Is it an even playing field?
Weight loss is something many of us try to achieve. Regardless of our current size, we’d still like to think that we have a little bit of weight to lose right? The more clients we work with, the more we’re able to find common patterns between the two genders, so in this chapter we look at what roles our bodies/ gender really play when it comes to losing weight.
”Why is my partner losing more weight than me? We’re on the same program!”, this is a relatively simple question that trainers will be asked time and time again but no doubt you want the answer because this sounds like something you may’ve asked before right? It’s no secret that women carry more fat, 6-11% more in most cases but this doesn’t mean women are generally fat (Not the point we’re trying to make here). What it does mean is that women don’t burn the calories quite as quickly as men do (In the beginning) as men tend to have more lean muscle and this requires more energy which leads to higher calorie burn.
In the Daily Expenditure chapter we took you through a formula to work through the amount of calories you might expect to burn throughout your average day. If you took note of both Men and Women's required intake, you would’ve noticed that the formulae stayed the same right up until the final section where a Male at the same weight and height as a female now has an extra 156 calories over the course of a day in their Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). This is a good indicator of the paragraph above and also gives you a better understanding of what 6-11% extra body fat may equate to when it comes to burning calories.
The danger isn’t so much in how much fat you carry but where you carry it. Men tend to carry it in their belly and this significantly increases their rate of Heart Disease but when they start losing weight, this is one of the first places that it disappears from so it’s not all bad news right?
So do men find it easier to lose weight quicker than women? Yes, we do, but, this is only in the short term and if both the male and female continue their reduced calorie intake (the same amount each) it’s been found that the gap closes significantly so if you’re a female and discouraged by the slow rate in which you’re losing fat/ weight, hang in there, slow and steady wins the race!
Justin Beard Pn1