Researchers in the US found that women who were overweight were more likely to report ever having sexual intercourse with a man, but apart from that women’s sexual behavior did not vary by body mass index.

The study was by researchers at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, and other research centres in the US and is published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The researchers looked at the links between body mass index and a number of sexual behavior measures, including orientation, age at first intercourse, ever having had sex with a male partner, the number of partners and frequency of intercourse. The sexual behavior was categorized by body mass index (BMI) groups: Normal (under 25 kg/m2), overweight (25 to 30 mg/m2) and obese (over 30 kg/m2).

The results showed that:

• BMI was not significantly linked to sexual orientation, age at first intercourse, frequency of heterosexual intercourse, and the number of lifetime or current male partners.
• Overweight and obese women were more likely to report ever having had sexual intercourse with a male partner (p under 0.001).
• 92 per cent of overweight women reported ever having had sexual intercourse with a male partner compared with 87 per cent of women of normal BMI.
• This figure was unaffected by adjustments for age and type of residence.

The authors concluded that:

“With the exception of ever engaging in sexual intercourse with a man, sexual behavior differs little between women of different body mass indices.”