January 23, 2012 • 24 mins
Sure, men and women have different exercise motivations -- but which group exercises more? Join Caroline and Cristen as they look at gender and exercise, from why single men exercise more than anyone else to why men's exercise pays off more than women's.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how stup works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And since it
(00:20):
is the start relatively of the new year, what better
time than to talk about exercise. Because it seems like
everywhere I turn in my neighborhood their boot camps running around.
My yoga class is now bursting at the seams. I
do not have much room for my son's salutations. I
(00:42):
am a little irked, and I feel like it's all
provoked because of the New Year's resolution. Gotta lose the
quote unquote holiday pounds, New Year, new body. Yeah, it's uh.
Everybody is trying to fulfill those New Year's resolutions. I, however,
am going to the gym to quit. Can't of my membership?
Oh nice, Yeah, I'm I'm going the opposite way because
(01:03):
my resolution is more to save money. So I haven't
been using my membership as much as I should. So
I'm gonna cancel that puppy. That's a great idea. And
I quit my gym a couple of years ago. Because
my resolution was to seem more day light outside of
a building. Uh. But enough about that. The question that
came to my mind probably because I do take yoga,
(01:25):
that seeling kind of organized exercise that I do, and
my classes are mostly women. And if you see the
boot camps around town a lot of times, I've noticed
it's a lot of women. So I got an assumption
in my head that maybe, especially around this time of year,
women exercise more than men could be. Maybe we're trying
(01:46):
to recover from all that cake and pie and turkey
we eight over the holiday, unnecessary body standards, body and standards,
things like Yeah, So we set out to answer this
question of whether women or men exercise more, and the
first thing we come across is a study about what
(02:08):
happens on the playground. Yeah, it starts in the very
beginning and apparently socialization. Boys are one way, girls are
another way, and this affects playtime and this study found
it's out of the UK, found that girls take part
in six percent less vigorous playtime activity than boys do.
(02:29):
And according to Dr Nicky Rodgers at Liverpool University, girls
we tend to when we're when we're little, we tend
to spend time in smaller groups and engage in verbal games,
conversation and socializing. So women be shopping, so basically, while
we're playing mash, they are. Yeah. Boys are in larger groups,
(02:51):
which she says lends themselves to physical games such as
football or soccer depending on where you live. Uh. And
data from the National Child Measurement Program in England is
concerned about the low level of playtime activity for boys
and girls, even though and girls are exercising even less
(03:12):
than boys because by age eleven, thirty of children are
overweight or obese, a statistic which is reflected obviously in
the United States as well. Yeah, and Rogers points out
that it's definitely a concern that maybe the differences in
exercise and physical activity, um, maybe could be contributing to
this problem of obesity, childhood obesity. Um And that you know,
(03:35):
maybe we should try to have games and playground equipment
that appeals to both boys and girls. So like extreme Mash,
Extreme Mash where like yeah, kind of combined mash and
Duck duck goose somehow, there you go. That's again instead
of drawing the circle, you have to run around. I
think we just invented something we did amazing UH and
(03:57):
the this gender difference seems security over throughout the lifetime. UH.
In a study funded by the National Prevention Research Initiative
for people over seventy older, women tend to be less
active than men, and Ken Fox, is a professor of
exercise and health sciences at the University of Bristol, partially
(04:19):
attributes this to traditional gender roles, where the men might
be getting out and cutting the lawn and being more active,
whereas women might have a lower intensity activities indoors like
like chores like biscuit making, yes, crocheting, yes, both of
which I like doing. I have never crocheted. I tried
(04:40):
to learn a knit one time from a kit and
I I. All I did is kept nodding the yarn.
