Why your spouse may sabotage your diet

Dieters have to deal with spouses' reaction that may range from support to sabotage.

2 April, 2008

Dieting is certainly good for you, but have you ever thought of how your valiant fight against fatness impacts the emotions and diet of others, especially your spouse and “significant others”?

A new study conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Toronto, Canada, and the Ryerson University, Toronto, has brought to light a fact mostly unknown hitherto – the effect a dieter produces on the “significant other.”

The research results of the research have been published in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behaviour, the official journal of the Society for Nutrition Education, the United Kingdom.

A total of 42 people – including 20 couples and one father-daughter – were interviewed to understand how one person’s decision to lose weight or eat healthier food affected their partner’s emotions and diet.

The study found that a partner’s emotional responses varied widely – “from cooperation and encouragement to skepticism and anger.”

In most cases, the “significant others” described themselves as playing a positive, supportive role and some facilitated the change by joining in the new diet, or by changing their shopping or cooking habits.

In a few cases, the person trying to make changes in dietary habits felt that his/her partner had a negative impact, like, according to the study, by eating “forbidden” foods in front of the dieter.

In only one case, it was seen, did both partners agreed that the “significant other” played a neutral role.

Mostly, the researchers found, the “significant others” saw themselves as a positive influence on their partner’s dietary efforts to stay healthier – with the “significant others” even modifying their own diets drastically to support their partner.

However, in a few instances, the partners not only did not help the dieter but also worked in ways that served to sabotage the dieter’s endeavors by not letting go of their junk food habits and sometimes even making uncharitable remarks.

In a classic example of how the partner strived to beat the dieter, one of the study subjects said of his wife: “She’ll sit down and eat a bag of cookies right in front of me.”

Dr Judy Paisley, lead author of the study and an associate professor of nutrition at Toronto's Ryerson University wrote in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behaviour, “One reason people felt negatively about their partner’s diet was because they felt rejection. Women who were used to cooking meals for their husbands, for example, felt insulted if their husbands wouldn’t want to eat their food.”

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