Why women typically have a harder time losing body-fat than men and what to do about it.
After nearly 10 years I’ve seen and worked with nearly a thousand male and female clients and here is why, in my experience, women tend to have a tougher time losing fat and keeping it off than men. It’s less about biology of male vs. female than you think.
It has much more to do with the mindset around nutrition and exercise than it does biology in my experience.
Now don’t get me wrong, there can certainly be hormonal differences that can make it more challenging for women to lose weight, but more often than not that is only a small piece to the puzzle.
What it has come down to, in most of my career, is that the men I’ve worked with are more often overeaters, where the women I’ve worked with are more often chronic dieters.
You have probably seen funny pictures on facebook or other social media sites with some form of;
“ I cut out all sugar, carbs, and run 3 miles a day, while my husband just stopped having beer for breakfast. At the end of the week he had lost 10lbs and I gained one”
It seems totally unfair, but let’s go a little deeper.
What are the main differences that usually make it easier for a male to lose weight under relatively the same conditions as a female.
1.) Muscle and training style
The first one we will get out of the way are just the differences in body types between a male and a female. Men on average carry more muscle than women, and are more libel to strength train as part of a weight loss regimine than women. Now this is certainly changing for the better, but for many it’s still the case.
Why does muscle matter?
Muscle matters because it is metabolically active tissue. Which is just a fancy way of saying it uses calories. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn in the same amount of time.
This is why weight training is the queen when it comes to losing fat over time and keeping it off.
Just for an easy example lets say you burn an extra 50 calories for each pound of muscle you add. Don’t quote me on that number as different studies say different things, but for easy math we will go with 50.
Lets pretend on a normal day, with no additional exercise, you need 2000 calories just to run your body.
If you strength train and add a pound of muscle, now your body needs 2050 calories. You add another pound of muscle, now it needs 2100, another pound, 2150, so on and so forth.
Over time as you increase the amount of muscle you have, the easier it becomes to lose fat and keep it off because you just use more calories in general.
Whereas cardio for example, only burns calories while doing the actual exercise. So while yes you may lose weight faster doing a ton of cardio, as soon as you can’t keep up that level of exercise, it is much easier to regain it again.
If you were to add 10lbs of muscle that would mean you need 500 more calories to run your body in a day. So now instead of needing 2000, you need 2500. That means whether you workout that day or not, you use 2500 calories. Whereas if you are burning 500 calories a day doing cardio, your body is still only using 2000 the rest of the time.
That means on the weekend day where neither trains, the person with the muscle uses an extra 500 calories daily.
On the flip side, that means that if you’re basing your weight loss off of a ton of cardio, you’re going to have a tough time keeping the weight off without it. 500 calories burned via cardio is FAR from easy to keep up on a daily basis.
This is the first major difference when it comes to weight loss between men and women.
2.) Mindset around food and dieting
The next is simply most men’s mindset around food and exercise compared to most women’s mindset that I have worked with, this is often where the biggest differences lie.
Like men in general, their mindset is pretty simple. I want to eat food and I want to drink, so they eat food and they drink. They eat what they want, when they want, which is why more often than not men are overeaters. They will eat 4000 calories a day just from beer and pizza.
Which I know sounds unhealthy, and to a certain extent it is, however it also puts them in a prime position to lose weight.
You may be asking why consistent overeating puts you in a prime position to lose weight?
This is for a couple of reasons the first being simply that if you are in a constant surplus, it means there is constant extra energy. You can train more often, you will build muscle faster which will in turn cause you to lose fat faster.
Also the body feels “safe” that its always going to have the calories/energy it needs, so it’s not in storage mode, its in using/burning mode.
The body of the chronic dieter on the other hand, is usually flipping the switch back and forth between scarcity and storage.
This is different than how women tend to approach fat loss and just overall image in general.
When you really step back and look at it, it’s not surprising.
I grew up as an obese child, adolescent, and early adult, so my story is a little different. However on the whole most males are not constantly made aware of their weight. Society has some standard of how a man should look I guess, but it’s not NEARLY as prevalent as the unrealistic standards women have to deal with.
Men aren’t constantly boiled down to their self worth being what they weigh.
Men don’t have family members coming up to them and constantly commenting on their weight. Just this past weekend a friend of mine who just had a child within the last year was talking about how a family member said she could “stand to lose a few”.
Which to me is just unbelievable to hear that someone would say something like that, but most women deal with it on a regular basis.
While it is getting better in society as a whole, we still aren’t there yet and it’s going to take a long time to undo that damage.
