Weight loss topic is always an ongoing interest among all of us. You may find someone you have knew seems to be more likely to lose weight than one another. What makes up this individual difference? Research has shown that uncontrollable factors like genetics and age can be contributing, as well as the gender difference. So, do you think men lose weight faster than women?
Besides physiological reasons which aren’t always true long-term, here are some reasons for differences in weight loss between men and women.
Hormones
We all know that women primarily have estrogen and progesterone hormones, while men have primarily testosterone hormone. But, you might not be knowing that these hormones have linked to where fat is stored In our body. In fact, this is the factor that why men and women tend to focus on different body parts in term of weight loss. This is because testosterone promotes fat storage around the belly (apple shape), and estrogen mainly promotes fat storage around the lower body and hips (pear shape). Also, women’s hormones promote a higher fat storage than testosterone which is why women naturally have higher body fat percentages than men.
Metabolic Rate
In general, men are biologically set up to have higher metabolic rate and thus they burn calories faster than women. Hormones play a part in this difference, again. But, this is also because men have a larger body size in average and more muscles mass in comparison to women. Importantly, most women go on low calories diet which may lower their metabolic rates.
But this is not long-term
According to a 2014 study from British Journal of Nutrition studying women and men who went through 4 different commercial weight loss programs, the results had shown the men had lost twice as much fat-free mass and three times as much fat mass than women for each diet. So, although men lost more weight, they lost more muscle because they had more to start with. Over time, fat-free mass loss in men was balanced out with the women. At the end of the study, weight loss between both genders was similar.
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