Weight, Sex, and Marriage: A Delicate Balance

This book reveals the connection between weight problems and marital satisfaction and offers strategies to assist women in attaining their weight goals

The husband-and-wife authors of Second Marriage (he is the former psychological director of Weight Watchers International, she is a doctoral candidate in marriage therapy) examine the interaction between women's weight problems and their marital happiness, sexual satisfaction and self-esteem. So many women have trouble losing and maintaining weight, they explain, because "they put too much emphasis on restricting food intake, and give too little consideration to why they overeat." That women eat to pacify such moods as boredom, loneliness, anger, anxiety or depression is not news. But the work also offers convincing evidence supporting the provocative theory that some women believe their extra weight stabilizes their marriages, and the authors describe various emotional benefits that both husbands and wives derive from a wife's weight problems. This study provides food for thought but doesn't push a specific diet. And the arguments are fleshed out with repetitions and testimonies from patients in an attempt to make a book where a magazine article would have sufficed. Literary Guild selection.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.