1. Marriage is associated with numerous health benefits, but it has one big downside. It makes us fat (Meltzer, 2013, Eng, Kawachi et al., 2005; Jeffery & Rick, 2002).
2. The Mating Market Model explains the phenomenon; prior to marriage, weight maintenance is motivated primarily by the desire to attract a mate (Sobal, 1984). After marriage? There is pizza.
3. Ageing makes us fatter too. Our metabolisms slow by 5 percent each decade, so we burn about 200 fewer calories a day at age 45, than we did at age 25 (Flegal, 2000).
4. Being overweight is not just physically unhealthy. It also has negative psychological consequences; there is a direct correlation between actual weight and level of body dissatisfaction (Smeets et al, 2013).
5. Negative body image is particularly detrimental to good sex. Its hard to look in the mirror, let alone get naked in front of someone else, when you are sporting jelly rolls of fat around your midriff.
6. People who are overweight, or obese, are also more likely to have partners who are similarly supersized. This can serve as a barrier to weight loss because overweight couples tend to excuse each other's failures.
7. In a large-scale study of 12,000 French men and women between the ages of 18 to 69, obese men were found to have fewer sexual partners and were more likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction (Goldbeck-Wood, 2010).
8. In the same study, obese women were 30% less likely to have had a sexual partner in the last 12 months and were more likely to experience some form of sexual dysfunction. They were also 50% less likely to say that sexuality was an important component of their "personal life balance"(Goldbeck-Wood, 2010).
9. Negative body image has been linked to; sexual aversion (Reissing et al., 2005), sexual avoidance (la Rocque & Cioe, 2010), risky sexual behavior (Littleton et al., 2005), sexual dysfunction (Sanchez & Kiefer, 2007) as well as lower sexual self-esteem and assertiveness (Wiederman, 2000).
10. In contrast, people who are content with their bodies experience; fewer sexual difficulties (Weaver & Byers, 2006), more sexual satisfaction (Holt & Lyness, 2007; Penhollow & Young, 2008), and they are less likely to monitor, or evaluate, their bodies during sex (Ackard et al., 2000). People who are physically fit have higher levels of body satisfaction, (LePage & Crowther, 2010). They also have more frequent sex, feel more desirable and experience greater sexual satisfaction (Penhollow & Young, 2004, 2008).
PS: A regular American Hot pizza contains 807 calories. Half an hour of sex burns 120 calories. Do the math.