This has created/creates a very difficult mindset for most of the women I’ve worked with. Most of the women I’ve worked with decide they want to lose weight and fall back into the same patterns that the “wanting to lose weight” was built on.
They start a new diet or a new exercise routine with the main goal being to lose weight so they are more comfortable and confident. “This is the time I’m going to lose the weight”, but when things get too overwhelming it gets put on the back burner because there just isn't time. Since they feel they “failed”, they beat themselves up, over-indulge in all the foods they see as “bad”, only to admonish themselves further for doing it.
This cycle continues until reaching a point where most are too afraid to even try because “I don't have what it takes” or start believing there is “something wrong with me, it's impossible”, or even “I’ll start when I have more time to really devote myself to it completely”.
They get so wrapped up in thinking they need to have the time and the discipline to be perfect that they start, but very often dont make it that far. They will starve themselves and over-exercise to the point they can't physically continue. Can’t continue training, don't have the time or energy for their kids, start falling behind on all the things they need to accomplish in a day. It’s just not sustainable.
They’ve been told by their doctor, the media, and every arm chair personal trainer that their weight is all that matters. That losing weight is as simple as “eating less and exercising more”. They’ve been told that “healthy” is an insane exercise routine mixed with eating as little as possible. So they end up going on extreme diets, teas, bars, shakes, and eating as little as they can get away with. While at the same time trying to squeeze every last burned calorie out of their high intensity routine.
So…we’ve gone through some of the reasons why women tend to have a harder time losing fat than men. So now let’s go through some things that can help.
Things to help you lose fat in a healthy way with all these factors in mind
Focus on weight training.
Not only does it help in the ways I mentioned above about adding more fat burning tissue, but being strong also helps you be more active with less likelihood of ending up in pain.
Your clothes will fit better without you even having to step foot on a scale.
It’s more sustainable, 1 hour 4 times a week of strength training is much easier to keep up with than 1 hour of straight cardio 4 times a week.
Get off the scale
Start paying attention to things like how your energy is on a daily basis, do you feel less beat after a long day, are your clothes fitting better.
Seeing that number on the scale can be highly skewed. If you put on 10lbs of muscle while also losing 10lbs of fat, the number on the scale would look the same, but you’d feel better, your clothes would fit better and you would start seeing huge differences. However if you step on the scale and see a number you’ve been told all your life is “bad” or “to high” most women I’ve worked with have a hard time seeing past that number to all the awesome things I just mentioned.
If stepping on the scale consistently leads to self-destructive outcomes, you should take some time away from it. Focus on the process not the number.
Rather than trying to eat as little as possible, prioritize protein and veggies first.
Shoot to eat at least 3/4 your bodyweight in grams of protein per day, the more you workout, the closer that number should be to your bodyweight in grams of protein (if you weigh 150lbs, that’s roughly 113 grams of protein, if you are really active and workout often, that number should be closer to 150).
Don’t try to be perfect.
When I coach a client my goal is for them to be on it 80% of the time. My goal is never perfection. 80% means that if you eat 21 meals a week (breakfast, lunch, and dinner 7 days a week). It means that you should shoot to be on track about 17 of those meals.
Give yourself some grace!
To many times I’ve worked with women and seen the same pattern, they are proud of themselves for cutting out all their wine, candy, carbs, etc. Then their cravings hit and rather than having a glass tonight then just continuing with their plan, they beat themselves up and end up finishing the bottle because “I already failed, so screw it”. Have a glass a couple nights a week, have something for your sweet tooth every now and then. Those cycles of restriction and binging are born from trying to be perfect, then beating yourself up when you aren’t.
Stop using words like “bad” and “cheat”.
Two phrases I’ve come to really dislike the longer I’ve been in the health and fitness industry are “bad foods” and “cheat meals”.
Food isn’t inherently good or bad, all food has positive effects in certain amounts and negative effects in certain amounts. Thinking of food as good or bad is thinking in black and white. If you’re cutting out all the “bad” food, then there is no difference between having 1 cookie and having 10 cookies.
“Cheat meal” is just another form of “bad”, you’re not “cheating” because you have pizza on a random Friday night, you’re making pizza (something you enjoy) part of what can be an overall healthy lifestyle.
Don’t wait until the time is perfect.
Even if you don’t have time for a full fledged program, get out for a walk each day, go to the gym and do a couple exercises just to get in the routine. Start having a little more protein at each meal. little steps that can help you over time.
If your life is just crazy hectic and you need a specialized plan, click here to speak with a coach. We can find the perfect plan for you and your incredibly busy life!
~ Coach Adam