It wasn't working. I went through a crocheting face. I'm
not gonna lie. I'd like to I'd like to restart
that that it didn't get you out of the house though, no,
it didn't. I did not do extreme knitting or crocheting,
I should say now. There are some also some interesting
differences in how much people are exercising depending on their
(05:05):
marital status, and this is coming from a study in
two thousand, about of about thirteen thousand Americans aged eighteen
to sixty four, and it charts their hours of exercise
in a two week period. Yeah, and as you might predict, uh,
single people men and women exercise more than people in
any other marital category, and those are divorced or separated,
(05:29):
currently married, and widowed. So even though the single people
in both groups are exercising more than anybody else, men
are still exercising more than women in every single Yeah,
way more, way more. Uh single men, always always single
men reported that they put in eight hours and three
(05:50):
minutes of exercise in the last two week period that
they reported, and the always single women said that they
put in five hours and twenty five minutes. Now, I
wonder you got to take into account. It sounds like
there's a lot of self reporting going on. Perhaps men
inflate what they're doing in terms of exercise. Maybe we're
they're counting more walking or stair climbing. And as we
(06:15):
should point out, this is a cross sectional study that
just captured that one moment in time, that one two
week period, so it could be there. I mean, if
they captured him right after New Year's maybe everybody's really exercising.
Maybe if you did this again and like June, it
wouldn't be as high. I don't know, but it's nevertheless
(06:35):
a pretty start difference and also a start difference between
those always single men and the currently married men. And
even when they controlled for age, since the age band
does go from eighteen to sixty four, in this study,
it was still married men getting far less exercise than
single men. Yeah, they controlled also for married men's parental
(06:58):
status and hours put in it war just in case, like, okay, well,
it can make sense that if you have kids and
or work a lot outside of the home, that you know,
maybe you're not able to exercise. But they did control
for that, and the married men still had less exercise time.
But here's a little nugget of information that grabbed my
attention in terms of women and marriage and working. From
(07:22):
the mid seventies to the mid nineties, during a period
when women's labor force participation increase, our participation and exercise
also increased dramatically. I wonder if that's just what I'm
already getting out of the house. I'm taking control of
my finances. I'm an independent woman. I'm gonna go get
on the StairMaster. I wonder what the what the dealers.
(07:44):
I feel like I'm just imagining just a woman juggling
balls and it's just another another ball to juggle. Um. So, basically,
work an exercise not mutually exclusive for women. But yeah,
single folks were leading the pack with some of us.
So so us they're leading the pack and others of
(08:06):
us are wearing pajamas all day on Sundays. There's nothing
wrong with that. Um. But the thing is, Caroline, maybe
maybe you need to wear those pajamas, okay, because you
don't need to exercise in the same way that a
man does because your body is built differently. Tell me more.
How about that first segue? Yeah, here's the thing. Exercise
(08:27):
scientists have only started focusing on gender differences in how
the male and female body exercises and responds to exercise
in the past decade, and really only in the past
few years as it started to ramp up. For instance,
we ran across a New York Times blog post highlighting
some studies on how when sports scientists have recreated male
(08:51):
only experiments to include women, they have found that women
react much differently. For instance, um, they've discovered the estra
affects your metabolism and muscular health much differently than it
would in men. Researchers at McMaster University in Canada gave
estrogen to male athletes and then had them completely strenuous
(09:14):
bicycling session and it served as some kind of metabolism booster. Magical.
Yeah it was. Yeah, it was a total magic bullet.
They seem to have developed new metabolisms. They burned more
fat and a smaller percentage of protein or carbohydrates to
fuel their exertion, just like women do. Oh and the
whole thing about carbo loading before an endurance exercise that
(09:37):
has been around for so long, it doesn't work the
same for women. It's really not that great for us certainly, Yeah,
it does not work the same. And Massi University in
New Zealand did a study also a cycling an extreme
cycling session and had the male participants carbo load and
(09:59):
and eat protein, and they looked at the recovery time
and you know, did did test a couple of days later,
and then they found that men definitely rely on both
carbs and protein to fuel not only their exercise but
their recovery. This is definitely not the same for women.
Who rely more on the fat burn to fuel their exercise.
(10:20):
And it seems too that estrogen might have kind of
a protective effect on our bodies when we are exercising.
For instance, a study at mass University in New Zealand
found that during another cycling study, apparently it's very easy
to study, well, this is the one that David Rowlands
(10:40):
at Massey recreated, right, yes, because you know, women were like, hello,
we're different, we're not the same. Can you can you
not do a study that's only men? Right? And they
suffered less muscle damage, possibly because of the estrogen. Yeah.
