Men lose weight so easy...

cityruss wrote: »

I'm afraid males have been dealt the trump card in regards to metabolic rate.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC329930/

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1126247?sid=21106119700723&uid=70&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=3738032&uid=4 (1953 in the house!)

Although probably evened out by male pattern baldness (I was 27 for crying out loud), nose and ear hair, and testicles, which being frank just get in the way.

My husband stopped upsizing his fast food meals and lost 10 pounds in 3 weeks. He did not stop EATING fast food, nor alter his diet in any other way, nor add exercise. He just stopped getting french fry servings that were the size of a baseball, and instead got french fry servings that were teh size of, like, half a baseball.
And I exercise, and measure, and weigh, and blah blah blah, and I get 1.5 lbs down a week.
And yes, I do secretly say to myself when he looks at the scale and says 'Wow, down another 3 pounds, that was easy' I just think 'One day your forehead will be a five-head, and I will be SO VERY HAPPY.'

And, post-baby bodies, that's a thing for women, not so much for men.
Many women, myself included, have diastasis rectus, which is torn ab muscles (thanks twins!) so weight loss can still happen with that, but you just don't look like you used to.

Still, weight loss is hard for everyone. Except for my husband. He's a freak of nature.

_tigerblood_ wrote: »

when I hear a woman say men lose weight faster I assume she's lazy making excuses. you don't hear me complaining that I dont lose blood weight every month.

Blood weight. You think that's actually a thing? Do you know anything about the female reproductive system?

Let me clue you in.

At max women lose a cup of blood. That's about half of a pound. And then it comes right back - so it can get lost again in the next month!

So yay for my very temporary, at max .53 loss every month. That makes all this so damned easy. I can't understand why I'm having so much trouble losing these last 15 pounds - and obviously if I complain I'm just making excuses (after having lost 72 pounds already).

I should just focus on all the advantages I get from my blood weight. Obviously.

Men tend to have it easier. No question. We are more muscular and have more mass to play with (%).
Having said that, anecdotal evidence shows me that women can lose less weight but have amazing physical transformations with body composition. Small changes in muscles mass have a huge impact on appearance.
It is a tie in my books because the 'number' is only part of the story.

Some truths and observations: Hormones play a definitive role. With higher testosterone and lower estrogen, men have more lean muscle. I believe on average a man has a metabolic rate of about 5%-8% more of a female who is the same height and weight.
Also anecdotally, I think females are much more surrounded by food than men. Even today where you'd think it'd be much more even, females by in large still cook and grocery shop and take care of the kids. So the opportunities to nibble, taste, and just eat systematically are higher.
My experience with males is that most didn't really know much about nutrition or calories and just having them watch their intake (including sodium) made an immediate impact. Not uncommon for a couple to come to me, both start the same time, both eat the same foods and the male loses 10lbs while the female loses 4lbs even at the same calorie deficit.
Also I believe the approach to exercise is different. The majority of my male clients like lifting the weights with intensity with light cardio, while the majority of my female clients would rather do conditioning or a more aerobic based session and less weight lifting.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

But what about the guy who didn't know he had Hashimoto's and got down to 11% bodyfat? That wasn't very easy let me tell you. Though I will say it is totally possible to lose weight while untreated for thyroid.

Just wanted to throw that into the debate pool.



Am now on proper med.

rabbitjb wrote: »

Liftng4Lis wrote: »

_tigerblood_ wrote: »

when I hear a woman say men lose weight faster I assume she's lazy making excuses. you don't hear me complaining that I dont lose blood weight every month.

Seriously?? You ever had an anatomy class?

Or a girlfriend :huh:

SideSteel wrote: »

Something that I think is important to keep in mind here:

We're discussing the relative difficulty between genders. It certainly is not "easy" for men to lose weight.

Sometimes discussions like this can become insulting because it paints a picture that men can just lose fat with ease or without any effort. And that is simply not the case.

Comparatively, I believe on average it's a bit more challenging for women.

I agree with all this. I think on the whole it is more challenging for women.

But what I hate is the "you're taller/bigger so you can create a bigger deficit and eat more." Yeah sure, but I also have to eat more in order to be satiated. My mouth, stomach, etc are not the same as that of a 5-foot woman. I could make the same ridiculous argument that women "have it easy" because they can be not hungry on a smaller number of calories than I can.

And I hate the total math fail of comparing pound for pound loss rates of someone whose ideal weight is like 150% of the other person's. Of course the bigger person is going to lose "faster" when you completely ignore proportions. Same goes for the size of a calorie deficit. By this logic mice must have it really extra double super hard, because think of how long it must take a mouse to lose ten pounds.

Yes because they don't ovulate or menstruate. They bloat sure, but that's about it. They don't have like one week out of the month where it is the opportune time to weigh oneself, like us ladies. They can weigh whenever. They aren't really plagued by waterweight.

This reminds me of that commercial for some weight loss thing, a woman is there eating her salad trying to lose weight, her husband sits down next to her, drinks a glass of water and boom, looks thin...then the dog comes along, drinks out of his water bowl, and boom looks thin. And shes just looking at them like wtf?!

I dont even know what product that commercial was for, but I laugh whenever I think about it, because it really feels that way!!!

KingofWisdom wrote: »

Oh, great. Another way us males can be resented for being male.

Whaa? No way. I dont resent men at all... I'm grateful to be born a woman, wouldn't have it any other way! It would suck to resent men considering that would severely limit my pool of dating prospects...to like, zero. LoL!

Its nothing more than an observation and musing on our differences...at least from my perspective

Well, I've only ever been one gender. So I don't really have anything to compare it to, you know? You'd have to have a heck of an experiment to officially see what happens, and personally I don't have time to orchestrate that.

Whether it's muscle and/or hormones and/or emotions, I really don't care. I think what's important is that you do whatever you need to do in order to see the results that you'd like. If anyone says "oh, you lose weight easier cause you're ______", then they're just ignorant tools who clearly don't know how hard you're trying.

Aka: to 'heck' with them.

Yes. Men are loaded with testosterone, which builds/retains muscle. Women are loaded with progesterone and estrogen, which want to hang on to fat to nourish a pregnancy.

The differences usually make women's weight loss slower than men's.

Having never been a man, I can't give a definitive answer to that question It's like those that say it's harder to lose weight when you are short (I'm 5'2"), but since I've always been short I can't agree with that either.

My workout buddy is male and I can say that he struggles with losing weight, in a different way from what I go through. Each one of us experiences things in regards to losing weight in different ways with varying levels of difficulty.

Losing weight in general is difficult!

It is possible that men in general lose easier than women, or it's possible they don't, I don't know. At the same time, I seriously doubt someone is trying to undermine your success or any hardships you've faced. I think it was @herrspoons‌ who often says sth along the lines of "People don't really care how much you lost or how, they care about their own problems"? Sorry if I got that wrong. Whoever it is, they're right. Just move on.

Regarding the guy who was so concerned with blood weight... I am going to be the eternal optimist that I am and assume that he is just very very young and trying to sound interestingly blunt, and coming across the way he did only by accident. It happens so often when you try for the "interestingly blunt" too hard...

"Easier" doesn't equal "easy" and that's the only issue here. I just sort of shrug and ignore people at that point.