@99 It is not bad medical advice to tell people who mentioned they are very overweight to lose weight. It can eradicate many possible complications from higher risk of diabetes to hypertension.

If the LW wants to find her perfect manly man mate, she is better off in getting in shape, unless she finds her ideal manly man who is a chubby chaser. She should also lose weight to help her self esteem, besides help her depression by exercising regularly.

@98 "Of course weight loss will help control but does not cure type 2 diabetes"

It makes it much more manageable, besides one can control insulin's levels by diet, then having to take a daily insulin injection, with a person's weight under control with Type II Diabetes.

The key is also to maintain a chronic condition like Type II diabetes, so complications like kidney issues, neuropathy and vascular problems do not appear.

The emphasis on weight loss is for preventative measures, as a person is going to have larger risks for many problems that are caused by obesity. Being obese doesn't mean one gets these problems immediately, but they are long term risks as the person continues to be obese to morbidly obese.

Eating Right and maintaining a diet can be simply done. Just join Weight Watchers.

This makes me long for the days when intractable internet arguments were about abortion, circumcision, and Hitler, not about how easy! it is to lose weight! with diet! and exercise!

(If anyone's counting, put me in the column for obesity being a symptom with many interlocking causes and not something that anyone chooses any more than they choose depression, height, intelligence, poverty, or race-- all things that are also correlated with health and life expectancy.)

@103: Your unsolicited "advice" is not helpful or asked for.

Telling someone with overwhelming depression to "lose weight" will not solve their depression.

Getting back into therapy may help them lose weight, but it's the first step they need to take.

Harassing someone about the very body issues they tell you make up the core of their depression is not in any way constructive.

It's just shitty.

@107

"Telling someone with overwhelming depression to "lose weight" will not solve their depression."

Depression is a mental health issue. For many, it is a chronic issue. It doesn't go away, it has to be controlled. One of the best ways to help with people with mild to moderate depression is daily exercise.

Obesity is a medical problem that puts those with obesity to morbid obesity at serious health risks. It shouldn't be ignored, or people can't address it.. There is a difference between looking at someone who is obese as a moral judgment and trying to address a medical problem. It is not harassment, it is about helping them live a healthier lifestyle.

Losing weight is the easy part, trying to keep it off is the tough part. Whether the LW loses weight or not, is up to her, however she should do daily exercise to help with her depression, and if she wants find another partner, she is better off getting in shape. Manly Men are most of the time vacuous and arrogant, who demand good eye candy..

What is shitty is the Fat Acceptance movement, who are like flat earthers and global warming denialists. It should be every American's patriotic duty to lose weight if they are very overweight, it will help with insurance costs, lower medicare and medicaid costs, and help pave the way for National Healthcare with a Public Option..

Super sad. Sounds like she's married to a great guy. There's no fixing this.

This is why people should not get married young. Seriously. Don't get married when you are teenagers and in your early 20s! Just don't!

The lw said "I'm still very fat and with some disordered eating problems and trying to work on that," (emphasis added) which I take to mean that she knows she's overweight, she doesn't want to be overweight, and she is trying to take steps to change her eating and possibly general health habits.
There is no need to tell her she's overweight and that she needs to lose weight, and it's extremely easy to find weight loss programs and diets if she's so motivated.

Average Idiot,

Vitriol and judgement are part of the Internet. You have to either ignore it altogether or filter for the things that are helpful. You dished out some vitriol too, so I'd say all is fine, and how people act online is really not important.

You aren't attracted to your husband. You are lying to him about it. You are both still young. You have no kids. There is no reason to stay together, whether or not you love him or wish things were different. You got married when you were children. You grew apart. You will both be sad for a bit, and then you'll meet other people with whom perhaps you are more compatible. This does not make you an awful person. It's totally normal.

What might make you an awful person is if you keep lying about it and keep pretending it will work out until you are both older, less flexible and more financially tied together. Don't drop this on him in his early 40s. Do it now while you're both still young.

