A 260-pound woman on Dr Phil says that she’s afraid that if she loses weight she’ll get a lot of unwelcome attention from men.
I totally identify with the goal but the woman frets needlessly. If you are not attracting crowds at 260 pounds, you won’t attract them at 160. And if you are attracting crowds at 160, you will attract the same crowds at 260.
When I treated obese female patients who were trying to lose weight, those women got a lot of passive-aggressive resistance from their husbands, who were secretly worried that other men would start looking at their wives — and that their newly-attractive wives would start looking back.
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This is very sad.
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Losing weight often means the women in the couple change the way the food is prepared in the house. It also means they spend more time on themselves to exercise and sleep instead of using that time to take care of everyone else’s needs. This can be threatening to the people around the woman.
But I do notice I attract less creeps, whatever their stripes, in my current body than I did at a lighter weight. Of course, that may also have to do with my age.
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Losing weight often means the women in the couple change the way the food is prepared in the house. It also means they spend more time on themselves to exercise and sleep instead of using that time to take care of everyone else’s needs. This can be threatening to the people around the woman.
Definitely. It’s hard to introduce more veggies or have meals with no meat when the husband, who claims to eat everything, scoffs at everything cruciferous, peas and mushrooms supposedly give him indigestion, and does not count a meal without meat as a meal. It’s very hard to eat differently when you need to prepare the food for the people who don’t want to eat differently. It doesn’t help that the kids eat like locusts.
And taking the time for yourself instead of being at everyone’s disposal — boy, that goes down like a bitter pill.
But I do notice I attract less creeps, whatever their stripes, in my current body than I did at a lighter weight. Of course, that may also have to do with my age.
I am 42 and should lose weight, so I consider myself now outside of the range of outward attractiveness and quite happily so (not that I was stopping traffic at 20, mind you, but I wasn’t bad looking). Basically, I assume no one is looking at me and just go about my business invisibly. It’s nice, way nicer than when I was younger and there was all this creepy leering and a general feeling of being exposed and somewhat unsafe.
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On the other hand, non-cooking husbands who are prescribed a diet are completely at mercy of wives who might not be willing to modify their cooking in any way because that’s too much trouble.
This is a sore subject, so maybe I shouldn’t continue.
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This feels like it might about your mom and dad. I am sorry…
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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