How fat is too fat?

[Taz]

Once for 10 years to a Norwegian.

Irrelevant. Maybe American men come from such a weird culture that they find FSUW almost alien but after living in 3 foreign countries for the past 20 years I can't say that I see essential difference between FSUW and any of the other women I've come across.

That explains. You were married to a Norwegian woman. It all makes sense to me now. I work primarily with Norwegians here in the US. They are some of the most aloof and condescending people I know. Maybe it goes with the socialistic mindset...

I don't find FSUW women alien. I've dated more FSUW women than American women by far. Matter of fact I've never been married to an AW. Met very few I was even interested in. Just for the record, my first marriage lasted longer than yours. Let's see how long your second one lasts. Not wishing anything negative on you of course.

Well its fun to banter with you but in general a waste of my time. This thread is veering more off track and I have no desire to contribute to it further veering into a ditch.

[Ade]

 Yup a lot of crap going through my head. There must be something wrong with me since I am not physically attracted to fat chicks. I am in shape so why cant I have a woman in shape? She doesnt have to have model type looks but does have to have a good body. But now, in western society that is like asking for the secrets to the holy grail. You are considered shallow and vain for desiring so much from a woman.
  I cannot pretend to be physically attracted to a woman.

Yeah, right. But I was commenting on your attributing the ills of the world to feminism. I'm amazed by the number of whack jobs spouting nonsense like that here.

 If you have no problem being physically attracted to fat chicks more power to you. In fact you are a lucky man if you are. You have many to chose from locally.

Actually, live in Norway, land of the slim, tall, blond, athletic woman.

And again, you didn't get the initial attraction thing vs the love attraction thing, right? 

[Ade]

That explains. You were married to a Norwegian woman. It all makes sense to me now. I work primarily with Norwegians here in the US. They are some of the most aloof and condescending people I know. Maybe it goes with the socialistic mindset...

Just goes to show how perceptive you really aren't. Norwegians are renowned for their unassuming, modest and quiet outlook on life which you've obviously interpreted as aloofness and condescension; as a people I've yet to meet a group as a whole that are nicer and I've met people from most of the world. You may want to read up on Janteloven and reassess your judgement of those Norwegians.

And there's the "socialist thing" again; it crops up so much on these boards. I swear that the red's under the bed mentality is still alive and kicking somewhere.

Just for the record, my first marriage lasted longer than yours. Let's see how long your second one lasts. Not wishing anything negative on you of course.

Touché.

My guess, is longer than your 3rd and 4th. Together.

[facetrock]

    I dont think the worlds ills are caused by feminism. I do believe some women use it as a crutch to explain away why no one wants them. I have heard every possible excuse from fat chicks why men dont want them.
    Your lucky to live there. But where I live obesity is becoming worse by the year and that is for both men and women. Its actually comical that the fat guys want thin woman and vice versa.
 
    There are however many women that are fat that are very nice. I do enjoy talking to them but I could never be intimate with them. Physical attration is one of the laws of nature. Its where most relationships start, whether thats bad or good I dont know.But without that ongoing pyhsical attraction I think its almost impossible to keep a relationship healthy. Peoples eyes will wander when they no longer desire their mate intimitaly. I have known men who really did love their wives but as soon as they lost their desire for them because of obesity the love faded over time and it ended in divorce. A healthy marriage needs all the components working. Love with fake intmacy will not last forever.

[Sculpto]

And there's the "socialist thing" again; it crops up so much on these boards. I swear that the red's under the bed mentality is still alive and kicking somewhere.

They are still influenced by propaganda.. and jealous. 

[pitbull]

Yeah, right. But I was commenting on your attributing the ills of the world to feminism. I'm amazed by the number of whack jobs spouting nonsense like that here.

SJ,

I'm continuously amazed at this same fact as well. In fact, you are so out of place here that I wonder why you even post.
However, please keep posting since you are a live example of the 0.1% of truly great guys among "FSU wife seekers".   Gives us women hope (just read LadyR's posts)

[Ranetka]

All these posts made me check google if there is a difference betwwen american lb and british lb.

