Here’s a shame: men eat chips, and when they want, they quickly shed those extra pounds. Why?
We deal with the endocrinologist Natalia Sevastyanova.
– In women, everything is much more complicated than in men, who are very little subject to hormonal fluctuations. In our country, the hormonal background changes constantly starting from 12-13 years old, significantly – on average, once every five years. And depending on the phase of the menstrual cycle, we experience hormonal fluctuations every month. It is much easier for men to adapt to effective weight control, even from the standpoint of their genetics. To the point about hormones: they have a high concentration of the hormone testosterone, which allows you to maintain a high percentage of muscle mass, and its effect on weight loss has already been described above, it is very energy-intensive.
Note: As men age, their testosterone levels decrease, their muscles become smaller and they begin to gain weight easily, becoming like grandmothers.
Fitness instructor Yulia Chubarova told why it is easier for men to part with extra pounds.
Men naturally have a lower percentage of body fat. If for women this figure is 25-30%, then for men, fat is only 15-20% of body weight. This is genetically determined: the female body has a larger fat layer for the safe bearing of offspring. Accordingly, the higher the percentage of fat a woman has, the slower the metabolism (metabolism) in her body. As you know, the accelerator of metabolism is muscles.
So, the rate of energy expenditure in women is almost 10% less than that of men.
That is, in the female body, much less calories are spent to maintain the functioning of the body. Therefore, if the energy received from food exceeds its expenditure, the woman has a higher chance of gaining weight. And even professional athletes have a higher fat content than their male counterparts.
Psychological aspect. Women are prone to inappropriate eating behavior. For example, eating up a bad mood with sweets is a typically feminine trick. Then they suffer that they have added kilograms to themselves. They suffer from bulimia, anorexia. Most often we are talking about women over 30, their metabolism slows down with age, and then there are goodies as a cure for stress. And such people do not live in villages where physical labor, but in megacities.
The reserve of muscle mass. Men weigh more and have more developed muscles. Muscles require much more energy “maintenance”, more energy consumption than the maintenance of body fat. This factor is of particular importance at the initial stages of weight loss, so men are losing weight faster.
Addiction to food, its availability. Another psychological point. Women cook food all the time, taste it and thus do not keep track of calories. Again, women are more likely to stay at home and have XNUMX/XNUMX access to the refrigerator – under various pretexts. Men are lucky here too!
Diets, separate meals and so on. The constant desire to lose weight encourages a woman to try all new methods to achieve this goal. Including unprofessional and dangerous “sitting” on buckwheat, apples, etc. And a man is not spoiled by such an abundance of approaches and methods. Therefore, if for some reason he decides to lose weight, the body reacts faster and more gratefully.
Hormonal component. First, the ratio of the female hormone estrogen is different. In men, naturally, this hormone is produced in much smaller quantities. As well as the hunger hormone ghrelin, on which a person’s appetite depends. This is the second thing.