In the study, Rolands found that women's blood contained lower
levels of creatin kinais a biochemical marker of trauma in
(11:02):
muscle tissue. And so while he's not really sure why
what's going on here, he did, Yeah, he did suggest
that it could be estrogen protecting our muscles. And here's
the thing when it comes to gender differences with exercise.
In a previous podcast, we've touched on how it's easier
for men to lose weight than women, which has been
(11:24):
very frustrating for you know, straight couples who are losing
weight together because the guy will just instantly he'll stop
drinking coke, you know, when she's on this treadmill and
still can't match him in pounds lost. But it all
has to do with how we metabolize and how when
we when women do endurance exercises, if we're running marathons,
(11:45):
our body actually switches more into a survival mode and
holds onto energy storages. Were slowly burning fat. Makes exercise
sound terrified, I know, because we you know, we're evolutionarily
protecting ourselves to uh, I guess to take care of
our offspring. About some babies, whereas men just go and
(12:07):
they have those fast stores of energy from carbohydrates, from
proteins and uh, there you go. And they have the
higher density of muscle that also fuels, they're more efficient
calorie burning. Exactly, it's all about lean muscle mass. According
to Leslie Rochford, she's the executive editor of Women's Health magazine.
(12:29):
She was answering questions on their on their website and
from a lot of frustrated exercisers, and one one person
wrote in about like, why am I having such a
hard time losing weight when my husband is is having
an easier time, And Rochford said that men have more
natural muscle mass, which fuels metabolism, so they lose weight
faster and easier. Those jerks um and she suggested that
(12:49):
women can speed weight loss by building more lean muscle
mass through strength training. So don't just you know, I mean,
there's nothing wrong with being a runner and just running
that would be a great first step for me think.
But she suggested that women try to lift weights now
and again. And you know, in exchange for their fat
burning muscle mass, we have shapely curves. There you go,
(13:13):
glass have full. Well, yeah, men's men's muscle mass also
raises their just their resting metabolic right, so even when
they're sitting on the couch, they're still burning more galleries
than we are. Well, another thing too, is we tend
to perceive the outcomes of exercise differently. And I think
(13:35):
this has to do possibly with more of socialization factors.
But men are really motivated to or more motivated at
least according to studies, to want to, you know, do
the rigorous exercises and build the muscle and see it
as a way to feel better and feel stronger, whereas
(13:55):
a lot of times women's motivations for exercising is more
about shapeliness and wanting to look better, or if you're
like me, you want to exercise so that you can
eat that ice cream. It's kind of that means to
an end. Yeah, and UH Weight Watchers did a study
(14:16):
and chief scientists, their chief scientists, Karen Miller co Covac,
said that men see sweating as a badge of honor,
so they're in the gym adding more and more weight,
like oh, yeah, I'm gonna bulk up because they're thinking,
obviously this is a generalization, but they're thinking, I'm gonna
add all this weight, so I'm gonna be huge and muscly,
whereas women are going like, oh, I'm just gonna lift
a three pound wait, because I'm so terrified of looking
(14:37):
like Madonna. So but but as we've heard you, you
should lift more weight as a lady, right. But that
drive for muscularity is also a potential risk factor for men.
There's a two thousand to study from the University of
Florida which found the college aged men and this is
confirmed by time spent in our college Caroline. UH. College
(14:59):
aged men were twice as likely as their female counterparts
to exercise, to excess and become distraught if they miss
one session. Yeah, well that's that whole issue of exercise dependency.
