to present our findings somewhere and I think there's no better place than a conference in Cabo.
vidyohs

Take that bet? Oh hell no.

Tastes vary, whadayah some kinda anarchist, whoda thunk it?

:-D
Sam Grove

I read somewhere that chronic lack of sleep can lead to weight gain. That would certainly fit. Even husbands don't get as much sleep after kids arrive.
Marcus

It is my understanding that Russ was comparing childless women. From Russ's comments: "You can debate how stark a difference that is–fifteen pounds vs. eleven pounds is the relevant comparison." The 15 vs. 11 pounds is for childless women.

It is certainly childless women I am comparing.
Methinks1776

Marcus, your comment is either in the wrong part of the thread or you've lost me.
Marcus

While reading a post above by Daniel, coming from his PC world, I rolled by eyes when he qualified his post with, "That isn't meant to be sexist - men do that too." I didn't think such an obvious statement needed to be so qualified, especially here. Chalk one up for Daniel because apparently it was.

"Men seem to lose incentive to resist the slide into slovenly obesity when they get married"

Of course men face the same incentive! The only reason we are discussing women instead of men is because the studies were on women, not men.

I have no doubt at all that similar studies of men would reveal precisely the same thing. Why would I be offended by that?

"I notice all the men here think women's behaviour is incentive driven."

Well, I don't know about 'incentive driven'. Don't think anybody here claimed that precisely. As though there are no other factors involved in the behavior of human beings.

But woman (like men!) do in fact respond to incentives. Yes they do.
Methinks1776

you're parsing my post to say what I did not intend to say and then responding to an argument I didn't make. What does sexism have to do with anything?

Look at my post carefully. I'm saying that women have every incentive to look good to their partner after children (assuming that being slim is part of looking good) and men have virtually none. Yet, both get fat.

Nothing I said argues that human beings aren't incentive driven. I'm arguing that if women have every incentive to be attractive, but gain weight anyway, the weight gain may be driven by something other than incentive. circumstances, for instance.
Marcus

"I'm arguing that if women have every incentive to be attractive, but gain weight anyway, the weight gain may be driven by something other than incentive. circumstances, for instance."

An interesting thought I had on the subject while I was out and about tonight is: how does one go about measuring incentive?

Because, and I'll fully admit, with out a way of measuring it, offering it as an explanation is unfalsifiable. As far as I know anyway.
Methinks1776

I agree. There are too many unquantifiable factors to really declare a cause for weight gain. We're just musing.

And suppose we were able to quantify these factors. What are we supposed to do with this information?
Marcus

"And suppose we were able to quantify these factors. What are we supposed to do with this information?"

I'm not quite sure. On the one hand, I'd want to say that the information should be available to people so they can make better, more informed decisions concerning their lives. On the other hand, once liberals got a hold of it they'll want to base some government policy on it! ;)
Methinks1776

Yep. I can see these "findings" used by womens' groups to tell us once again how we don't need those nasty old men because they make you gain weight.
Marcus

"you're parsing my post to say what I did not intend to say and then responding to an argument I didn't make."

Fine, perhaps I have. I believe you are parsing mine also. To say that single women have more incentive in no way means that married women have no incentive. After all, if that were the case the difference in weight would be more like 100 lbs! It is a matter of degrees.

I am also not saying that the incentive to find a mate is the only thing which drives single women.

"I'm arguing that if women have every incentive to be attractive, but gain weight anyway, the weight gain may be driven by something other than incentive."

Perhaps it is. I'm certain we can both find plenty of anecdotal evidence to support either position.

Still, I maintain that such an incentive is stronger in single women collectively as a group than in married women collectively as a group (same for men!). I suspect also, that if we looked we would find that this affects their behavior in more ways than just their weight.
Methinks1776

To say that single women have more incentive in no way means that married women have no incentive. After all, if that were the case the difference in weight would be more like 100 lbs!

Look, this whole conversation is kooky anyway, so let's not take this silly thing too seriously. Pressing on...

