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How Much Weight You Need To Lose To Be Attractive

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How Much Weight You Need To Lose To Be Attractive

Trending News: Here's Exactly How Much Weight Loss You Need To Be Better Looking

Why Is This Important?

Because who doesn't want to be better looking?

Long Story Short

Scientists at the University of Toronto have examined the relationship between facial fattiness and attraction, and the news isn't good. You have to lose an awful lot of weight for people to even notice a change in your face, and about twice as much before your looks are considered improved.

Long Story

Most of us want to shed a few pounds, whether for ourselves or to be considered more attractive by the opposite sex. When we do, we almost exclusively focus on the midsection, since that's where fitness (or a lack thereof) seems most readily apparent. But does that make sense? After all, it's rare for anyone to see you in anything more revealing than shorts and a t-shirt, in which case you may want to focus on sculpting a slimmer, more manly facial profile. That's a fine idea, but psychologists from the University of Toronto have bad news for you: They know exactly how much weight you'd need to lose to make your face more attractive — and it's a lot.

Professor Nicholas Rule postdoctoral fellow Daniel Re examined something called facial adiposity, or how weight it perceived in the face. Considered an accurate indicator of a person's body mass index (BMI), it's calculated as a person's weight in kilograms divided by the square of the person's height in metres (kg/m2). They showed study participants photos of men and women between 20 and 40 years old, with the photos altered to gradually increase facial pudginess. Participants were shown two randomly selected photos and asked to choose the heavier one. At the end, the researchers determined how much contrast in facial adiposity was necessary for people to tell the difference — a BMI change of about 1.33 km/m2. What does that translate to in terms of overall weight loss (or gain)?


That means you can eat clean and sweat your butt off, but it'll take losing a solid nine lbs (on average) for the cute girl in the adjacent cubicle to notice a difference in what she sees from the neck up. And that's just a perceptible difference, mind you. For weight loss to have a meaningful impact on how handsome your face looks, men have to lose about twice as much weight — a BMI decrease of 2.59 km/m2, or a total weight loss of about 18 lbs.

Of course, this relies on BMI, which is a notoriously flawed indicator of health and even body composition (tell a 5'10", 210 lb NFL running back that he's fat because his BMI is too high). It also doesn't take into account the ways in which individuals lose weight, which can vary from person to person — everyone has those last deposits of body fat that stubbornly refuse to go away, even after you've slimmed down elsewhere. It's a good reminder, though, that looking attractive isn't always as simple as having a killer set of abs.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Is it possible to encourage weight loss in the face specifically, or is the body in control of that?

Disrupt Your Feed

Great, I can have washboard abs but my dumb potato face will always make me seem pudgy.

Drop This Fact

The one place it's good for men to be a little chubbier? Politics. Research has shown that fatter male politicians are seen as more honest, trustworthy and more capable.

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