And it does make you feel better, it relieves anxiety
and tension and all that stuff, but you can become
(15:19):
um hooked and should really not try to push yourself
over the limit. There's it's there's a difference between pushing
yourself and trying to get healthier and pushing yourself and
then injuring yourself. And women have to watch out too, because,
according to Jennifer Bema of Brigham and Women's Hospital, we
you know, we do exercise differently, and we respond differently
(15:39):
to exercise, and we have to actually work harder to
keep our hips in line with our knees when we're
doing things like running and jumping. So our bodies not
only our bodies responding differently to exercise, but um, we're
physically different obviously. For instance, women tend to have smaller hearts,
and on the downside, estrogen actually counteracts a protein which
(16:03):
is produced when we exercise really intensely, which helps protect
the heart against tissue damage. So we might be at
a higher risk of that kind of tissue damage because
of estrogen. Um and we also have smaller lungs, which
can limit exercise tolerant, which makes me feel better about
when I'm on the treadmill and I'm next to a
dude and I'm like, you know, I'm doing that awful,
(16:26):
ugly heavy breathing thing and turning bright red, and then
the trainer comes over and he's like, are you all right?
But I need to get off. But that doesn't mean
that we are not fit for endurance competition. Even though
here's a staggering fact for folks out there, it wasn't
until nineteen eighty four that women were allowed to compete
in the Olympic marathon. Crazy, that has only been twenty
(16:49):
seven years. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're actually better suited
to long distance running marathons because we've got fat all
that wonderful that it's more of a long burning fuel
as opposed to carbs or protein. So even though over
the long term, if we're doing all of that, we
(17:10):
might not might not necessarily burn the same amount of
calories these guys, but hey, we can, we can run,
we can burn fat. And you'd think because when they
gave in that study we mentioned earlier, when they gave
men estrogen, all of a sudden the men were like, bamn,
fat gone, and they weren't relying their bodies weren't relying
so much on proteins and carbohydrates. You'd think like, oh, well,
(17:32):
then why do we have the harder time losing weight?
But you know, several studies that we looked at showed
that women just have to work harder because to lose
that fat that we're holding onto. Right, because our fuel
is perhaps in a way you could think of it
as a gas tank premium because it burns slower longer. UM. Yes,
(17:55):
But for all of our gender differences in motivations for exercise,
in how our bodies respond to exercise, and yes, these
are a lot of generalizations that we have mentioned, here's
the thing that we can all take away, and that
is the fact that every single one of us probably
(18:15):
needs more exercise. What are you talking about unless a
lot of people have written in UM and say that
they listen to the podcast while they're at the gym,
are going jogging. So for those of you exercising while
you're listening to this right now, kudos because you are
in the minority, and don't be embarrassed about your panting.
You have smaller lungs as a woman, and I get
red faced. I get so red anyway. Yeah, people people
(18:40):
would get have concerned looks when they pass me on
the sidewalk. I I'm jogging. But according to these Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, more than sixty of American
adults are not regularly active, and of us aren't active
at all. How it's those you get those Law and
(19:01):
Order marathons going, and it's hard to go. Yeah, and
especially I mean, I'm now to down to nabby every
episode like an hour and a half and it's for
for one more. Kind of frightening statistic. This is coming
from an American Time Youth survey that was recorded from
two thousand three to few thousand and eight. Amongst eighty
thousand people twenty years old and over, only five percent
(19:24):
of respondents reported any vigorous activities on a day to
day basis, and the most common of moderate activity that
everyone reported was food and drink preparation. The most calories.
Take that in, people, The most calories that we're burning
during the day is when we are microwaving that hungry
(19:45):
man XXL dinner before we tuck in for a Law
and Order marathon. That's awful. So so the calories were
burning are immediately um added back and probably double or
triple or quadruple. Yeah, well that is scary. Um that
(20:05):
makes me want to do push ups. I think I
think hard about it, I really do. I just it's hard.
I don't have time. I'm tired, and it's hard. Yeah,
and our our constant work cycle is completely tiring, and
commute times and hello, child rearing. I can't imagine that
I have none of those things to blame it on.
Just laziness, just podcasting, just podcasting. So I think we
(20:28):
can take away that men and women are different in
every single possible imaginable way. But then you do exercise
more than we do. Yeah, you do, so kudos. Try
to get your female friends, girlfriends, wives, whoever, sisters, mothers
into the gym with you. Yeah, so that we can
all be so healthy, exactly healthy and live long and
(20:51):
productive lives. Yeah. So so, ladies, I'd like to know
if we have listeners, female listeners out there who are like, what,
this is ridiculous. I'm at the gym every day, I
read marathons every weekend, so I want to know about
the the extreme Now, people, who exercise regularly out there?
