Randy Turner, the manager of the
It's Harder for Women to Lose Weight — Really
By nature, women tend to have a lower metabolic rate than men. This means your body uses fewer calories (units of energy) to fuel normal body functions like breathing, thinking, and circulating your blood. The leftover calories are stored as fat.
Men have more muscle, especially in the upper body, and since muscle burns more calories than fat, men have a faster metabolism—5 to 10% faster to be exact.
Numerous scientific studies have revealed that men burn more fat during exercise and even while at rest, while women have a moderately slower fat metabolism. This leads to women gaining weight faster than men, although proper dieting and exercise help maintain healthy body weight.
Randy Turner, the manager of the Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth Fitness Center, said that men tend to lose weight faster than women primarily due to a key physical difference. “In most cases, men have more lean muscle than women, so it's easier for them to lose weight more quickly,” he explained.
Women generally have a higher percentage of body fat than men. Also, women store more fat in the gluteal-femoral region, whereas men store more fat in the visceral (abdominal) depot.
One reason belly fat is so hard to lose is that it's considered an “active fat.” Unlike some fatty tissue that simply sits “dormant,” belly fat releases hormones that can have an impact on your health — and your ability to lose weight, especially in the waist and abdomen areas.
Where men lose weight first. According to one study, men tend to drop weight around their torsos first. However, men with obesity tend to drop it first in their arms and legs. A 2014 research review showed that men also tend to lose weight much more easily than women.
Basically, the more you weigh, the more energy it takes for your body to move and function. This means that a heavier person will burn more calories as compared to a lighter person performing the same activities. This applies to both people who are overweight as well as those with higher muscle mass.
Conclusion. Women carrying a male fetus have significantly increased maternal weight gain during pregnancy when compared to women with a female fetus.
However, when it comes to health, men are biologically weaker. Men are more likely to experience chronic health conditions earlier than women and have shorter lives. In almost all countries around the world, women outlive men.
Women do tend to have slower metabolisms than men, but the difference is primarily a function of muscle mass and body size, not gender. We might expect someone with more muscle and less fat to be more metabolically healthy.
Men usually have less body fat and more muscle than do women of the same age and weight. That means men burn more calories.
Mostly, losing weight is an internal process. You will first lose hard fat that surrounds your organs like liver, kidneys and then you will start to lose soft fat like waistline and thigh fat. The fat loss from around the organs makes you leaner and stronger.
Everyone's body, say experts, follows a fat-storing order. The order is not the same for each individual. Usually, when you lose the fat, it comes off in the opposite order that it was stored. If your body tends to store fat in your face or belly first, these will be the last places where it would shed from.
As people gain weight, excess fat tends to be centered around the abdomen, generally starting at the lower abdominal area and working up. This results in a large belly or gut protruding out from the rest of your body.
Men often gain weight steadily starting at around age 30 and continuing until roughly age 55. Throughout life, a man's excess weight tends to be carried as belly fat, which increases his risk of heart disease and other conditions.
As against areas such as legs, face and arms, our stomach and abdominal regions possess beta cells that makes it difficult to reduce the fats easily and lose weight in these areas. However, as per research, belly fat is the most difficult to lose as the fat there is so much harder to break down.
“Women are also multi-taskers, and they do a lot at once. Because they use more of their actual brain, they may need a little bit more sleep than men. It is still debatable, but some experts say that women need twenty more minutes on average than men usually need.”
It is believed that one's metabolism is at its peak during the teenage years when one can eat anything they want without the fear of gaining kilos. By the time they reach midlife around the 30s and 40s, it starts to decline, and it becomes difficult to keep the weight off.
Women have twice the level of leptin as compared to men and that makes us 3 times less responsive towards leptin. This makes us vulnerable to obesity as it slows down the metabolism and increases the appetite.
Boys tend to look a little chubby and gangly (long arms and legs compared to the trunk) just prior to and at the onset of puberty. They start to experience a growth spurt as they progress further into puberty, with the peak occurring during the later stages of sexual maturation.