“It’s Important To Stay Skinny For My Husband”

“It’s Important To Stay Skinny For My Husband” 1

There’s an attention-grabbing headline! Of course, “skinny” isn’t really optimal, and whatever can be said for wives can be said for husbands, too. Let’s see what Ginny Hartley says.

After the birth of our third child, I was clinging onto extra weight far longer than I did after my first two pregnancies.

My husband definitely noticed my more ample features, and while he didn’t seem to mind one bit, my insecurity about my postpartum body quickly started to get in the way of our love life.

As someone who had spent most of her life being defined by athleticism, I was at a total loss when I realized I was no longer the lean girl my husband fell in love with.

When I married my husband, I was barely out of my teenage years and a rail-thin 102 lbs. I couldn’t fathom a day would come when I would gain considerable weight or have trouble staying fit. Fast forward seven years and three kids, and it’s a whole different story.

That once effortlessly skinny physique is now a thing of the past. But so what if I have to work for it? I’m willing to put in the extra effort to stay fit for the sake of my marriage.

I think there are two important and related concepts here: health and attractiveness.

First, we have a responsibility to God, ourselves, and our family to be as healthy as possible.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Being fit is an essential component of being physically healthy, but health is more than just fitness. Mental, spiritual, and social health are as important as physical health, and we should pursue them all — just like Jesus did as he grew up.

Luke 2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

Those four elements of health are fodder for a post of their own someday.

Second, we have a responsibility to our spouse to be as attractive as possible. Fortunately, attractiveness tends to follow health — if you focus on health, you get attractiveness almost for free! (It’s still worthwhile to put some energy into your wardrobe, of course.)

Health and attractiveness get more difficult to maintain as we get older, for both men and women — but women feel more pressure for cultural and biological reasons. Having babies is really difficult, and most men don’t work at jobs that are as physically demanding as pregnancy and childbirth are.

And so, as with all things in life, we need to do our best and trust God. I really like what Mrs. Hartley says here:

We want to raise our kids to respect their bodies and physical health. I have to practice what I preach. I need to workout for my mental health. I need to stay physically fit to keep up with the demands of raising three kids.

I need to maintain my weight so I feel confident in my body — not because I’m vain, but because I want to be the best version of myself.

God, your spouse, and your family deserve the best version of you! Being the best you takes intention, effort, time, and energy. It isn’t easy.

What do you do to be your best you, physically or otherwise? Leave a comment!

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19 comments

  1. This was great. I especially love the focus on health when you said, “if you focus on health, you get attractiveness almost for free!”

    I think any loving wife would want to bring her best into the marriage, whether it’s through her thoughts, emotions, words, actions or physical fitness: mind, body, spirit. We are beings of composite (at least here on earth), they affect each other.

    The problem is with the victim mentality. When women hear they should stay physically fit “for” their husbands, they mentally trip-out to an evil that isn’t even present in most husbands: “so i have to work at being a size 2!! no way!!” The truth is that, like most behaviours and growth in ourselves for our marriage, it is hard work and sacrifice. Like other women, I didn’t much care for that either, but now I see it through God’s eyes and it makes perfect sense.

    1. Absolutely! It’s easy to dismiss any attribute of attractiveness by saying “that’s shallow!”, which is somewhat true… but it’s not as simple as that. Sure, your spouse may put up with a mediocre version of you, but do you want a mediocre version of your spouse? Well, neither does she!

  2. I guess that I’m a bit different. My beloved husband loved me thin, fluffy and medium in weight. I was a size 12 and a triathlete when we met. Then I became crippled and gained a bunch of weight. I stayed at that hefty weight until about 4 years ago. Now I am average in weight leaning toward curvy.

    The beautiful thing is, we got engaged while I was crippled and fluffy. God bless my man’s soul, a very good soul. Weight loss was never about what my beloved thought about me. It was what I thought about me. And somewhere is there is the truth that the weight fell off when my evil father-in-law finally died. God have pity on his soul.

    1. I think it just depends on your perspective. There are always medical exceptions … it doesn’t make it an application for all to live by. Myself, I have just spent almost 2 years in a chair from a terrible accident. Packed on more that few pounds as I quit smoking as well (terrible timing, I know). Anyhow, I still will make my best effort to be healthily trim for my man.

    2. Thanks for the comment! Every person and marriage is different, and we each have our own challenges that tend to grow as we age. I certainly don’t think we need to adhere to some worldly standard of beauty… but I do think we should strive to be our best selves.

  3. I met Heather when she was 17, tall, skinny, leggy, 120ish lbs, and HOT! I was 18, athletic, tall, 180lbs, and had hair. Nearly 40 years later, we’re not teenagers any more.

    At some point in our 32 year marriage, she hit 200 lbs and I hit 300. I lost 80lbs and she lost 50. It was then that I realized I missed my athletic body and also missed her skinnier body as well.

    Having said that, our love and sex life never waned. Yes, I love my skinny babe but I also loved my bigger babe as well.

    Those of us who married thin and grew have the advantage of “growing” together. Had either one of us gained 50 or more lbs in 6 months, it may have been more noticeable. We each gained gradually and only noticed when the scale told us something we never thought we’d hear.

    I actually noticed that I was looking at other women with Heather’s bigger body and thinking how good they looked. My tastes changed as she did. Love does that. I wrote about it on marriedheat.com. You can read it at the link below. I wrote it because Heather, like a lot of other wives, was holding back on her sexuality because she thought she wasn’t sexy as a chubby girl. Quite the opposite.

    http://www.marriedheat.com/wives-take-big-girl-panties/
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  4. A family member recently asked me, “Which do you like better: an attractive face or an attractive body?”. Initially, I thought that they’re of the same value, almost by definition. Then, I realized that, unlike a person’s face, the attractiveness of their body says more about them than their physical attractiveness. Fitness, which corresponds to an attractive body, is valuable in its own right, since it improves length and quality of life. If you really love your spouse, then you should want to spend as many years with them as possible, and for those years to be as enjoyable as possible.

    Furthermore, it’s the most significant component of one’s appearance that one has control over. I can’t fault somebody for having a naturally unattractive face, but an unattractive body caused by excess weight is a waste of potential. As others here have said, it’s about being our best selves—or, as an old Disney movie put it, “It’s what you do with what you’ve got that counts.”.

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