Average Idiot, I echo the advice to get some therapy, even if it means you have to go about it in an unorthodox way since you'll be abroad. I don't know if this marriage is salvageable, but I'd counsel you not to make any hasty decisions until you get some individual therapy and then perhaps couples therapy. But don't put these off; you and your husband are still relatively young and if you do decide to end the marriage (and transition to very supportive friends, maybe), you want both of you to have time to move on with less hindrances to finding new partners better suited to each of you.

Staying with someone because you don't think you could attract anyone else isn't a very good reason and staying with a partner who wants you sexually but to whom you're not sexually attracted at all isn't fair to the partner.

@90 Sandwich

People who spend their de-stressing time posting about other people's relationships online and then arguing over who gives better advice are unlikely to be doing so simply because they are motivated to provide super accurate and helpful advice to the LW. I think people here mostly do that too (not always but mostly) but of course the comments serve the purpose of diversion to the poster, not of doing a job or advancing a career or helping a friend or any such thing. I've not seen anyone here being very intentionally rude or hurtful, and the trolls seem pretty easy to identify, but certainly no one is going out of their way to sugar coat and of course there is projection. I bet this is not your first day on the Internet. In any case, you did not ask the comment section for advice. You asked Dan.

@91 of course diets work. If your vision of a diet is "Zone" or "SouthBeach" or whatever, those are marketing plans designed to turn you into a product consumer, not to make you healthier. We all have diets, they're essentially lifestyle choices. I understand not everyone can be 110 pounds but 99% of women who don't have specific medical conditions can get down to 150.

@72 - as @94 indicates, respect and desire are very closely linked. She lost desire because she lost respect; she lost respect for her partner because he didn't display prototypicaly masculine traits: Physically, with his body; socially, by not being assertive, emotionally, by not "standing up for her"

Undead. Fuck off will you.
What a freak out you lot get into.
LW if you are still there, good luck with sorting these issues thru with your husband, and your new job.

Sportlandia

Are desire and respect always linked? In an LTR I'd say yes, so it's maybe a moot point for me to bring it up (and certainly a sidetrack which I don't think is bad in this thread right now), but are they generally linked? I've desired many people that I've had absolutely no respect for at all. I mean, I respected them as humans with rights, etc, but beyond that? Nope.

@116 Emma - "Always" is of course a bit too strict, there are no always's in the world of human relationships; in any case, we're talking about different forms of respect - acknowledging that someone is in fact a human doesn't equal respect; that is, thinking that someone is at minimum your social equal. And no, you didn't respect those hot people you wanted to fuck but otherwise didn't respect any more than Donald Trump respects essentially any woman.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/ma…

I'll leave this right here. Being a pragmatist, I believe in thinking about what works. You alll have a nice day.

That's exactly why I referred the LW to that book DarkHorse, because it works.

No, the depression did not get cured. You are still depressed. Maybe you don’t recognize it if what signaled ‘depression’ to you and got you into treatment was suicidality and you are not suicidal right now, but you are definitely depressed.

Talk to your doctor. Find an online or telephone therapist.

Depression kills libido and so can antidepressants. There’s not an easy way out of that dilemma, but being undepressed with no libido is better than being depressed with no libido. Plus, when it’s the meds that are killing your libido they can be tweaked.

Am I really the only one here who notes the irony of calling being fat a choice, saying that 99% of the people who are fat could be cured if they wanted to be, decrying that fat people are bringing down the common good of the nation, and no one seems to notice that that's the Far Right's take on homosexuality? We can't possibly support a gay pride movement or allow gay people to marry, because, oh-my-god, then they might think it was okay to be gay! It would be too awful if your sexual deviance was considered normal (normal for you, anyway). Fat acceptance is wrong because it encourages people to be happy being fat, giving in to their sick fat desires, when it's bad for you, you could get AIDS. Being fat is a choice! Look at all the people who have chosen not to be fat. They thought briefly they might be fat deep down while at boarding school, but with some will-power, they're now attracted to women or have at least sublimated the bad attractions to the point where they're able to live in the closet.

