One way to reduce the probability of yielding to such temptations is to eliminate the targets of those temptations. If we are not attractive to others, they are less likely to give us the opportunity to stray. It is pretty obvious that, if no one finds us desirable, we are unlikely to cheat on mates or otherwise get into trouble.

Mind you, much of this typically goes on at a mentally subconscious level and may trigger only marginal conscious awareness, if that. Even though we have absolutely no conscious intention of cheating on our mates, the subconscious may nonetheless be worried that we might. And one outstandingly effective way to make ourselves undesirable is to be fat.

This happens to both men and women, but it is more likely to happen to women. But it works both ways, that is to say in both genders. But the effects are not limited to oneself, or just to what one does to oneself. There also exist frequent situations in which one mate's insecurity motivates him or her to influence the other mate to be overweight. For instance, a masculinely insecure man might be driven to make his wife overweight. That way he has less to worry about from the competition. He might wish his wife were svelte and sexy, but the insecurity that that would produce are far more painful than putting up with a fat wife.

There are lots of permutation and combinations that can arise in this kind of context. Here are most of them:

• Person is overweight to reduce the temptation to philander.
• Person induces mate to be overweight to diminish mate's temptations.
• Overweight person induces mate to be like him/her (for several reasons).
• Person senses mate is insecure so becomes fat to ease mate's insecurity.

ideomotor questioning is one of the best ways to poke into this issue to see if fidelity or mate-security issues are factors in your problem with weight. If it is, sharpen your pencil and work up some suggestions to get started changing your subconscious dynamics so you won't have to fight what is probably an unnecessary battle.

Back to "Reasons Why People are Overweight."