Now below is Ranetka with a horrid weight of 185 lb...(I am 5' 7'')

[ambach123]

From the poll so far approximately 43% of the people would be less attracted to him/ her for gaining a mere 5Kg (11 lbs).

Obviously people here give a lot of importance to weight.

There is nothing right or wrong about this, just an observation; goes to show that most who look for a RW are looking for a thin woman. A RW who gains even a few Kg. reduces her chances substantially.

[Taz]

Just goes to show how perceptive you really aren't. Norwegians are renowned for their unassuming, modest and quiet outlook on life which you've obviously interpreted as aloofness and condescension; as a people I've yet to meet a group as a whole that are nicer and I've met people from most of the world. You may want to read up on Janteloven and reassess your judgement of those Norwegians.

Read carefully again SJ- I spoke about the Norwegians in the US. I am surrounded by them at the moment. This apparently is the home for all transplanted Swedes, Finns, Danes, Norwegians, etc. They all seem to have migrated to where I am currently working. They bill themselves as "MN nice". They are the most clique oriented group I've been around. If you weren't born and raised with them here, they will never really open up. The exact opposite of the Siberians I've met in my life. I've also been to Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. Of these I like the Danes the best. Definitely more friendly and helpful than the other groups I met. One thing I remember very well was the cost of everything. I'll attribute that to socialism as that seems to be the one of the most common effects of socialism. They tax the heck out of everything.

As for the red's under the bed. Never subscribed to that notion. I do have a major problem with socialism as it punishes those who are successful. I've lived under capitalism, socialism, communism and worked under a few dictatorships. Of them, I'll take a model similar closer to the US model even though it has its flaws. I know the US has its flaws but it didn't grow to world prominence in such a short time purely because of luck. Nor am I one to short shrift the other contributions to the world by other countries. I am not ethnocentric at all. I am not the typical US citizen who thinks the US way is the only way of doing things and I've definitely been exposed to other cultures.

As for Feminism, it is definitely different hear than any other country in the world with respect to its teachings. I remember listening to Feminist demonstrations and they would continual claim that marriage is either prostitution or that marriage was rape. I would say that is a pretty screwed up notion but I remember hearing it repeatedly by Feminist when they were demonstrating. Additionally they worked very diligently to bias the court system against men. Justice is often NOT BLIND in the US. If you go to court as a man and you have children, the immediate assumption is you will be a dead-beat-dad and not take care of your kids. Even if you have done nothing wrong they will attempt to garnish your wages if you are a man. I have never seen them do that to a woman yet. Even in cases where it has shown the woman is a worse parent than the man, they most often give custody of the children to their mother.

I am all in favor of everyone being equal before the laws of the land with no bias for OR against anyone because of their sex, religion or race. Do you know that in many states that if a man is abused by a woman there is almost no free help legal or otherwise but if a man abuses a woman she has a ton of resources at her disposal? Do you know that a woman can easily have you evicted from your own house and there is virtually nothing you can do about it? Yet the opposite is almost never true? All she has to do is claim domestic violence and even without proof they will almost always ask the man to leave the home immediately EVEN IF THE WOMAN was the aggressor. I believe there should be no discrimination against anyone with respect to laws and their enforcement. In what I've observed Feminism has definitely had a negative effect on the US in it extreme form. Many men have no idea how bad it can be until they witness what happens when you go through the US legal system. This is one of the absolutely most screwed up things about the US. A perfect example of that is the IMBRA law.

SJ - you may be the best Norwegian in the world but all it takes is one bad woman to totally screw up your life. So I'd say don't be too overconfident. While going through flight training my instructor told me - "Taz, it is dangerous to be among the 3 worst fighter pilots and among the 3 best!" Hopefully you can understand why.

[Taz]

All these posts made me check google if there is a difference betwwen american lb and british lb.

Now below is Ranetka with a horrid weight of 185 lb...(I am 5' 7'')

Some people can carry their weight very well. When I was close to 400 lbs, I didn't look that big either but I sure felt it in some ways. In general people aren't talking about people being plump or big as much as people that are definitely fat. It seems here most men are interested in women that are slimmer than in the US. I didn't think it was reasonable for my future partner to be slender or average sized if I was grossly overweight. Why should I expect more from her than I am willing to give myself?