Your implicit assumption in that statement is that the only incentive to remain slim is to attract a member of the opposite sex. That's not the only reason to not gain 100 pounds! When I gain so much as 5 pounds I feel like crap enough to do whatever it takes to get rid of it even though I look pretty much the same. The physical hardship of lugging around the added weight equal to a small woman is incentive enough to curtail weight gain.

You know, most men will not notice a 4 pound difference. Heck, the only thing that most men notice about an 11 pound weight gain is that his partner's boobs got bigger. That's pretty powerful incentive to plant your butt on the couch beside your beloved's expanding hind quarters and watch really bad TV instead of going for a run after work - unless you go on that run together.

Do you suppose we can get a grant to study this? I'm really trying to get some of my tax money back.
Marcus

"Your implicit assumption in that statement is that the only incentive to remain slim is to attract a member of the opposite sex."

No, there is no such implicit assumption. There are many incentives to remain slim, as you suggest! But dividing women into two groups distinguished only by being married or being single doesn't seem to provide any useful basis for measuring other incentives to stay slim. It does, however, seem to provide a basis for measure such an incentive in regard to attracting a mate!

Again, I am in no way saying that this is the only incentive which affects people. But the experiment doesn't lend itself to measuring those other incentives.

"You know, most men will not notice a 4 pound difference."

That's not even relevant. We're talking about statistical significance here. Certainly, as the weight of a person goes up, the number of potential mates who would find that person attractive goes down. Given a large enough groups to measure, I would imagine we would find a statistically significant difference in two groups whose average weights were 4lbs different.
Methinks1776

dividing women into two groups distinguished only by being married or being single doesn't seem to provide any useful basis for measuring other incentives to stay slim.

It doesn't seem to provide any useful information at all except that people gain weight over time. All the women in the study gained weight. The difference between the partnered non-mothers and the single non-mothers is too small for a man to notice with the naked eye.

That's not even relevant.

It's relevant when talking about being attractive to a member of the opposite sex where slimness is considered attractive and where being attractive to a member of the opposite sex is an incentive to stay slim. On average, partnered women don't gain noticeably (by men - women will notice every ounce) more weight than single women.

Certainly, as the weight of a person goes up, the number of potential mates who would find that person attractive goes down.

What if we found out that the partners both gained about the same amount of weight? What if they're already ugly at any weight? What if they're over 40 (older women tend to look younger with a bit more weight)?
Methinks1776

Marcus, I still think it's a lifestyle issue. obviously, I have not asked any of my fat married friends who are mothers why they're so fat. However, I don't know of a single married mother who thinks "hey, now that I have these two kids to take care of and no job, I'd like to become as fat and ugly as I can so that my husband can stop being attracted to me and leave the kids and me for someone much more interesting and attractive." It's a phenomenon among my female friends. I don't know if you noticed such a thing. As young professionals, we were all skinny. Then, they got married and had a kid. After the the first kid, they got with it and snapped back into shape right away because they didn't like feeling like a blob. Then, the second kid comes and they now have a newborn and a toddler and usually a third child (the husband) and they're too exhausted to remember their name, let alone what they ate that day.

A married childless woman has a lot more time for herself, but is less active and prone to sharing in her husband's bad eating habits on the couch after work. Unmarried childless women are much more likely to spend an evening at the gym or dancing at a club than home alone eating ice cream on the couch.

Ever notice how couples gain weight together? This whole "study" focuses on the woman's weight gain. But, couples tend to do things together - like eating, for instance. If you knew that male weight gain were similarly distributed, would you think it's incentives or lifestyle?
johndewey

"Ever notice how couples gain weight together?"

Is it possible that couples who stay together have adopted similar values and lifestyles? I've known both fit men and fit women who grew apart from and eventually divorced spouses who did not share their values about healthy living. Their second spouse was generally more attuned to their values.

"Unmarried childless women are much more likely to spend an evening at the gym or dancing at a club "

I think the same can be said for unmarried childless men. Why do you think they might be doing so?
Methinks1776

Is it possible that couples who stay together have adopted similar values and lifestyles?

