Why Do Couples Get Fat Together? (Especially After Marriage)

If you’ve recently moved in with your partner and are living together, you’ll notice many changes.

Usually, these changes are welcome and pleasant until they affect your waistline.

But it seems like you can’t even vent to your partner because their clothes are getting tighter as well.

There are literally thousands of memes and jokes on the internet about people getting fat while in a relationship. In fact, I’m starting to think that there’s something about a relationship that adds calories to my plate. Or maybe that’s just my wife’s cooking.

Either way, it’s food for thought.

However, there are some legitimate reasons why couples tend to get fat together.

The most common reason for gaining weight while in a relationship include:

Their routine changes
They keep finding each other attractive regardless of weight
They acquire fattening habits
There is no accountability when neither partner puts in any effort

In this article, you will discover four core reasons why people get fat in relationships and how to push back against these factors to save your waistline.

4 Reasons That Couples Get Fat Together

There is more to couples getting fat together than laziness and being off the market. But to inspire further inspection, one must bust the myth that couples get fat because the partners are no longer trying to impress the opposite sex.

Even in a stage of life where a man or woman is single but not actively pursuing relationships, he or she maintains her figure to the best degree possible. This is because humans are primally compelled to keep themselves in decent condition. Here are a few things that change when they get in a relationship.

Routine Change

A major routine shift occurs when a single person gets in a live-in relationship. The time he might have dedicated to active or passive exercise might get transferred to a couple’s activity that is more sedentary.

For instance, a girl who might like listening to music and taking a short walk around the block might start prioritizing watching Netflix with her boyfriend.

A guy who previously started his mornings with 30 push-ups might find it harder to sleep because of being engaged in the bedroom late at night. A routine change can wipe out decades of micro habits that might be keeping the partners individually fit.

The solution: Understanding Atomic Habits and integrating “micro habits” that can increase calorie expenditure can improve a couple’s overall health and fitness.

To learn more about micro habits, you should read Atomic Habits by James Clear and have a meeting with your significant other to identify small practices from your respective single lives that kept you fit.

Finding ways to bring them back is the most significant way to combat routine-change-driven obesity.

The Cemented Attractiveness Factor

There is enough research to suggest that people remember their partners by their first impression. This means as an individual in a relationship starts aging or changing, their attractiveness to each other stays constant.

Why?

Because of their initial impression and the feelings anchored to that point in their lives.

Getting fat is not an abrupt change, so couples don’t even notice each other getting fat. Each person keeps finding their significant other attractive, which only yields further complacency from the party with the license to continue maintaining a routine derailing their fitness.

Sometimes this happens to both the parties, while in other instances, only one person is off their routine. Regardless, the fact that getting fat doesn’t affect the degree of attractiveness of a person in a relationship gives a license to let go.

The solution: You can use the cemented attractiveness for your motivation. Even if your partner remembers you by your first impression, you can set as your lock screen a photograph from when you used to embody that first impression.

This tactic can make you want to get back in shape or at least maintain your figure. The same suggestion adopted by your partner can help her too. However, suggesting this yourself can be offensive, so you shouldn’t bring it up unless you’re asked about your mobile phone background.

Fattening Habits Get in the Way

While habits that keep single people fit can get disrupted, more damage is done by the fact that habits replacing the fit lifestyle, in this case, are fattening. Many romantic activities are fattening, from watching TV together to going on long drives.

No wonder couples get fat together when chocolates are a Valentine’s Day staple, and pancakes, steak, and beer are boyfriends’ appreciation day delicacy.

Couples are marketed to differently than single individuals. And given how much of our behavior is driven by advertising, it is easy to see that people who are marketed comfort and high-calorie food get fat.

The solution: The greatest way to keep obesity away is to say no to fattening habits. Have zero tolerance for anything that, if done a hundred times, would make you fat. This ensures that if something has the potential to become a fattening habit, you weed it out at step one.

If you need more guidance on getting rid of habits, please read The Little Book of Big Change: The No-Willpower Approach to Breaking Any Habit.

Lack of Accountability

Partners don’t want to hurt each other’s feelings, so they don’t bring up each other’s weight. More importantly, people in a relationship are in no position to hold each other accountable because it would be like the pot calling the kettle black.

One has to put in the effort before expecting it from their partner. Because the boyfriend is also getting fat, he can not motivate or hold accountable his girlfriend, who is finding it hard to control her weight.

The solution: The only viable solution to combat the spontaneous lack of accountability is to meet with your partner and invite them to motivate you to stay fit. Once they start doing this and you start losing weight, they might follow their own accord.

It is important not to force your partner to lose weight as this causes resentment, which is the number one predictor of divorces and breakups.

Final Thoughts: Why do People Get Fat in Relationships?

Losing weight or gaining weight: couples do it together because humans are social beings, and the company they keep has an effect.

Couples often get fat together because people in relationships undergo a major routine overhaul, and their previous lifestyles are disrupted. Unless partners consciously design their lives to ensure fitness, healthy habits get swapped with fattening habits, resulting in them getting fat.

Work out with your partner and eat right because you’ll start getting fit as a couple and will be the subject of envy of other couples.