[Boethius]

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[Boethius]

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[JR]

The original questions were akin to "Is it ok to dump a fat wife or cheat on her?" 

The original question was: At what point would you start becoming less physically attracted to your mate/partner if she/he were to gain weight?

[Taz]

And presumably, it is also perfectly acceptable to leave a partner who has been diagnosed with cancer, or MS, or diabetes, or kidney disease, or has a heart attack.  Or if he/she loses a job.  Or doesn't get the anticipated work bonus.  Or if he loses his hair or needs viagra . . .

No one here said you had to.  The original questions were akin to "Is it ok to dump a fat wife or cheat on her?"  That is what posters were objecting to, not who, or what, you find physically attractive.

The original question was this:

At what point does the excess weight of you mate/partner start to have negative effect on the physical attractiveness or desire for your partner

I don't think anyone on here has even once suggested that you should leave a partner that has been diagnosed with a serious illness. It again your misunderstanding (as many others) that attempt to twist the topic to suit misinterpretation. You, and many others, don't understand the difference between something that is as easily preventable as obesity and sever disease. These are things that are not as easily prevented or can occur even when you do everything right. People become obese because they over eat or don't exercise enough. Each of which is pretty easy to fix. Hopefully you have the intellectual honesty to understand that.

I have never advocated dumping a woman because of her weight and I don't recall anyone posting that in this thread. Please kindly point me to where someone said that. Perhaps it is only your mistaken impression of what was said or I might have missed it.

[Boethius]

d

[Taz]

The main point was in the first paragraph. The other questions were follow-up questions.

I wanted to edit it later but after a short period of time, you can't.

[Boethius]

The original question was this:

At what point does the excess weight of you mate/partner start to have negative effect on the physical attractiveness or desire for your partner

I don't think anyone on here has even once suggested that you should leave a partner that has been diagnosed with a serious illness. It again your misunderstanding (as many others) that attempt to twist the topic to suit misinterpretation. You, and many others, don't understand the difference between something that is as easily preventable as obesity and sever disease. These are things that are not as easily prevented or can occur even when you do everything right. People become obese because they over eat or don't exercise enough. Each of which is pretty easy to fix. Hopefully you have the intellectual honesty to understand that.

I have never advocated dumping a woman because of her weight and I don't recall anyone posting that in this thread. Please kindly point me to where someone said that. Perhaps it is only your mistaken impression of what was said or I might have missed it.

You asked if one would consider having an affair, or if they'd dumped someone because of weight.

I am surprised, given your penchant for quoting all sorts of studies, Taz, that you have not read much obesity being classified as an illness.   Certainly physicians working in this field view it as an illness.  

Most illnesses are preventable.  Most cancers are the result of lifestyle choices, as is a lot of  heart disease, adult onset diabetes, and erectile dysfunction.  So why is one lifestyle choice unacceptable and the others not?  

[Daveman]

This was also part of the original post -

Have you ever left a partner because you no longer found them physically attractive?
Would it increase your odds of having an affair if you no longer found your partner physically attractive?

No and No.  

I still can't believe though, that even with love, devotion, great sex, et al, that unless someone is actually attracted to overweight people to begin with -- at some point on the path of weight gain one would find their partner less physically attractive.  She/he may be the absolutely most beautiful and wonderful person in the world in your heart, but I still can't imagine someone looking at a 7-800 behemoth and thinking "no less physically attractive to me".  I think it's easy to "say the right things", but real thoughts about the situation would be quite different.

