Marriage Mondays: The Marital Waistline

Hi there! I'm trying to find out what works best here on Not the Marrying Kind, and I'd really like your help. I've created a short survey in order to get some feedback on what goes on with my wee small blog. I have a lot of lurkers that visit, seemingly consistently, but are silent observers. I respect silence on blogs, but if you could please break your silence in a completely anonymous way and let me know what you think of some stuff around this, here stretch of the internet, that would be oh, so wonderful! You can access the survey here and it will be up until July 15th. I will probably remind you about this on a daily basis, so please don't get mad at me, k? (PS. A.P. told me that nobody would fill out my survey. Help me prove him, and all men, wrong by sticking it to him. Seriously. Go here.) And thank you to those that have already filled it out! Your feedback is very helpful!

Years ago, when I was working in advertising, a coworker (and friend) got married. Unlike most people I know who get married, this girl had never lived with her now husband. They were both fairly religious and so they didn't move in with each other until after they'd said their "I do's."

After her wedding, we would find her in the kitchen snacking away on the company candy and Friday morning donuts like the rest of us (all things she avoided before her wedding, of course). One day, this girl confided in the rest of us that she couldn't stop eating and that she had to get it under control. I hadn't really noticed, but after this confession, another coworker of mine remarked that the girl really had gained a lot of weight. Shortly after, the newlywed joined weight watchers.

I think about that memory all the time. Especially now that I'm married. Because there's nothing like an awesome relationship to ruin a perfectly good waistline. It never fails that if you're in love, you're going to fatten up like a sausage. I like to call this nesting. Your body's primordial way way of prepping itself for the possibility of a baby. Human dating rituals have changed drastically since prehistoric times, so we don't all fall in love and have babies right away. But we might as well still be clubbed over the head and dragged to a cave where we can have a feedbag attached to our heads. It seems like the minute we only have eyes for one, we forget about portion control, scales, mirrors, and any clothing without spandex.

When I first started dating A.P., I was the thinnest I'd been in my adult life. I was in great shape, tan as all f*ck, and super broke, but super happy. I was biking 10 or more miles a day. I was finishing up a job right before I was going to grad school. I wasn't starting school yet and didn't have another job lined up. I had a reasonable amount of money in the bank and wasn't worried about paying my bills, so I was, in some ways, pretty carefree. I was taking life day by day. I was literally drawing/painting, writing, or reading every day. It was awesome.

A.P. is extraordinarily thin, and he likes to eat, so what do you think we did on a lot of our dates? Ate out! Then I started grad school, and my schedule went from 9a-5p to 8a-10p. I had to make up some undergrad credits for my specialization since I only had a minor from my undergraduate studies, and so I was taking a ton of classes. More often than not, I would spend whole days downtown at school. That means that two of my three meals were on the go.

These two forces collided right on my ass...and my chin. All the weight I'd lost and then some found its way back onto my figure. It was depressing to go from my looking my best to looking my worst, and it's affected me in ways I won't even begin to talk about, not even to A.P. I deal with it every day, and though I deal with it better than I did five years ago, it's still hard.

In the months before our wedding, I lost about 25 lbs. But in 2009, I'd lost about 10-15 lbs, bringing my total pre-wedding weight loss to approximately 35-40 lbs. I am still about 20 lbs. overweight. Maybe even 30, if I want to be as thin as I was when I first met A.P. All of which makes me long for those days when I foolishly thought I was fat! It also makes me wish for the pre-living with A.P. days (not for the pre-A.P. days) where I had more control over my diet.

Food is an issue in our marriage, whether we like it or not. We both place and accept blame for various food issues we bring into this relationship, but the fact is we both have bad eating habits. We may not both need to eat better to lose weight, but we both need to eat better to make ourselves healthier. This summer, I've decided I need to be more like my friend was all those years ago. Five years is a long time to procrastinate on losing some damn weight. I need to get this under control. Most of our problem is us eating out so much it hurts our guts and our wallets, as well as trips to the corner store for snacks, beer, and soda. Beginning in August, we've set a new budget and some new rules about eating out/running to the store. Our new budget will help with our checkbooks, but will also hopefully help our (read: my) waistline.

And just for visualization purposes, here are some pictures of me (even the embarrassing ones!) from 2006, right before I met A.P. until the present. You can see my weight go up and down and then sort of stabilize itself.

Summer 2006

January 2007May 2007
Christmas 2007
March 2008
Christmas 2008
March 2009
August 2009

Wedding (March 2010)

Honeymoon

July 2010
Christmas 2010

Present

It was actually really good for me to do this. It's inspiring me to get my ass in gear faster. Do/Did you struggle with your weight as a result of your relationship? Has it affected your relationship? If so, how?

(All photos by me!)