Feed Her! Women With Full Stomachs Will Have More Sex With You

It turns out that the old saying, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach," isn't just true for men, but for women as well. Women are much more responsive to romance and sex when they're not ravenous.

A recent study was published in the journal Appetite, and studied how women's brains are more receptive to romantic and sexual cues when they're not hungry. This make sense, as it's difficult to become aroused when your stomach is growling. 

"We found that young women both with and without a history of dieting had greater brain activation in response to romantic pictures in reward-related neural regions after having eaten than when hungry," said lead researcher Alice Ely, PhD from UC San Diego School of Medicine.

In an earlier study completed at Drexel University, which was published in the journal Obesity, Ely studied how women's brains responded to images of fatty foods on an empty and full stomach, and discovered that both their hunger levels and dieting history did affect brain activation patterns. Ely's desire to see if a woman's hunger state had an influence on another highly rewarding stimuli beyond food: romance.

For the romance and hunger study, Ely and her research team had 20 participants, all of normal weight. Half of the young women had tried at least twice in the past to lose weight, and half had never dieted at all. All of the participants were asked to fast for at least eight hours and then come to the lab hungry.

Once at the lab, the participants were put into an fMRI and shown romantic images such as a couple holding hands, and non-romantic neutral images like a bowling bowl. The researchers saw similar levels of activation between both groups of women. The women were then told to drink 500 calories worth of a meal replacement drink and were put back into the brain scanners. 

After ingesting the meal replacement drink, the researchers found that the participants were more responsive to romantic cues.

"In this case, they [the participants] were more responsive when fed. This data suggests that eating may prime or sensitize young women to rewards beyond food. It also supports a shared neurocircuitry for food and sex," Ely said.

Players, take note: if you want to put the moves on a lady, make sure she isn't hungry!

"Instead of being anxious and annoyed and irritable when you're hungry ... once we're sated, then we can get on to better things," Ely said.

There's a reason that dinner is often included in a romantic evening. You want your date to be able to focus on you, not on her hunger.