Why Women Have a Harder Time Losing Weight Than Men

There is an old weight loss cartoon that graphically describes how men and women lose weight. In the cartoon, the man eats one steak instead of his usual two, drinks two beers instead of five, plays a couple of rounds of tennis, and promptly loses eight pounds.

The woman does aerobic classes for a month until she drops from exhaustion, eats next to nothing, and only loses half a pound.

The cartoon is an exaggeration but it does point out the truth that women have a harder time losing weight.

Female fat cells
A fat cell’s purpose is to store fat when your body doesn’t need it and to release it when your body needs the extra energy. Different enzymes control these reactions.

An enzyme is a protein that hastens or retards a chemical reaction. Enzymes that help store fat are called lipogenic enzymes (lipo = fat, genesis = formation) while lipolytic (‘’lysis’’ = breakdown) enzymes help release it from the cell.

Scientists have found that women tend to have more fat-storing lipogenic enzymes and larger fat cells while men have more fat-releasing lipolytic enzymes and smaller fat cells. In short, women store fat quickly and lose it slowly while men store fat slowly and lose it quickly. There are, of course, exceptions for both sexes but overall, this observation holds true.

Smaller muscle mass
The average woman has smaller muscles than the average man. Each pound of muscle burns about 10 calories per day. The more muscle mass a person has, the more calories burned in a 24-hour period. Men have more muscle, less fat while women have less muscle, more fat. A healthy body fat percentage for a man is 12- 18 percent while for a woman it is 18 - 25 percent.

Healthy women do jiggle, according to Covert Bailey, author of the bestseller, Fit or Fat. He observes that ‘’the buttock and thigh muscles may be quite firm, but most women, unless they are very young or have inherited thin legs and hips, carry a wiggling layer of fat in that area. Even super-athletic women – those who play professional tennis or run marathons – are not as solid in the hips and thighs as their moderately active male friends. This is simply part of being a woman.’’

Estrogen
What makes a woman a woman is estrogen, the female sex hormone. Estrogen, scientists have found, multiplies the fat-storing enzymes. It is no wonder then that the two periods in a woman’s life when estrogen floods her system, puberty and pregnancy, are the times when a woman is more apt to store fat.

Estrogen also determines a woman’s shape since it directs fat to be stored in the buttocks, hips, and thighs. Throughout history, the sign of fertility has been a woman with large hips. Testosterone, the male hormone, meanwhile, encourages the production of the fat-releasing enzymes.

Fat and fertility
Women have the amazing ability to sustain another life in their womb for nine months and then feed that new life with milk made by their bodies. Nature has made sure that a woman has an abundant storage of fat to stay fertile, carry a pregnancy to term, and lactate even in times when food is scarce.

Long ago, stored fat came in handy when famine was a common occurrence and women had to do hard physical labor. Just two hundred years ago, the average woman had to walk a few miles just to get to a clean water source.

Today, this propensity to easily store fat is no longer such a blessing since we have so many laborsaving devices and an abundant supply of food.

Crash dieting counterproductive to fat loss
The built-in protective mechanism that ensured survival during a famine now works against a woman when she tries to starve herself in a misguided attempt to lose weight. The body cannot tell the difference between famine and a self-imposed ‘’crash diet’’. When you go on a starvation diet, biochemical changes are set into motion.

One of the first changes is the activation and multiplication of the fat-storing enzymes. Worse, the fat cells become less efficient at losing fat. Some studies have shown that severe dieting can reduce fat-releasing enzymes by 50 percent. Most of the weight lost on a crash diet comes from the lean parts of the body – water and muscles. The haggard faces and soft, flabby bodies of women who have lost large amounts of weight on crash diets are the result of this loss of lean body mass.

That’s not the end of the story. Since there is less lean body tissue, the body now burns fewer calories. The weight is regained in the form of more fat. Even though the body eventually recovers the lost lean tissue, the damage (gain in fat weight) has been done.

Outsmart the female fat cell
So, if dieting doesn’t work, what does? According to Debra Waterhouse, nutrition counselor and author of “Outsmarting the Female Fat Cell’’, exercise is the only strategy that effectively releases fat from the fat cells. All other strategies like eating less fatty/starchy foods and controlling your portions, while effective, simply prevent fat storage. The key is to become an efficient fat burner. This is a slow process. The physiological changes that occur inside the body in response to exercise do not happen overnight. Remember, if it were that easy for women to lose fat, the human race would have died out a long time ago.

More tips:

Losing weight is more about making lifestyle changes than crash fad diets.  Besides checking the nutrition information on the foods you eat, it's also helpful to eat 5 or 6 small meals a day rather than 3 large meals. Of course, if you've gained unexplained weight, you should make sure you're not showing early pregnancy signs .