(The point for the especially dense: You can substitute "fat" for "gay" back and forth and get the same arguments either for or against acceptance.)

EmmaLiz@116 – Are desire and respect always linked?
They are for me. I have seen my fair share of "beautiful" women who I had absolutely no desire for due to their obnoxious beliefs, entitled attitudes, etc... If the space between the ears is repugnant, no amount of great tits/super ass is going to make up for it. Not even for a one-night stand. There are too many other more appealing options out there. Don't stick your dick in Crazy. Don't stick your dick in Trumpettes.

@121 "saying that 99% of the people who are fat could be cured if they wanted to be"..

First, there is overweight, and then there is obese to morbidly obese. There is no cure as much as there is perseverance. The big problem is maintaining healthy eating habits and maintaining one's weight..

Anyone who is obese to morbidly obese, and I will put out some explosive in this mix, someone like Lindy West, should seriously work on losing that weight. It is not good for a person to run out of breath by walking up a flight of stairs, nor they are limited in what activities they want to do, because of their obesity to morbid obesity.

It is a medical problem if someone is obese to morbidly obese, they are running the risk of numerous health problems, like hypertension which begets other health problems like renal failure. It is not the same as sexual identity..

I understand that obese to morbidly obese people are discriminated, and those who are obese to morbidly obese are stereotype as lazy slobs. However, they have a serious medical problem, they have to address. They can't do what Fat Acceptance activists like Kate Harding and Lindy West have done, be in complete denial that obesity can cause serious health problems..

One can argue that long term cigarette smokers don't have a choice, they are addicted to very powerful drug: nicotine. It is very difficult to stop this addiction, and in many ways it isn't a choice given the strength and withdrawal symptoms of nicotine..

However, for obesity and morbid obesity, one has to change one's lifestyle to lose weight. It can be done. The most important part is change of diet, and eating properly. Going to a dietician helps.

My interest is people maintaining healthy eating habits. If a person maintains healthy eating habits, exercises regularly, they stop being obese and morbidly obese. Whether it is a choice or not, we are all homo sapiens who have pretty similar physiology, that uses ADP and ATP for cell metabolism.. Obese to morbid obese people are not a different sub species of homo sapiens, that somehow can't metabolize nutrients..

People can make a choice in losing weight. The difficult part is perseverance, and it is not a short term project, but a lifetime project..

I'm not aware of massive amounts of legislation proposed or enforced that discriminate against overweight people. There might be and I just don't know about it.

I agree that culturally, there is a major problem with body shaming and with unrealistic representations of bodies in the media and unrealistic expectations and standards of beauty in society. I also agree that there are many different body shapes and that genetics plays a huge role in all of this, and that, yes, you can't just "change" the way you look.

But it isn't entirely true to say that you have no control over your weight. It just isn't. I think that sort of defeatism is also unhealthy. It's true that not everyone is going to be thin and that thinness shouldn't be some standard etc. But most people do have some control over their weight, their lifestyle, their diet, etc. We have to acknowledge this first before we can talk about the very real obstacles in the way of many people exercising that control.

If you want to insist on using the gay analogy, it would be like saying that just because you are gay, you are going to get HIV and there is nothing you can do about it so stop shaming people. It's true that we should not shame people from getting HIV. It's also true that there are ways to mitigate that risk. None of them are fail-proof. The risks don't change the fact that people are gay. No one should be shamed for any of these things. No one should be denied health care or participation in society for these reasons. But we still acknowledge that most people do have some control over their lifestyle and what risks they take.

