Are you feeling stressed that you might gain a few pounds after your wedding? Want to know some of the reasons for weight gain after marriage? Maybe you recently got married and found yourself gaining a few already. If you do a little searching, you’ll find articles saying that weight gain is often common in happy and healthy marriages, especially just following the wedding. That’s encouraging… kind of?
While the whole weight gain issue is still in question, here are a few reasons that you may experience a little more fluffiness. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that there is NO SHAME in gaining a few pounds. Your value is not dependent on how much you weigh or how you look. The hope is that you connect with a reason such as the ones listed below and that you can manage it!
Stress
Every person’s body reacts differently to stressors put on them. Being a newlywed brings on so many new stresses. Having just planned and carried out such an important event as your wedding put a lot of stress on you too.
Stress is usually associated with negative feelings, emotions, and events. While stress often comes when we are going through tough times, stress also comes during the good times too.
Getting married, probably the best of good times, is no exception. No doubt levels of stress will increase as you navigate the new experiences that come with being married. You are part of a new family, establishing a new one of your own, and trying to do normal life.
Stress is a very common reason for gaining weight. This might not be how your body normally reacts, and if so, maybe there is another reason for your weight gain. If, however, you usually do tend to gain some weight when you are stressed, let’s take a deeper look.
If you are anything like me, when you are feeling stressed, you may like to ease your mind by eating. Guilty. But cookies help me, what can I say? Yes, food tends to be a common culprit of weight gain and overeating may occur when stressed.
So what can you do? Stress less! Ok, that’s silly and so obvious. But really, the best thing to do is to not worry too much about weight gain, and instead focus on self-care in ways besides eating. Maybe it’s by taking a walk in nature, or a bath! Just be calm. Time has a way of taking care of us.
Trying Less to Impress
Before getting married, you are still working on impressing one another. You want to look attractive, healthy, and put together for your person. You may feel like you can’t let your guard down in terms of eating habits.
Exercise habits may be more on par than normal. Who doesn’t want to date and marry someone who goes to the gym every day? Haha Really though, it is common to want to impress your boyfriend, girlfriend, or fiance through your exercise routine.
The whole concern over not having a ring to keep the other person around more permanently may drive some to try to be as fit as possible. In a shockingly short amount of time after marriage, couples become extremely comfortable with each other, especially with their bodies and body image.
While we will always be aware of our health and weight, the anxiety over impressing one another goes away very quickly after marriage for most. In healthy and supportive marriages, emphasis is not put onto physical bodies and how we look. Love is given and received freely and abundantly.
The lack of needing to impress each other after marriage in the way couples often feel they need to before marriage may be a leading cause in slight weight gain. Don’t worry too much about it, and encourage each other in loving ways to be active and healthy.
Strict Pre-Wedding Diets go out the Window
Totally normal to want to be as in shape as possible for your wedding. After all, you bought that dress, you’re going to have all those pictures taken. It’s your time to shine!
Because that strict dieting and exercise regimen was primarily for your wedding day, you may find that it is not as sustainable as you’d hoped. Or maybe you didn’t care if it was sustainable, you just knew that you had to fit in the dress on the day of, and who cares about after! (me lol)
Whichever type of person you may be, the strictness to your weight goals often just goes right out the window after you get married! Bye! Yeah, and when that happens, much like any diet, you can gain the weight back (sometimes plus some).
Seriously, this is not supposed to scare you, rather just offering a reason it may happen. Again, remember that when you are comfortable in your relationship, a side effect is often worrying less about weight and gaining some.
With this in mind, though, pre-wedding you may want to consider options that are a bit more sustainable. Maybe walking daily is more manageable than running. Maybe limiting yourself to only having sweets on the weekends rather than no sugar at all would be something that could carry over. Don’t stress. Just be happy and make manageable choices! You know yourself best.
Hormonal Changes
I will keep this one short and sweet. Mainly because I really don’t want to even claim I know anything about hormones. Nope! I just know that their levels can change leading up to and after getting married.
One thing that I do know is that hormone levels can impact our moods and emotions. When our moods and emotions change, we may want to eat more.
To share a personal experience, I personally got fairly depressed when I was on a certain type of birth control. I got extremely lethargic and found it difficult to be motivated to do much of anything. Exercise, gone. Eating… yeah I ate some extra treats.
To be honest though, these experiences shape us and help us to understand our bodies more fully. I was able to recognize my go-tos when I was feeling down, so I had my husband help me to divert that energy to more healthy and helpful activities. NOT EASY!
Hormonal changes are another potential reason you may experience weight gain after marriage. Sadly, you don’t have total control over your hormone levels, but you do have control over how you let them impact you. Focus on labeling the emotion and finding helpful ways to manage!
Gym becomes a Lower Priority
Ok, this one is very real. You now have your spouse that you consider when making decisions. Do they enjoy going to the gym? Do they want you around more often?
You may find that after marriage there are many other more exciting and enjoyable things to do than going to work out. Honeymoons may throw you off your routine. You may want to just hang out together, I mean you are newlyweds after all!
Whatever the reason is, the gym may become a lower priority to either spouse after marriage. This likely won’t last forever, especially if you were regularly going before marriage. But right after getting married, this may contribute to weight gain.
Give it time, you’ll go back! And if not, you probably didn’t go a ton before anyways (me again haha).
Eating more because of meal quality
Who knows why, but for the majority of couples, meal quality improves quite a bit when they get married. Especially for men! (well, that one I know why lol)
When food tastes better, we eat more. I even found that because I started eating with my husband more often, my portion sizes got larger.. What’s up with that? As if I need to keep up or something?
Anyways, we have more time to prepare and work together to make great meals in our new home together. Men (or women!) may eat more often because they don’t have to prepare all of their meals, or go get them!
Calories in > calories out, pretty simple!
You love doing everything together, including eating
This is definitely something that my husband and I experienced. Wow, was it tough to say no to a mug cookie if the other was having one. Or even just that most of our date nights had food involved that typically wasn’t super healthy. (Had to let Stone have a burger now and then 🙂
Eating is such a social activity, and when your main socialization is with your new spouse, you can imagine that a lot of your activities you do together now will involve food. Nice! Except that when you ate less often before it didn’t matter as much if that food was less healthy.
One way to help alleviate this burden is to plan ahead for some activities you do together to not include food. Maybe it’s to take a hike on Thursday night. Perhaps your date will be focused on the batting cages instead of going to Texas Roadhouse. Think of ways to be together and do things together that don’t involve eating.
When you do this, you can also plan food to eat before or after that you make at home that is more healthy!
If this is concerning to you, have a convo early
Weight gain is concerning to a lot of us. Really it is! If you think that you might be concerned about yourself or your spouse gaining weight beyond what you are comfortable with, have a conversation!
The earlier you discuss this topic the better. This will help to avoid hurt feelings or any self-consciousness.
During your engagement phase, it would be totally appropriate to sit down with your fiance and write down some strategies for how you will manage your health post-wedding. Determine together at what point where it is appropriate for the other person to mention anything about weight gain.
You will be much more comfortable confronting this challenge should it arise after the wedding if you have already discussed it. This will help to make each other aware of why and how this topic feels to the other, and when stress surrounding weight gain may arise.
The main takeaway here is to love your body. Don’t stress if you gain a bit of weight after your wedding, or even if you don’t! You are beautiful the way you are. Just control what you can and enjoy your newlywed phase with your new marriage partner!
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