If I could have a nickel for every woman that complained to me that their husbands lost weight so much faster than they did, I would be a rich lady! The story is always the same. A husband and wife decide to lose weight. They find a program that seems to be a good fit for them. They eat similar meals, and have similar workouts. The husband starts shedding massive amounts of fat, and the women, if she is lucky, will lose a half a pound per week.
The unfair deck of cards, dealt to women is not in your imagination. It is true that men are better at losing weight than women, and it’s not because they have more willpower than we do, or even that they are secretly taking fat burners to give themselves the extra advantage. They actually have a few biological advantages that make them better fat burners.
Women have more fat cells than men. It has been found that men carry 26 billion fat cells, and women have 35 billion! Women have almost 10 billion more fat cells. Not only do women have more fat cells, but the fat cells are actually bigger. Therein lay the first disadvantage for women. With more fat cells, we have more opportunity to store fat in all sorts of locations. That number always is constant. Liposuction hasn’t even been shown to change the amount we are designed to carry. Fat cells get bigger and smaller in response to weight loss and gain, but the number always stays the same.
Men have more lean muscle mass. Lean muscle is more metabolically active than fat. Naturally men are able to carry more muscle mass than women. This allows men to burn more calories during the same duration and intensity of a workout than women. If a husband and wife were to go for a jog, and jog at the same pace, an average sized man will burn 600 calories after 6 miles, and an average sized woman might only burn 400 calories. It takes more calories to maintain muscle than fat.
Women get hungrier after a tough workout. Everyone is hungry after a good workout, but women however, get really hungry. Our hunger drive kicks into high speed to make up for calories lost during exercise and we compensate by eating more throughout the day. It has been reported that men, do not have the same response. They will either eat as much as they do on a normal day when they didn’t work out, or only eat slightly more calories.
Women have hormonal preferences to store fat. You can see this as a cruel joke by mother nature, or an evolutionary benefit to childbearing women. Either way, women are meant to store more fat than men to protect their babies during pregnancy and childbirth. Women have 6-11% more body fat than women on average. Estrogen and other hormones encourages fat storage, and ironically, adipose tissue also promotes estrogen production. This cycle makes it increasingly difficult for women to give up fat at all.
Women have a lower metabolic rate at rest. Men burn as much as 5-10% more calories than women do, even when they are watching television. Also, as we age, women’s metabolism begins to slow down sooner than men. Men can thank their greater amount of lean muscle for that. Lean muscle helps metabolism to stay elevated later in life. Metabolic rate at rest has a large impact on overall weight loss. The calorie burn during a short bout of exercise doesn’t help to burn fat as much as the number of calories burned all day.
Men and women trying to lose weight may be better off going it alone and forget about contests and trying to compare results. Weight loss among the two sexes is very different. This doesn’t mean however that it’s impossible for women to lose weight. Women can build their lean muscle, eat foods that control their hormones, and keep their cravings under control. At the end of the day, it’s good we have differences. Curvy women will always be seen as more feminine and desirable to the majority of men, so keep your curves, and stop stressing about beating out your partner.