Article Advise

submitted: Jul 30th 2008 | by: ChristineSutherland | Total views: 2 | Word Count: 1225 | |

Weight loss is not just a matter of energy in, energy out, as most diet companies would have us believe. Just as important as these 2 factors is our metabolic rate, but few people understand how lifestyle factors, including sexual relationships, impact on metabolic rate.

There is no doubt that a healthy metabolic rate requires a healthy lifestyle, and a healthy sex life is part of that for almost all adults. If you are working toward weight loss, it's sensible to consider that this area of life might also need improvement.

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!

I'll be writing about other lifestyle factors in other articles about weight loss, but this article is specifically about one factor: the state of your most intimate relationship.

The Role of the Intimate Relationship

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!

Talk the Same "Language"

If you and your partner aren't using the same "language" or aren't on the same "wavelength" you're most likely experiencing a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding. This leads to feelings being hurt, to disappointment, and even to resentment.

Although technique can be important, what I'm talking about here is not technique, but the non-verbal communication which makes up nearly 100% of the intimate encounter. Matching sounds/silence, matching eye contact, matching facial expressions, even matching breathing.

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.

Compatibility

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.

Or perhaps he has a fetish, such as wearing high heels, but she finds this "unmasculine" and a certain mood breaker.

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.

I do wish that society were healthier so that people didn't grow up so ignorant about the variety of human nature, and so that people didn't feel they have to hide these things from others, or even from themselves. We'd avoid a lot of damage to individuals and families if only that were the case.

And of course that leads to .....

Honesty in Relationships

So many relationships stagger on with very little sexual honesty. I'm not talking about infidelity here, but the sexual dishonesty of holding back one's true thoughts and feelings about sex, and in a cowardly or resigned way, giving up on making that all it could be. And the longer it goes on like this, the harder to face up to it, and the harder to now communicate the truth.

However if you want to build a deeply fulfilling intimate relationship, that's exactly what you must now do.

Have you heard the old joke about women faking orgasms but men faking relationships? Well really they're one and the same when it comes to unsatisfactory marriages. A faked orgasm is a lie, pretending that an encounter is fulfilling when it is anything but.

This faking has more consequences. Practised often enough it can become so habitual that the woman is unable to achieve the real state.

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) What words you might actually say to your partner, or what things you might actually do, to communicate the changes you want

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.

Getting 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.

I know it can be very difficult to get that kind of privacy together when you're leading a very busy life, particularly if you're the parents of young children. But remember that the quality of your relationship together provides the foundation on which your children can grow and develop into healthy, happy adults themselves. You have a really serious responsibility to make that foundation as healthy and strong as you can.

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 sex life sorted, that's one lifestyle factor you can "tick off" as you work toward the greater health and wellbeing required for permanent weight loss.

About the Author

Christine Sutherland is an expert on weight loss, especially when it comes to lifestyle factors and issues that are crucial to easy and permanent weight loss. Her free book "17 Solutions" is must reading for anyone who is looking for a permanent answer to weight problems.

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