No fat chicks?

Why do you want to be skinny?  Odds are, it's because society has taught you that all these amazing things will happen once you're skinny: you'll run down the beach in technicolor slow motion and nothing will jiggle, you'll finally pull a size 2 off the rack and slip into it easily, women will envy you and your amazing skinny body, men will faun over you so ardently that they will argue over who will buy you your next drink...

Let's pause on that last one for a moment: one of the major reasons women want to lose weight is to attract a mate.  We have this misconception that the skinnier you are, the more attractive men will find you.  And you know what?  That's true.  For some men.

But here's a reality check: for the vast majority of men, your confidence and the way you carry yourself is a much more significant factor than your jean size when it comes to whether or not they find you attractive.

Beyond that, it turns out that men like a lot more meat on our bones than many of us would suspect.  A flurry of recent sociological studies coming out of U.S. universities in the past year or so have revealed that our ideal size for ourselves is a size 6.  Pretty small, right?

In contrast, amazingly enough, researchers found that the average man's ideal size for a woman is somewhere between a 10 and a 12.  Further, researchers found that men tend to seek out women with bodies that look "natural", bodies with some curve and jiggle to them.  You don't need to be carrying an entire Christmas season's worth of extra weight with you, but once you get down to skin and bones, many men simply aren't interested anymore.

Imagine that!  Men don't mind if we look like real people!  The average guy doesn't want to be sleeping with a Vogue model, he wants to be sleeping with you!  With one caveat: the confident, self-accepting you.

So how about, instead of killing yourself to drop the weight to find a mate, as it goes, you focus instead on accepting your body the way it is, and realize that the person who is right for you will love your body just the way it is.  Apparently men like us with a little extra something to grab; if that isn't a great reason to stop dieting, I don't know what is! #