One under-recognised factor in overweight is lowered metabolic rate due to anxiety or depression related to a non-existent or unsatisfactory sex life. In examining a range of important lifestyle factors that impact on metabolic rate and weight loss, this is one area that certainly deserves consideration and support.

If your sexual relationship provides the deep emotional bonding and satisfaction that you desire, then it provides a boost to your wellbeing, including to your metabolic rate! A healthy sex life can be very important to weight loss!

Did you know that diet and exercise programs fail for nearly 100% of people? It’s no wonder, because the whole issue of overweight and obesity is much bigger than diet and exercise. In fact a poor diet and too little physical activity can be seen as SYMPTOMS, not as causes of overweight. When you’ve successfully “ticked off” all the important lifestyle factors, you won’t have to think about dieting ever again because overweight will be a thing of the past!

Although there are a myriad of lifestyle changes that can add immeasurably to your health and your enjoyment of life, and make important contributions to weight loss, this article has been written to help you understand and work through aspects of your most intimate relationship.

Your Most Intimate Relationship - Why It’s Important

Although intimate partners experience different kinds of sexual expression together, ranging from “fast-food” sex to “perfunctory” sex to “gourmet” sex, in every case they are communicating to each other their state of wellbeing, and the state of wellbeing of the relationship itself.

When you consider that sex is such a powerful way to communicate, it may become obvious to you that you need to look at what it is you’re actually saying!

Being on the Same “Wavelength

Do you and your partner share the same sexual “language”? If you don’t you may be mis-communicating, or misunderstanding each other, leading to disappointment, hurt, or resentment.

In sex this isn’t really about technique (although of course that’s important!) but about the non-verbal communication that you both engage in. When are you silent, what sounds do you make, what eye-contact do you have, what facial expressions? Are these similar, or is there a big mismatch?

Practice being more aware of your partner’s non-verbal expressions; mirror those back and notice what happens to the quality of your interaction as a result.

Being Compatible

Obviously not every partnership is between people who are naturally compatible. Different body clocks may have libido rising at completely different times and there’s not much you can do about that if your libidos virtually live in different time zones.

Perhaps she is like many women who tend to feel the cold and who sleep so much better wrapped up in flannalette pj’s. If he finds the flannelette a most unsavoury companion and can only become sexually interested if she’s wearing not much at all, there is also a problem!

Perhaps he’s the “strong, silent type” even during sex, but she finds this cold or even repellent.

If he likes wearing women’s clothes and she finds such “lack of masculinity” totally off-putting, that is also a basic incompatibility.

Couples can and do overcome these barriers, with a lot of love, a lot of commitment, and sometimes a lot of therapy.

Left alone, left unspoken, these types of incompatibilities can cause raging resentment that eventually implode the relationship. If you have these kinds of incompatibilities, then the best thing to do is to be very honest and open about them, very respectful of each other’s differences, and work, if necessary with a therapist, to resolve them happily.

If only we lived in the sort of ideal world where people were more aware of the variety of human nature, were able to acknowledge and accept their own characteristics, and feel comfortable and confident in sharing those with potential partners. I’m sure the divorce rate would plummet.

And of course that leads to …..

Honesty in Relationships

Oh how little sexual honesty there is in so many relationships. Not so much outright lying (I’m not talking about infidelity) but in “settling” for unsatisfactory sex. And how difficult is it, after years of misleading your intimate partner about the amount of satisfaction you’re getting, to now “come clean”!

Nevertheless, that’s what is necessary in order to build a truly fulfilling intimate relationship.

There’s a joke that goes “women may fake orgasms, but men can fake whole relationships” and in fact in the intimate relationship, faking an orgasm is faking a relationship. It is not a “white lie”. More usually it is a deliberate deception to bring to an end a boring or unsatisfying sexual experience.

And unfortunately “faking” soon becomes the closest the woman will get to orgasm because in terms of behaviour theory, she has trained herself to associate this “fake” state with sex. I knew one woman who decried the fact that she even faked orgasm during masturbation!

So putting up with unsatisfying sex is harmful for the individual as well as for the relationship itself.

One of the best ways to deal with this is to take courage and actually write down (because it can be more comfortable to write it than say it):

1) What is not happening during sex that you want to happen, 2) What is happening during sex that you don’t want to happen, 3) The words you might actually say to your partner, or the things you might actually do, to communicate your wants

In order to make it easier for partners (or individuals in partnerships) to accomplish this, I wrote the book “Intimate Partners”. This book explains how to pre-frame requests, how to deal with criticism, and how to be more direct, at the same time maintaining comfort and ease in the discussion.

Your Time Out

An intimate relationship IS intimate because of its exclusive and private nature. Without privacy and exclusivity the experience of intimacy is drastically reduced, and so is the quality of the relationship.

With all the busy demands of daily life, particular where there are new babies or small children, the challenges of intimacy may seem insurmountable. Keep in mind that the world, including your children, must turn around YOU. Together you are the solid foundation to their lives and it’s up to you to keep that foundation intact and healthy.

Help for Sex Issues

Adult beings need and are entitled to a deeply satisfying sex life, just as all humans are entitled to clean air and water, or need nutritious food, in order to function optimally both physically and mentally. But too many couples put up with unhappy sex lives because they don’t know what to do about it. That scenario isn’t good for the relationship, isn’t good for the people in the relationship, and isn’t good for people who depend on the relationship.

This article can’t possibly hope to be a complete sex manual for every issue that might impact on your sex life, and even if I were to present you with hundreds of pages of information, it might not be quite what you were looking for. That’s why it’s important to seek out specific support if you decide that this part of your life could do with an overhaul.

With your sexual life in great shape, you know that’s one aspect of your life that is certainly supporting your general health and wellbeing, and definitely performing as a plus when it comes to naturally maintaining that ideal weight.