I'm very athletic. Part of that is due to good luck with genes. Part of it is due to good luck with having the sort of privilege that allows me the time/space/resources to participate in physical activity and train for events. Part of that is also due to my lifestyle choices. Everything else the same, when my lifestyle choices are different, my body shape is different. I know that this is not the case for everyone as some people do not have those first two cases of good luck that I have. But it is the case for many people, including members of my family and friends who I have watched put on quite a bit of weight as they age, and this weight is entirely due to their lifestyle choices. However, my priorities are not the same as theirs, nor are my interests, nor are my ways of coping with stress, nor are our opportunities, and this difference between them and me is not the basis of any sort of judgement or discrimination. In some ways, they are healthier than I am. I binge drink, for example. I stress about work to the point of losing sleep and raising my blood pressure. I work in spurts so that I go days without sleep and then spend days laying about doing nothing. These are all lifestyle choices that I could handle differently, and I don't because we are all humans and life is hard and we are all doing what we can with our own skills and priorities. But it would be a lie to say I couldn't make different choices and that my drinking or stress management or sleeping schedule are entirely out of my control. For most people, their exercise and diet are NOT totally out of control. And for those of us that have seen the changes we can make to our weight, body shape, and muscle tone, it's hard to believe that 99% of overweight people have no control over their bodies, especially when we've seen first and second hand evidence to the contrary.

Diets work until they don't.

Obviously no one bothered to click on the link. Whatever. All the studies out there show that obesity and weight gain are intractable problems, that waving the next "fad" diet book or telling people to just eat less and exercise more are INEFFECTIVE. Not just in the fat ol USA but in Australia (which has done a ton of work on this). That is what the link says in a nutshell (not the Aussie stuff) from a doctor in NYC who specially works in weight loss for years.

Lw knows she's fat. She's said it. She didn't ask for advice to lose weight, but damn obviously since she's fat that must be the answer to ALL her problems. She obviously would want to bone her husband if she was just skinny. That's part of the fat-stigma issue. Its time to focus on the etiology rather than the symptoms.

@124. Emma Liz. Yes, I would think the range of weights for women who eat 2,200 calories a day and exercise for 45 minutes correspond roughly the 'right' weight interval on the latest BMI scale.

In this sad case I agree with Sublime Afterglow @2 and Undead Ayn @6. There should be some way she could kindly disengage and start having sex for herself. The really important thing she said was in the handle, IFEELHORNY. She wants to have sex again and doesn't desire her husband. It may be their relationship will evolve in the direction of a companionate marriage and that they will raise children together. He seems never to have sacrificed her esteem. But he may not want that.

I wouldn't be absolutely convinced he finds her desirable with her weight gain, whatever his attestations. The running marathons could be a modeling of behavior for her--get up off the couch--and a deflection of anger. Both deserve better than this sexless desert of polite non-communication. She's having with Dan the conversation she should be having with her husband, with honesty and without shame.

@125 "Obviously no one bothered to click on the link"

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/ma…

Yes, I did read it, and this is the quote that stuck..

"Wing ( Dr.Rena Wing,) says that she agrees that physiological changes probably do occur that make permanent weight loss difficult, but she says the larger problem is environmental, and that people struggle to keep weight off because they are surrounded by food, inundated with food messages and constantly presented with opportunities to eat. "

People can lose weight if they are having only 500 calorie Opti fast diets. Much like Contestants at the "Biggest Loser" tend to lose weight by exercising constantly and eating asparagus and jello..

The key is eating a healthy well balance diet. People like to look at the French, with their diet with lots of cream, eggs and cheese, and why 34% of the population is not obese like in the US. Do they have different genetics? No. One reason is that Americans are renown snackers, besides very large portion sizes at meals. The French are not known as snackers and their meals may have rich and fattening dishes, they are not as large portion size..

I just read a book called "Eggs or Anarchy" about rationing in the UK during Second World War, and the key was nutritional requirements with Britain under blockade, especially for children and pregnant and lactating women. One doesn't see obesity epidemics popping up during this time.

There is a difference between overweight and obese, both are unhealthy, but those who are obese have to confront their problem, without throwing in the towel, or feel attacked if people and especially medical professionals are stating they need to lose weight. Anyone who is obese, has to make an effort to try to lose weight.. That is 34-35% of all Americans..

