Why Women Have Harder Time To Loose Weight Than Men?

Don't Do Diet after 40s

Have you noticed why women have more difficult time to shed extra pounds?

If you are a men, you notice you can lose weight relatively easily. This was shown in a controlled study where 100 men and women participated. The program they enrolled in was a no exercise no diet plan - measure your body weight in the morning and at night. Yes that's it. Plot the results on the scale and watch your weight go down. More than 80% of men lost 4-14 lb in 8 weeks. Those men were not obese to begin with, so these numbers are pretty good. Also there was no exercise or a specific diet they followed. You don't believe it? Try it -see what you will loose?

This, sadly, may not happen for all of us. Mainly because our brain is wired in a different way - a bit more complicated.

We got a couple of more hormones working on us, estrogen, progesterone....and we are very much "social". These two factors affect our weight, more specifically "fat"accumulation, and motivation. Without going too scientific, estrogen helps our body burn fat. Progesterone in other hand make us store more fat under our skin. As we get older, we will have less estrogen, so we will burn less fat. We will also produce less growth hormone, so our muscle cells tend to turn to fat cells. As you know, progesterone is a bit%$ hormone - some of us become more moody, hungry (for no reason), and/or irritable. During this phase, it is known that our bodies do everything they can do to maintain the body weight. So we may not see any "results" from diet or exercise. So some women get discouraged and throw away the perfectly good routine or clean diet. 

If you know the cycle well, you can use this to your advantage - do a lot exercise during the estrogen phase. Pay attention to your body, chances are you will be less hungry. You may not need to eat as much as yesterday or your "suggested" calories. During progesterone, don't expect to see "great results" and anticipate a more than usual appetite. You can plan ahead to bring "healthy snacks" with you. So you can maintain relatively clean diet during this phase.

It makes sense we are wired in this way. We need to prepare for "nesting" (progesterone phase), so we will be left alone and eat more. During estrogen phase, we will be hunting (?) for the perfect mate, so we will skip a meal or two. 

Does this make sense?


For those who want to try this no cost no diet weight loss challenge, look at the graph below. Make something similar to this, and start measuring up your body weight.

The graph is in a kg, so you may want to adjust it to lb. It's more effective if you can add a comment each day. For example, I had an entire bag of potato chips when watching a football game. Or, I ran 3 miles today. As you begin to "see" the weight come down, brain will begin to produce a "pleasure hormone", endorphin, and you will follow a more healthy life style. This works pretty well for men. I did this for a while, it did work for 6 weeks. You may want to start this around Thanksgiving Holiday. So you can track your weight and stay in your zone.

Sources: Science for Everyone, various articles