What keeps you motivated? Please tell me something, anything, because
it's easy to go on the New Year's kick of
(21:13):
getting in the gym or the yoga class of the
boot camp every day for I don't, well, not every day,
but regularly for a couple of months, and then it
slowly tapers off. So what do you do? Let us know?
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address. And on a much lighter note, I have
an adorable email from a listener named Julia, who writes,
(21:36):
I was listening to your perfume podcasts from way back
when I was listening to your Perfume podcast earlier, and
you said that a woman might like perfumes similar to
what her mother had worn. I'm fourteen years old, and
my mom and I each have a perfume motion from
Bath and Body Works. I recently secretly stole hers perhaps
she's not listening, and replaced it with mine because it
(21:56):
smells so much like her and it makes me happy
when I wear it. So I agree with you that
a girl would like a perfume similar to her mom's.
Sweet This is an email from Allison about our Imaginary
Friends podcast and she said, you mentioned something about the
number of imaginary friends, and I wanted to tell you
that I had seven imaginary friends. They were all named Katie,
(22:19):
and they were about seven inches tall with wings. One
would say bad words like poop, and I would immediately
have to rush in and tell my mom that Katie
had said that word. Another one used to fly out
of open car windows, forcing my family to spend more
than one car ride with their hands flinging out the
window trying to help me catch Katie as she tried
to fly away. I just like to interrupt her and
(22:40):
say that my parents never would have participated anyway. She says.
At one point, I was at dinner with my family
when suddenly I stood up on the booth, raised my
hand above my head, snapped or tried to my fingers,
and cried, waiter more napkins please, because Katie. Because different,
Katie had put her face in her food, as she
did often. I'm an I'm an only child and have
(23:03):
always been told that I have great verbal skills. I'm
not sure what all this says about me now, but
the podcast is one of my favorites. Thank you. I
have been really Alison and all of your Katie's Yeah,
and to all of you who have been sitting in
stories about imaginary friends, they are a delight. We still
haven't heard anything about Cucumber Boy. I know you're out there.
Send us an email Mom Stuff at how stuff Works
(23:25):
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or you can follow us on Twitter at Mom's Stuff Podcast,
or you can check out the blog during the week
It's stuff Mom Never told You at how stuff works
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(23:46):
we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how stup works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And since it
(00:20):
is the start relatively of the new year, what better
time than to talk about exercise. Because it seems like
everywhere I turn in my neighborhood their boot camps running around.
My yoga class is now bursting at the seams. I
do not have much room for my son's salutations. I
(00:42):
am a little irked, and I feel like it's all
provoked because of the New Year's resolution. Gotta lose the
quote unquote holiday pounds, New Year, new body. Yeah, it's uh.
Everybody is trying to fulfill those New Year's resolutions. I, however,
am going to the gym to quit. Can't of my membership?
Oh nice, Yeah, I'm I'm going the opposite way because
(01:03):
my resolution is more to save money. So I haven't
been using my membership as much as I should. So
I'm gonna cancel that puppy. That's a great idea. And
I quit my gym a couple of years ago. Because
my resolution was to seem more day light outside of
a building. Uh. But enough about that. The question that
came to my mind probably because I do take yoga,
(01:25):
that seeling kind of organized exercise that I do, and
my classes are mostly women. And if you see the
boot camps around town a lot of times, I've noticed
it's a lot of women. So I got an assumption
in my head that maybe, especially around this time of year,
women exercise more than men could be. Maybe we're trying
(01:46):
to recover from all that cake and pie and turkey
we eight over the holiday, unnecessary body standards, body and standards,
things like Yeah, So we set out to answer this
question of whether women or men exercise more, and the
first thing we come across is a study about what
(02:08):
happens on the playground. Yeah, it starts in the very
beginning and apparently socialization. Boys are one way, girls are
another way, and this affects playtime and this study found
it's out of the UK, found that girls take part
in six percent less vigorous playtime activity than boys do.
