Manama: A Saudi father has refused to allow his daughter to marry an obese husband and asked him to lose 55 kilos before the family would accept the proposal.
The hopeful said that his weight was 145 kilos when he wanted to marry their neighbour.
However, her father said that he had to weigh 90 kilos for the marriage to go ahead.
“For the last three years, I have been working hard to slash my weight,” the hopeful man told Saudi daily Makkah.
“I have been exercising and dieting relentlessly, but I was able to shed only 25 kilos.
"I went back to the family, and the father said that 120 kilos was not the weight he wanted from me.
"He insisted I lose 30 kilos more and explained to me that the date of the marriage would be decided as soon as I weighed 90 kilos.”
A health report last year said obesity was fast turning into a major cause of concern for Saudi Arabia with 70 per cent of Saudi men suffering from it while 37 per cent of Saudi women faced problems related to being overweight.
The disease had reportedly spread at a rate of 30 per cent in the past 10 years.
According to Gulf health reports, around 20,000 people die annually in Saudi Arabia from obesity-related diseases.
