Lose weight by having fun in the bedroom

I will teach you to use a more effective incentive to slim down by using your imagination and focusing on you. The imagery in your mind of a more sensual you is a much more realistic and tangible motivational tool than some airbrushed, touched-up photo from a glossy fashion magazine. In Chapter 4, Body Image: Feeling Hot, Hot, HOT, I’ll show you how to boost your self-confidence and perception of yourself.

Many people lose weight at the start of a new relationship. The excitement of a new love can temporarily speed up their metabolism. The constant thinking about food when you’re
single is replaced with loving thoughts of the new special person in your life. New lovers may also feel motivated to improve their appearance to further attract the ones they love, with the
hope that the object of their affection will reciprocate their love.

When the “honeymoon period” ends, however, the pounds often quickly return. Couples eventually reach a level of comfort with each other and spend more and more of their time together socializing while eating and drinking. They begin to feel more secure and often “let themselves go.” This is when being part of a couple can negatively influence eating habits, particularly when one partner is less health-conscious than the other. The bad habits of each partner inevitably begin to transfer to the other.

Then it’s the Ultimate Sex Diet to the rescue! It will motivate both of you to maintain a constant, intense level of frequent and pleasurable sexual activity.

That is why the Ultimate Sex Diet is most effective when both partners participate. It is still effective (and beneficial for both parties) with just one of you on the diet, but ideally both
partners should be involved so that a positive transference prevails over a negative one.

Speaking of downers, the word “diet” can have a negative connotation. It is not a coincidence that the first three letters of the word spell “die.” Most of us feel like we want to die when we are limiting our food intake. So, instead of viewing this as a “Sex Diet,” I personally choose to replace the “i” with a “u” (coincidentally, a great strategy in the bedroom), and view the Ultimate Sex Diet as a “Sex Duet Exercise and Nutritional Program,” to give it a more positive ring.

I think a sex duet sounds fun, and indeed it is! This is also an appropriate term to use for our particular purposes, since sex involves two parties “singing” together, instead of just one
person doing a solo. The most positive outcome of this interactive slimming program is that your partnership ultimately benefits just as much as each of you do. In Chapter 5, Feeling Sexy Every Night, you’ll learn how both you and your partner can work together to achieve your unique diet goals.

The first step of the Ultimate Sex Diet is to make your whole food experience more sensual. The key is not only to focus on healthier foods that make you feel good while eating them, but also to fully appreciate the entire sensation of eating. You will soon discover that this diet is not about restrictions and deprivation. It is about celebrating, feeling, and indulging in life.

“How can that be?” you might be wondering. Just think about how many negative attitudes you have about food. Traditional diets do nothing but reinforce these “bad food vibes.” But when food and eating are associated with the benefits derived from more intense foreplay, sex, and afterglow, your entire approach to food changes for the better.

Like many areas of our lives, when it comes to eating and making love we need to take more time to completely enjoy what we experience. You need to enjoy the scent, the texture, the taste, and the feelings that are created when you eat, just as when you are making love. On the Ultimate Sex Diet you will be encouraged to try new exotic and sensual foods. Won’t that
be fun?!

In Chapter 12, Sexual Nutrition: Healthy Foods for Healthy Loving, I will discuss how to approach food in a way that will heighten your sensory experience and how to translate these techniques into the bedroom. I will also discuss foods that are sexy to eat, those that serve as aphrodisiacs, and foods that can actually be used in the bedroom to enhance your sexual experiences.

In Chapter 14, Fighting Cravings: Don’t Crave Sweets, Crave Your Sweetie, I will teach you how to fight your food cravings. You will learn how to transform a craving for junk food into a craving for your partner. (Move over Baby Ruth—I’m looking for Mr. Goodbar!) Many times we eat when we are not hungry, to fill an emotional void. I will tell you why that void exists in the first place and discuss the body movements, mind tricks, and various mental strategies specifically designed to fill the void without filling your belly!

If you’ve been watching the news lately, you may have heard that there are many health benefits associated with sex. These include longer life spans, better cardiovascular health (surprise! sex really helps the heart), higher pain tolerances, an improved immune system, and a lower rate of depression. Chapter 16, Sexual Healing: The Amazing Health Benefits of Sex, will detail what science has discovered about the dramatic and positive impact sex can have on your physical wellbeing.

Now the tantalizing question becomes, are we dieting to have more sex, or are we having sex to diet? You will love the chapters devoted to what some have fondly called “Sexercise.” This is an activity many of us have been engaging in for years without realizing the benefits we were reaping. Such lack of awareness caused us to miss opportunities to increase those
benefits. If you’ve ever had sore muscles the morning after a good night of lovemaking, you may have been sexercising without even realizing it.

Aerobically, a half-hour romp in the sheets burns approximately 150–250 calories and sometimes even 350 calories if you are frisky enough. This is roughly the equivalent of briskly walking, running, or lifting weights for thirty minutes. Now which would you rather do: make sensual love with a warm partner, or just have a sweaty session on a cold and clammy exercise machine?

The regular calorie “burning” from sex doesn’t even include the additional calories used up during the strength and toning exercises you will learn about in Chapters 7, 8, and 9. Using my tantalizing suggestions for increasing the amount of foreplay involved in sex will burn up even more calories and also increase the amount of time you spend making love. These exercises will not only improve your body’s appearance, they will also enhance your pleasure during sex and lead to greater orgasms. You’ll be thanking me sooner than you think!

As you will discover, sex is a great exercise, and the more exercise you do in general, the better your sex life will be. Researchers at the University of California at San Diego found that three to four one-hour workouts per week helped men achieve steadier, more satisfying
sex sessions with their partners. In a Harvard School of Public Health study, men who worked out vigorously for twenty to thirty minutes several times a week reduced their risk of erection problems by half. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin discovered that women’s genital blood flow after watching an X-rated film was much greater after exercising than it was without the workout.

So, it’s an amazing cycle: The more you exercise, the more sex you have, and the more sex you have, the more exercise you are getting! Isn’t this the most natural and most pleasurable way to really lose weight and keep it off? Isn’t this one of the best ways to get healthier and happier? Isn’t life great? Yes!

Excerpted from “The Ulimate Sex Diet,” by Kerry McCloskey . Copyright © 2006, Kerry McCloskey. All rights reserved. Published by Penguin Group. No part of this excerpt can be used without permission of the publisher.

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