(02:29):
And according to Dr Nicky Rodgers at Liverpool University, girls
we tend to when we're when we're little, we tend
to spend time in smaller groups and engage in verbal games,
conversation and socializing. So women be shopping, so basically, while
we're playing mash, they are. Yeah. Boys are in larger groups,
(02:51):
which she says lends themselves to physical games such as
football or soccer depending on where you live. Uh. And
data from the National Child Measurement Program in England is
concerned about the low level of playtime activity for boys
and girls, even though and girls are exercising even less
(03:12):
than boys because by age eleven, thirty of children are
overweight or obese, a statistic which is reflected obviously in
the United States as well. Yeah, and Rogers points out
that it's definitely a concern that maybe the differences in
exercise and physical activity, um, maybe could be contributing to
this problem of obesity, childhood obesity. Um And that you know,
(03:35):
maybe we should try to have games and playground equipment
that appeals to both boys and girls. So like extreme Mash,
Extreme Mash where like yeah, kind of combined mash and
Duck duck goose somehow, there you go. That's again instead
of drawing the circle, you have to run around. I
think we just invented something we did amazing UH and
(03:57):
the this gender difference seems security over throughout the lifetime. UH.
In a study funded by the National Prevention Research Initiative
for people over seventy older, women tend to be less
active than men, and Ken Fox, is a professor of
exercise and health sciences at the University of Bristol, partially
(04:19):
attributes this to traditional gender roles, where the men might
be getting out and cutting the lawn and being more active,
whereas women might have a lower intensity activities indoors like
like chores like biscuit making, yes, crocheting, yes, both of
which I like doing. I have never crocheted. I tried
(04:40):
to learn a knit one time from a kit and
I I. All I did is kept nodding the yarn.
It wasn't working. I went through a crocheting face. I'm
not gonna lie. I'd like to I'd like to restart
that that it didn't get you out of the house though, no,
it didn't. I did not do extreme knitting or crocheting,
I should say now. There are some also some interesting
differences in how much people are exercising depending on their
(05:05):
marital status, and this is coming from a study in
two thousand, about of about thirteen thousand Americans aged eighteen
to sixty four, and it charts their hours of exercise
in a two week period. Yeah, and as you might predict, uh,
single people men and women exercise more than people in
any other marital category, and those are divorced or separated,
(05:29):
currently married, and widowed. So even though the single people
in both groups are exercising more than anybody else, men
are still exercising more than women in every single Yeah,
way more, way more. Uh single men, always always single
men reported that they put in eight hours and three
(05:50):
minutes of exercise in the last two week period that
they reported, and the always single women said that they
put in five hours and twenty five minutes. Now, I
wonder you got to take into account. It sounds like
there's a lot of self reporting going on. Perhaps men
inflate what they're doing in terms of exercise. Maybe we're
they're counting more walking or stair climbing. And as we
(06:15):
should point out, this is a cross sectional study that
just captured that one moment in time, that one two
week period, so it could be there. I mean, if
they captured him right after New Year's maybe everybody's really exercising.
Maybe if you did this again and like June, it
wouldn't be as high. I don't know, but it's nevertheless
(06:35):
a pretty start difference and also a start difference between
those always single men and the currently married men. And
even when they controlled for age, since the age band
does go from eighteen to sixty four, in this study,
it was still married men getting far less exercise than
single men. Yeah, they controlled also for married men's parental
(06:58):
status and hours put in it war just in case, like, okay, well,
it can make sense that if you have kids and
or work a lot outside of the home, that you know,
maybe you're not able to exercise. But they did control
for that, and the married men still had less exercise time.
But here's a little nugget of information that grabbed my
attention in terms of women and marriage and working. From
(07:22):
the mid seventies to the mid nineties, during a period
when women's labor force participation increase, our participation and exercise
also increased dramatically. I wonder if that's just what I'm
already getting out of the house. I'm taking control of
my finances. I'm an independent woman. I'm gonna go get
on the StairMaster. I wonder what the what the dealers.
(07:44):
I feel like I'm just imagining just a woman juggling
balls and it's just another another ball to juggle. Um. So, basically,
work an exercise not mutually exclusive for women. But yeah,
single folks were leading the pack with some of us.
