Sex File: My wife’s weight loss makes me self-conscious in bed

Most married adults lose weight because they dislike their body, not their relationship. Picture: iStock

Over the past year, my wife has been on the GLP-1 jabs and has lost quite a lot of weight. I'm happy for her and know she feels more confident about her body, but it's making me feel worse about mine, and it's affecting our sex life. On top of all that, I feel like I was more attracted to her before she lost weight. How can I get over this?

When one partner in a marriage loses weight, it always has implications for the other. The recent explosion of GLP-1 jabs means that you are not the only man trying to reconcile himself to a dramatic change in his wife's appearance. 

Weight change creates relational turbulence because it disrupts existing behaviour patterns and creates uncertainty. A study at the University of Texas tracked how weight loss affected couple relationships and found that, like you, the non-dieting partner often felt insecure or more self-conscious about their body. 

As the non-dieting partner perceived their significant other becoming more confident and attractive, they also worried about the stability of their relationship. While this reaction is understandable, it is not rational. 

Most married adults lose weight because they dislike their body, not their relationship. That said, the weight of marital partners tends to be correlated. Not only do we fall in love with people who are of a similar build, but the weight of married partners also changes in parallel over time.

A US study which assessed the BMI of 12,067 people between 1971 to 2003, found that if one spouse became obese, the likelihood of the other spouse becoming obese increased by 37%. The same is also true in reverse. 

In 2018, researchers at the University of Connecticut discovered that there is a knock-on effect: when one partner actively loses weight, the other tends to lose some too.

You may or may not need to lose any weight, but you do need to build your body confidence. The best way to do that is to exercise, which will not only increase your confidence, tone your body and improve your self-esteem, but also boost your libido and your sexual function. 

A study of 2,034 patients published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine last year found that engaging in light to moderate levels of physical exercise led to a significant improvement in both libido and erectile function. Patients who did moderate exercise also had better sperm motility and harder erections.

The weight-loss pen might be a great quick fix, but exercise is a behaviour change that will deliver long-term benefits. It is also something that you can and should encourage your wife to do, since there will eventually come a time when she has to rely on willpower to sustain her weight loss.

An Oxford University study published in the BMJ in January found that people who stopped weight-loss medications regained the weight rapidly, at an average of 0.4kg a month. Getting into exercise together could help her to navigate the transition more effectively. 

Either way, it's probably a good thing that you fancied her just as much when there was more of her to love.

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