How many times have you heard a bloke say how easy it was for him to lose weight? Or heard a story about a husband and wife team who are both on a weight loss diet and the husband’s weight seems just to fall off?
It seems so unfair and I get a lot of emails from mums asking why this is the case and how to deal with a very annoying husband who is parading around his weight loss like he has just won the lottery but who didn’t have to work as hard as they did all week.
So why is it that weight loss for men seems easier than for women who often struggle? There are factors like men carrying more muscle which speeds up their metabolism but the main reason is our genetic make up.
Even though we live in an age of (supposed) equality, a woman’s body is designed to have children and store fat for breastfeeding so when we try and lose weight our bodies do react differently to a man who’s body was made to hunt and who doesn’t have excess Oestrogen roaming around their bodies from the age of puberty.
It is thought that women have approximately 6 to 11 percent more body fat than a man and studies (most recently by Professor Tony O’Sullivan, of the University of NSW and St George Hospital, Sydney) now show that it is the hormone Oestrogen which is to blame as it reduces a female’s ability to burn calories after meals which then results in more fat being stored in the body.
This means that a man and woman could eat the same amount of calories for their body weight and the man would burn the energy more efficiently than the woman who would store more as fat as it is thought the female body will always store fat for breastfeeding.
This seems very unfair – especially when a lot of women have 1 or two – or no children but in terms of evolution the female body is designed to reproduce and this means having lots of children and doing lots of breastfeeding so in this case the body is just doing what it thinks it should and storing fat at every opportunity for when you have your 15 kids over your lifetime!
So what is the solution? Being sensible I am afraid and accepting that this is the case. To lose your baby weight you need to use more calories than you consume or consume less calories than you need according what your personal BMR is – note your BMR is different to your BMI and you can work out your BMR here. You also need to be realistic. You cannot eat the same as your partner and do no exercise. Well you can, but you won’t lose weight.
You need to follow a healthy weight loss program like Lose Baby Weight and should look at our 28 Day Diet & Exercise plan – and make sure you are getting the right nutrition in your diet and not starving yourself and you need to start incorporating exercise into your life – and all of these things need to be lifestyle changes not quick fixes as when you lose your weight you want to be able to keep it off so for example on the Lose Baby Weight plans you will learn healthy lifestyle changes and choices so you and your family stay healthy for the long term – it isn’t just a short term fix.
And I am afraid you will just have to live with the fact that men lose weight differently – and if your partner does the weight loss plans with you which is GREAT for morale support and help – he will lose weight faster than you so don’t get depressed by that fact!
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