So so us they're leading the pack and others of
(08:06):
us are wearing pajamas all day on Sundays. There's nothing
wrong with that. Um. But the thing is, Caroline, maybe
maybe you need to wear those pajamas, okay, because you
don't need to exercise in the same way that a
man does because your body is built differently. Tell me more.
How about that first segue? Yeah, here's the thing. Exercise
(08:27):
scientists have only started focusing on gender differences in how
the male and female body exercises and responds to exercise
in the past decade, and really only in the past
few years as it started to ramp up. For instance,
we ran across a New York Times blog post highlighting
some studies on how when sports scientists have recreated male
(08:51):
only experiments to include women, they have found that women
react much differently. For instance, um, they've discovered the estra
affects your metabolism and muscular health much differently than it
would in men. Researchers at McMaster University in Canada gave
estrogen to male athletes and then had them completely strenuous
(09:14):
bicycling session and it served as some kind of metabolism booster. Magical.
Yeah it was. Yeah, it was a total magic bullet.
They seem to have developed new metabolisms. They burned more
fat and a smaller percentage of protein or carbohydrates to
fuel their exertion, just like women do. Oh and the
whole thing about carbo loading before an endurance exercise that
(09:37):
has been around for so long, it doesn't work the
same for women. It's really not that great for us certainly, Yeah,
it does not work the same. And Massi University in
New Zealand did a study also a cycling an extreme
cycling session and had the male participants carbo load and
(09:59):
and eat protein, and they looked at the recovery time
and you know, did did test a couple of days later,
and then they found that men definitely rely on both
carbs and protein to fuel not only their exercise but
their recovery. This is definitely not the same for women.
Who rely more on the fat burn to fuel their exercise.
(10:20):
And it seems too that estrogen might have kind of
a protective effect on our bodies when we are exercising.
For instance, a study at mass University in New Zealand
found that during another cycling study, apparently it's very easy
to study, well, this is the one that David Rowlands
(10:40):
at Massey recreated, right, yes, because you know, women were like, hello,
we're different, we're not the same. Can you can you
not do a study that's only men? Right? And they
suffered less muscle damage, possibly because of the estrogen. Yeah.
In the study, Rolands found that women's blood contained lower
levels of creatin kinais a biochemical marker of trauma in
(11:02):
muscle tissue. And so while he's not really sure why
what's going on here, he did, Yeah, he did suggest
that it could be estrogen protecting our muscles. And here's
the thing when it comes to gender differences with exercise.
In a previous podcast, we've touched on how it's easier
for men to lose weight than women, which has been
(11:24):
very frustrating for you know, straight couples who are losing
weight together because the guy will just instantly he'll stop
drinking coke, you know, when she's on this treadmill and
still can't match him in pounds lost. But it all
has to do with how we metabolize and how when
we when women do endurance exercises, if we're running marathons,
(11:45):
our body actually switches more into a survival mode and
holds onto energy storages. Were slowly burning fat. Makes exercise
sound terrified, I know, because we you know, we're evolutionarily
protecting ourselves to uh, I guess to take care of
our offspring. About some babies, whereas men just go and
(12:07):
they have those fast stores of energy from carbohydrates, from
proteins and uh, there you go. And they have the
higher density of muscle that also fuels, they're more efficient
calorie burning. Exactly, it's all about lean muscle mass. According
to Leslie Rochford, she's the executive editor of Women's Health magazine.
(12:29):
She was answering questions on their on their website and
from a lot of frustrated exercisers, and one one person
wrote in about like, why am I having such a
hard time losing weight when my husband is is having
an easier time, And Rochford said that men have more
natural muscle mass, which fuels metabolism, so they lose weight
faster and easier. Those jerks um and she suggested that
(12:49):
women can speed weight loss by building more lean muscle
mass through strength training. So don't just you know, I mean,
there's nothing wrong with being a runner and just running
that would be a great first step for me think.
But she suggested that women try to lift weights now
and again. And you know, in exchange for their fat
burning muscle mass, we have shapely curves. There you go,
(13:13):
glass have full. Well, yeah, men's men's muscle mass also
raises their just their resting metabolic right, so even when
they're sitting on the couch, they're still burning more galleries
than we are. Well, another thing too, is we tend
to perceive the outcomes of exercise differently. And I think
(13:35):
this has to do possibly with more of socialization factors.