This makes sense to me. I've noticed a similar pattern among those in my circle as well. Couples tend to live basically the same lifestyle. That's why it seems stupid to me to look at only the man or the woman in a relationship when studying weight trends (to the extent that it's worthy of study at all). Lifestyle is a important factor.

And after we've spent thousands of dollars in grant money determining yet again that sitting on your arse with your beloved shoveling supersized bags of chips in your mouth tends to pack on the pounds, what the hell are we supposed to do with that information exactly? Do we really need a study to tell people that if they went for a walk together instead that they would be slimmer?

I think the same can be said for unmarried childless men. Why do you think they might be doing so?

I think this is supposed to be a rhetorical question, but I don't think it is. I think men usually go out to try to pick up women. Women tend to more frequently go out in groups just to be out and about. I don't think as many women are interested in picking up stray lovers as men.
Marcus

"Actually, THAT's the answer that I believe Don was getting at: incentives."

Oops, I meant Russ, not Don. Sorry about that.
Billy P

I just came back to this posting to argue that same point. I wouldn't say it's so obvious that it serves as a reason not to research this issue further, but it's nonetheless an explanation that sheds some light on the question.
vidyohs

This is not as obvious as it seems. Or, at least I don't think so.

I am running late for a 0400PM job in the med center so I'll have to wait until I get home again to explain what I mean by that.
vidyohs

"It is widely known that women tend to gain weight after giving birth,"

All my comments are based on the assumption that the pregnant woman was not already overweight or obese when she became pregnant or married.

That is a almost 100% a falsehood. The truth is that women will almost 100% gain weight during pregnancy, not after giving birth.

Now they may continue to gain weight after giving birth, but objective observation tells us that it is a rare rare woman that does not gain extra weight during pregnancy, extra weight meaning beyond the weight of the fetus and relative tissues.

The question in relation to that is, why don't they lose it after giving birth?

My first wife was 5' tall and 105 Lbs was her best fighting weight, wonderfully proportioned for that height and that weight. She never gained a pound before getting pregnant with our first child. Even watching her eating she looked like a little washing machine by the time my son was born, 9 Lbs and 4 Ozs of that was boy. She delivered naturally and in three months was back down to 105 Lbs, it was all attitude, diet and exercise.

She went through two more pregnancies and the pattern repeated.

Mostly women gain weight in pregnancy and find it difficult to lose it after giving birth and we have a society now that has developed husbands to weak willed to insist that the wife regain at least some of her former physical appearance.

Then as Dr. Roberts, in MHO, correctly points out we also have a society that has developed the theology that all lapses of personal responsibility are somehow a disease, alcohol...a disease, coke....a disease, fat....a disease, queer....a disease, lack of will power...a disease, etc etc.

I agree with Dr. Roberts, you have the choice of putting it in your mouth even if the restaurant tempts you with large portions equal to your larger partner's. You put it in your mouth you can expect for some of it to stick around, especially if your life is one of inactivity.

Married, single, pregnant, male or female, show me the fat animal that has starved to death, or bring me a picture of a scientifically documented photo of a fat animal that has starved to death.

I'll be politically incorrect here and make it even more blatant. Study old photos of prison camps, death camps, and slave labor camps going back to the Civil War to WWII, and you'll see stick people with hardly even gristle left on them, but you won't find fat ones.

I don't give two figs for your genetic make-up or your enculturation, if it doesn't go in then it can't stick on as fat. One needs to recognize one's own disposition to add weight on light rations and limit oneself to that that is needed and no more. If one goes over that, one takes the consequences.

Again, in agreement with Dr. Roberts, do we really need (have we ever needed) to spend public money on these kinds of "plain as the egg on your face" issues? I certainly hope none was spent on it.
AdamGurri

Funny, Boing Boing just had a post about studies that took enormous energy in order to draw what would seem to be pretty obvious conclusions.