I really haven't experienced the weight gain aspect, but I did experience something a little crazy. My ex has the most gorgeous dark dark brown/black hair.  Just eye poppingly beautiful.  Well, one day she got a wild hair (pun intended) and had some crazy color put on her hair.. GAG!  It looked like hell.  I didn't leave her... I still made love to her and enjoyed it, I still loved her, all of those .. but damn that was FUGLY!  During this time I was indeed less physically attracted to her appearance.  Didn't change how I FELT about her, but I absolutely found this god awful hair coloring less physically attractive and rushed her to an emergency psycho-therapy session to find out why in the name light refraction she did that.  I don't think that particular color even exists on the rainbow anywhere.  I believe it would be similar with the weight gain after a certain point thoug the latter would be more gradual as opposed to the eye bugging shock factor.

Ladies who have posted their photos here look very shapely, so I really have no idea what the poundage would be where I'd begin to be less physically attracted , but I know that a body in the shape of that guy up thread that JR posted just is not physically attractive at all.  I cannot believe that anyone posting in this thread, who began with a normal sized partner, and he/she increased to THAT size would NOT be less physically attracted. I'm just absolutely not buying it.

[facetrock]

  I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone would claim obesity is a disease. In a very very few cases it might be true. But the huge majority of people who are fat is because they simply eat to much and exercise to little. If being fat was a disease then almost half the people in the US are sick with it. I dont buy into the excuses either; I am depressed, or stressed, or my dog died blah blah blah. Being fat is a choice and the last thing these people need is someone to convince them its not their fault. These people need a GodDam stairmaster, not another trip to the buffet line.

  I never said it was right to cheat on a spouse who becomes fat. But in many cases when the overweight spouse refuses to trim down and take care of themselves the other who is in shape will not put up with it forever. The same with drinking or drugs. No one wants to see their partner ruin their body and few will stick around for the stroke or massive heart attack and honestly I dont blame them.

  Call me shallow, vain, inconsiderate or whatever the hell you want. Sorry I cant be politically correct for everyone here and have zero tolerance for women who turn themselves into a human garbage disposal and refuse to do anything about it.

[Sculpto]

Facet.. there is something to consider in the US diet.. all that corn syrup in everything does create issues that cause problems later.  Not making excuses.. but.. unlike places in the world where the cuisine is based on traditions and available produce we do eat a lot more processed food than other places.  It has an impact, especially combined with all the car sitting and office work..

[Boethius]

No and No. 

I still can't believe though, that even with love, devotion, great sex, et al, that unless someone is actually attracted to overweight people to begin with -- at some point on the path of weight gain one would find their partner less physically attractive.  She/he may be the absolutely most beautiful and wonderful person in the world in your heart, but I still can't imagine someone looking at a 7-800 behemoth and thinking "no less physically attractive to me".  I think it's easy to "say the right things", but real thoughts about the situation would be quite different.

First of all, there are not too many 700 or 800 lb individuals, even in the US. 

Second, nobody is arguing that the individual is no less physically attractive.

I really haven't experienced the weight gain aspect, but I did experience something a little crazy. My ex has the most gorgeous dark dark brown/black hair.  Just eye poppingly beautiful.  Well, one day she got a wild hair (pun intended) and had some crazy color put on her hair.. GAG!  It looked like hell.  I didn't leave her... I still made love to her and enjoyed it, I still loved her, all of those .. but damn that was FUGLY!  During this time I was indeed less physically attracted to her appearance.  Didn't change how I FELT about her, but I absolutely found this god awful hair coloring less physically attractive and rushed her to an emergency psycho-therapy session to find out why in the name light refraction she did that.  I don't think that particular color even exists on the rainbow anywhere.  I believe it would be similar with the weight gain after a certain point thoug the latter would be more gradual as opposed to the eye bugging shock factor.

Proves you don't get it and likely never will.

Ladies who have posted their photos here look very shapely, so I really have no idea what the poundage would be where I'd begin to be less physically attracted , but I know that a body in the shape of that guy up thread that JR posted just is not physically attractive at all.  I cannot believe that anyone posting in this thread, who began with a normal sized partner, and he/she increased to THAT size would NOT be less physically attracted. I'm just absolutely not buying it.

And yet, that guy found a wife who, apparently, loves him.

