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Sex is Physical!
Whether alone or with a partner, sex is a physical activity that utilizes the entire body, including the brain. An unhealthy body impairs a woman's sexual ability. Medical research has found that being underweight or overweight adversely affects a woman's sexuality. If you want to have more enjoyable sex you need a healthy body, and more importantly, a healthy body image.
Sex is a reproductive activity. If your body determines you are underweight and becoming pregnant would be harmful to you and the developing baby, it automatically shuts down your reproductive organs, and as a result your sexuality. While you may feel more attractive when you "feel thin," and as a result are more receptive to partnered sex, your body may not be capable of the sex you desire. If you are starving yourself, you simply may not have the energy for sex.
By design and necessity the female body stores fat, and is therefore naturally soft rather than firm and muscular.
""When girls finish growing, their bodies are 26 to 28 percent fat, compared to about 12 percent for boys," Frisch notes. A normal 5-foot-5-inch female weighing 125 pounds would carry as much as 35 pounds of fat. That's equivalent to 144,000 calories. In situations where a regular supply of food is not guaranteed, a woman needs to store that much body fat to cover the cost of pregnancy and nursing."
"At menarche, which in this country occurs at an average age of 12.5 to 12.8 years, girls' bodies contain about 22 percent fat. Improvements in nutrition, health, and living conditions have lowered menarche age from 17 years in 1800, to 14 years in 1900, to the present age, which has remained so since 1950." Source
Additional information: Menarche
Sex is also a recreational sport with one, two, or more players. If you are obese then you aren't in the best physical condition to be engaging in a sporting event, which will adversely affect your ability to engage in sex. If you get out of breath climbing a flight of stairs, are you prepared to play baseball or basketball, walk around the block, or have sex? If many women are to experience orgasm, the sexual stimulation must continue uninterrupted for 20-60 minutes, especially during partnered sex. Are you up to the challenge? Can you walk on a treadmill for 20-60 minutes without stopping? If you have high cholesterol levels your arteries could become restricted with plaque, which restricts the blood flow to your reproductive and sexual organs, as you become older. While being a little over weight wont adversely affect your sexuality, being obese most likely will in the long term. Though it is better to have five extra pounds than to be short five pounds.
"Obese women suffered from a significant amount of sexual complaints, including decrease in desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, and sexual satisfaction, compared with the nonobese controls."
"Obesity has been associated with many comorbidities, including hypertension, cardiovascular and pulmonary disease, arthritis, diabetes, and cancer." Source J Sex Med 2007;4;547
Here is some interesting statistics for American women:
Women aged 20-29 were nearly 29 pounds heavier, women aged 40-49 were about 25½ pounds heavier, and women aged 60-74 were about 17½ pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared to 1960. Source
Yes, an increasing number of American woman are obese, but are the wrong women hearing the message...
Ideal Weight Range
It is difficult to learn what our ideal or appropriate weight range should be. This is because we come in so many different shapes and sizes. Women of the same height can have small, medium, or large frames, resulting in a wide range of appropriate weights for a given height. The experts can't agree on our ideal weight, as evidenced by all the different methods of calculating it that are available on the internet. To add to our confusion, our mind has it's own idea of what our ideal weight should be. Our body image will likely control our choice of an ideal body weight more so than any data we receive from the medical community. The emotional part of our brain may overrule the logical part.
To find your appropriate body weight range please visit the website linked to below. The linked to website provides more than one ideal weight range. Each range is based on different criteria and expectations, which will allow you to choose an appropriate weight range for you as an individual.
http://www.halls.md/ideal-weight/body.htm
Pick a weight range, as your weight will likely change throughout the course of your menstrual cycle, as you don't want to be starving yourself at different times during your menstrual cycle. Choose clothing that fits you best when you are at your maximum recommended weight so your clothing isn't providing inappropriate negative feedback. You should also weigh yourself at the same time of day, as you are likely the lightest upon getting out of bed in the morning, assuming you haven't eaten a meal in the past 8 to 12 hours, and weigh the most after eating a large meal.
Eating Disorders
Eating disorders are a very complex subject that are beyond the scope of this article and website. You can learn more on the websites linked to below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_disorder
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/eatingdisorders.cfm
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/eatingdisorders.html
http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/feelings/eating_disorders.html
Self-Injury
Eating disorders often occur concurrently with cutting or self-injury. You can learn more about this subject on the following website:
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