@45. Average Idiot. You are showing a deal of self-love and self-pride. There are a lot of good things in your life--your new job in development, even your stalled friendship with the good man who's now your husband. I would not think your 'type' in terms of who you're attracted to and your current physique. People have psychologists about your searching for a physical manifestation of comfort or stability, but maybe one can't ask the why and the wherefore. You should not worry about finding someone else with whom you're more sexually compatible. There are men for every type of shape, and also there will be a man truly, rootedly, sexily into you as such!

Sorry: 'I would not think your taste and your current physique necessarily connected'.

As someone who’s livelihood for the last 27 years has been, among other things, changing people’s body composition, I am full of opinions on the scrap that’s broken out here on the fat loss subject. But! Fair’s fair, those who’ve called this are right, LR didn’t write in seeking advice about her weight, or any of that truck, her question was:
What do I do about the sex?
I want to fuck someone who turns me on. (As her husband, currently and for the foreseeable future, does not.)
I have to say, Dan rarely weighs in here, but it would be useful to know if
a. He or his staff made up her acronym signature
b. This was gender-swapped.
Anyways, LW, I have to side with the folks that suggest, if not a divorce, a trial separation. Man, if I was married to someone and she spoke about going away from me for long periods of time with relief, I’d pull the pin on that grenade, right there.
I also sympathize with the whole depression thing, which, as others have pointed out, is amorphous. I’ve been depressed, I’ve been bummed out, I’ve never been in that state that I’ve read of, regarding clinical depression:
“Picture yourself on a couch, with a table in front of you, and on that table is a pill that, if you take it, will solve all your problems. And you still can’t make yourself lean forward, and take the pill.”
Man, i’ve been down, but I’ve never been that down. But I’ve been assured by friends who have, that that is a real thing.
If you’re clinically depressed, you need to get some help, and that help doesn’t look like the guy on the Brawny paper towel wrap. Maybe meds to get a grip, start crawling out of the hole, then explore other options.

IAMHORNYDAN mentioned in passing that she had gone off of birth control pills. There was very interesting buzz in the scientific world a few years back, which never really hit the public's attention. Brief summary here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic…
In short, the hormones in birth control pills appear to affect women's major histocompatibility complex (MHC), changing their preference in men. (The hormones may mimic pregnancy, when sticking close to your genetic family may be safer for mother and baby. When not pregnant, women are more attracted to unrelated (in the MHC sense) men. I think this is a very real problem in modern societies. (An example of a giant uncontrolled experiment foisted upon us by pharma.) Some sympathy for IAMHORNYDAN is order.

As others have touched on, if a person has disordered eating, diets are not the answer. IAMHORNYDAN, I know you said therapy is not an option because you are in a developing country, but please investigate phone sessions with your shrink or a new one. There are also online therapy options. While not necessarily ideal, it would provide you with regular sessions to work on yourself.

You've received some good advice and support here. Make a point to dial back on just remembering the replies that upset you or offered diet advice, and focus on the ones that are helpful. You are still young and able to reinvent your life, with a new partner or solo. Please don't think you 'owe' it to yourself or your husband to stay in the marriage, if ultimately that won't be fair to either of you (and in my opinion, it will not). Best of luck.

I want to offer a bit of advice to anyone looking to find help on saving their marriage/relationship. Me and my husband had a torrid time for a whole decade; all our family & friends constantly advising us to get a divorce but we knew it would break our children’s heart. We tried so many different things to save our marriage and from trial & error we came across a very helpful site online that has worked extremely well for us: http://prophetabuviasolutiontemple.webs.… - spend a bit of time and follow his guide if you are looking for help. I am not gonna start saying its a miracle cure that will fix things over night but the changes made with me and my husband over the last 2 years have been remarkable. It is a whole lot cheaper than expensive marriage counselling fees too where we have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on different counselling appointments and if I’m being completely honest, they had absolutely no positive effect. If anything, the financial constraints of it all just made us argue even more. I am just glad now that we are at the happiest point we have been for many years and I can finally see light at the end of the tunnel. I do really highly recommend Abuvia for anyone who is having troubles right now. Good luck anyway to you all smile emoticon