Want to help your sweetie lose weight? Better keep your mouth shut.
Turns out that urging your significant other to slim down may actually backfire — triggering unhealthy eating habits, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The findings were based on an online survey of nearly 1,300 young adults from the Twin Cities.
Dr. Marla Eisenberg, the study's lead author and an associate professor of adolescent health and medicine at the university, has been studying the eating behaviors of the same group of young people for years — beginning when they were teenagers.
For this study, she asked them about their boyfriends, girlfriends or spouses. "In the twenty-something decade, significant others are really important people in their lives," Eisenberg said.
Researchers focused on two main questions. Did the young person's significant other diet? And had the significant other encouraged them to diet? Both behaviors were linked to unhealthy eating habits such as binge eating, skipping meals, induced vomiting, popping diet pills or using a laxative, Eisenberg said.
But one factor in particular — urging your partner to lose weight — appeared to inflict the most damage.
"If people are hearing something like this from someone that they love dearly, it's hurtful. It's depressing," Eisenberg said. "People can often respond to feeling bad about themselves or feeling bad about their bodies with unhealthy weight control behaviors."