I knew a woman (one of those MN Scandinavians) who was going through a divorce and started posting online a lot.  She was working through her emotions and was looking for anonymous views/support.  Online, she "met" a guy with a very similar humour to hers, and who was obviously very intelligent.  They really clicked, and eventually, he flew out to meet her.  She knew he was big, as he'd sent her a picture, but she confessed to me she didn't know how big.  He had been really depressed and, at 6'2", was over 300 lbs.  She later told me that during that first meeting, they could not even consummate the relationship, because of his size; not because she didn't want to, but because it was physically impossible.  Yet, she was undeterred.  She told him that if their relationship was to proceed, he needed to lose weight.  She didn't expect him to be thin, just healthy. 

He was motivated and joined Weight Watchers.  He dropped over 100 lbs. Within a couple months of their meeting (while he was still dieting), she left MN and moved in with him.  Five years later, he is still a big guy, overweight, even, but they are very happy together.

If she had not "met" him online, I doubt they would have come together.  But she really fell in love with his personality, and that was paramount to her.

[Boethius]

  I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone would claim obesity is a disease. In a very very few cases it might be true. But the huge majority of people who are fat is because they simply eat to much and exercise to little. If being fat was a disease then almost half the people in the US are sick with it. I dont buy into the excuses either; I am depressed, or stressed, or my dog died blah blah blah. Being fat is a choice and the last thing these people need is someone to convince them its not their fault. These people need a GodDam stairmaster, not another trip to the buffet line.

  I never said it was right to cheat on a spouse who becomes fat. But in many cases when the overweight spouse refuses to trim down and take care of themselves the other who is in shape will not put up with it forever. The same with drinking or drugs. No one wants to see their partner ruin their body and few will stick around for the stroke or massive heart attack and honestly I dont blame them.

  Call me shallow, vain, inconsiderate or whatever the hell you want. Sorry I cant be politically correct for everyone here and have zero tolerance for women who turn themselves into a human garbage disposal and refuse to do anything about it.

I will defer to obesity experts.  When you post your degree and credentials, your opinion will bear some "weight" (no pun intended).

Nobody said you have to accept anything, so why are you protesting?

[facetrock]

  Sculpto, do you know of anyone that is so stupid they dont realize sitting on your ass and eating junk food wont make them fat? Sorry that is an excuse. If you exercise enough you can eat all kinds of stuff you really shouldnt. Why is it when I go to the FSU and see very few fat men or women but here they are everywhere. Most white Americans come from the same gene pool as them so I dont believe its genetic. Its exercise, they walk everywhere, they actually care what their bodies look like. They dont stuff themselves all day with food.
  I have also noticed they have all kinds of fatty food there too. But its the exercise that keeps them trim.

[Boethius]

Facet.. there is something to consider in the US diet.. all that corn syrup in everything does create issues that cause problems later.  Not making excuses.. but.. unlike places in the world where the cuisine is based on traditions and available produce we do eat a lot more processed food than other places.  It has an impact, especially combined with all the car sitting and office work..

I agree, if one eats junk he/she will gain a lot of weight.  I also agree that sedentary lifestyles are a factor.  However, I also think that if we are talking about huge weight gains, the emotional factors cannot be discounted.

I'm not making any suggestion on who one should marry, or what one is attracted to.  I just find that aspect somewhat shallow in a marital situation.

[Daveman]

  I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone would claim obesity is a disease. In a very very few cases it might be true. But the huge majority of people who are fat is because they simply eat to much and exercise to little....

Well, it is for most a "habit".. addictive behavior is considered the illness.  There have been many pop psychological meanderings around that topic as well as genetic predisposition, etc.  Acoholism, gambling, over-eating, even sex under certain circumstances.  The illness portrayed is not the actual obesity (though that can obviously lead to serious disease) but the behavior precipitating and perpetuating the condition.  Yes, there are indeed medical disorders which can lead to serious weight gain, but I agree the most common pattern is Open Hand, Clutch Food, Stuff Into Mouth, Swallow (mastication optional).. Repeat and, um, don't move around very much.

Alcohol is an illness.
Gambling is an illness.
Obesity is an illness.
Sex is an addiction.
Smoking is only a nasty habit.
Smoking after sex.. I don't know, I never checked..