Women Really Do Prefer Men Who Are Physically Fit

But It’s Probably Not For Any of the Reasons You Might Think

Matt Gangloff
5 min readDec 20, 2022
Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

Do women really prefer guys with big muscles? Most women will say no. Then, date guys who are jacked.

It’s not because they’re lying. It’s that men don’t understand what women are really after...

It’s not exactly that women prefer men who are physically fit.

It’s that being physically fit hints at something much deeper and more important (and totally achievable, even to the average guy).

Here’s what I mean…

Physical Fitness Is Just a Proxy for These 5 Things

Humans use proxies, or heuristics, or little rules of thumb to make mating decisions. They look at one thing as evidence that something else is true.

Take, for example, male birds’ colorful plumage and dance routines. Female birds select based on those things as a proxy that indicates the most colorful dancers have good genes to pass on to the next generation.

Now, human beings are a little more complicated than that. We select partners based on more than just genetics alone.

--

--

Matt Gangloff

I teach the how-to’s of Post-Traumatic Growth: How to heal and grow, find a new mission, become your best self and build a meaningful life. www.mattgangloff.com