What a fat lot of good love is

Jo Clare who has lost 38.1kg in a year.

Love and marriage is, for women, one long roller-coaster of flab and famine, a global weight-loss company's survey suggests.

The Weight Watchers survey of 3000 married women in Britain shows females fluctuate in weight by more than 13kg through cycles of romance, marriage and child-bearing.

Meeting the man of your dreams may be celebrated with a three-course meal by him, but it appears to be just salad for the average woman, who at this time loses 3.9kg.

Within a few years, it's take-aways at home and a DVD - and five more kilos under her belt.

Salvation comes with wedding bells. She wants to look her best, shedding 4kg, although 20 per cent of those surveyed lost a whopping 12.7kg.

But marriage often heralds babies, and an extra 7.2kg for mum in the years after childbearing.

By mid-life, when the kids are growing up, she is looking in the mirror, yearning for her youthful figure. It's back on the treadmill and diet and off comes a little over 6kg.

A Weight Watchers spokeswoman, Karen Church, said yesterday that the experience of New Zealand women in the group reflected the findings.

She highlighted the case of Christchurch member and mother Jo Clare, 33, whose weight fluctuations are worse than average.

Mrs Clare said she was overweight as a teenager, but lost 8kg when she met Warren, who is now her husband.

The biggest and most recent swing was losing nearly all of the 40kg she had gained during two pregnancies.

The survey also found that two-thirds of women said their weight fluctuated depending on how happy they were at a specific time.

More than 80 per cent thought the biggest factor in their happiness and wellbeing was their relationship.