But men are really motivated to or more motivated at
least according to studies, to want to, you know, do
the rigorous exercises and build the muscle and see it
as a way to feel better and feel stronger, whereas
(13:55):
a lot of times women's motivations for exercising is more
about shapeliness and wanting to look better, or if you're
like me, you want to exercise so that you can
eat that ice cream. It's kind of that means to
an end. Yeah, and UH Weight Watchers did a study
(14:16):
and chief scientists, their chief scientists, Karen Miller co Covac,
said that men see sweating as a badge of honor,
so they're in the gym adding more and more weight,
like oh, yeah, I'm gonna bulk up because they're thinking,
obviously this is a generalization, but they're thinking, I'm gonna
add all this weight, so I'm gonna be huge and muscly,
whereas women are going like, oh, I'm just gonna lift
a three pound wait, because I'm so terrified of looking
(14:37):
like Madonna. So but but as we've heard you, you
should lift more weight as a lady, right. But that
drive for muscularity is also a potential risk factor for men.
There's a two thousand to study from the University of
Florida which found the college aged men and this is
confirmed by time spent in our college Caroline. UH. College
(14:59):
aged men were twice as likely as their female counterparts
to exercise, to excess and become distraught if they miss
one session. Yeah, well that's that whole issue of exercise dependency.
And it does make you feel better, it relieves anxiety
and tension and all that stuff, but you can become
(15:19):
um hooked and should really not try to push yourself
over the limit. There's it's there's a difference between pushing
yourself and trying to get healthier and pushing yourself and
then injuring yourself. And women have to watch out too, because,
according to Jennifer Bema of Brigham and Women's Hospital, we
you know, we do exercise differently, and we respond differently
(15:39):
to exercise, and we have to actually work harder to
keep our hips in line with our knees when we're
doing things like running and jumping. So our bodies not
only our bodies responding differently to exercise, but um, we're
physically different obviously. For instance, women tend to have smaller hearts,
and on the downside, estrogen actually counteracts a protein which
(16:03):
is produced when we exercise really intensely, which helps protect
the heart against tissue damage. So we might be at
a higher risk of that kind of tissue damage because
of estrogen. Um and we also have smaller lungs, which
can limit exercise tolerant, which makes me feel better about
when I'm on the treadmill and I'm next to a
dude and I'm like, you know, I'm doing that awful,
(16:26):
ugly heavy breathing thing and turning bright red, and then
the trainer comes over and he's like, are you all right?
But I need to get off. But that doesn't mean
that we are not fit for endurance competition. Even though
here's a staggering fact for folks out there, it wasn't
until nineteen eighty four that women were allowed to compete
in the Olympic marathon. Crazy, that has only been twenty
(16:49):
seven years. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're actually better suited
to long distance running marathons because we've got fat all
that wonderful that it's more of a long burning fuel
as opposed to carbs or protein. So even though over
the long term, if we're doing all of that, we
(17:10):
might not might not necessarily burn the same amount of
calories these guys, but hey, we can, we can run,
we can burn fat. And you'd think because when they
gave in that study we mentioned earlier, when they gave
men estrogen, all of a sudden the men were like, bamn,
fat gone, and they weren't relying their bodies weren't relying
so much on proteins and carbohydrates. You'd think like, oh, well,
(17:32):
then why do we have the harder time losing weight?
But you know, several studies that we looked at showed
that women just have to work harder because to lose
that fat that we're holding onto. Right, because our fuel
is perhaps in a way you could think of it
as a gas tank premium because it burns slower longer. UM. Yes,
(17:55):
But for all of our gender differences in motivations for exercise,
in how our bodies respond to exercise, and yes, these
are a lot of generalizations that we have mentioned, here's
the thing that we can all take away, and that
is the fact that every single one of us probably
(18:15):
needs more exercise. What are you talking about unless a
lot of people have written in UM and say that
they listen to the podcast while they're at the gym,
are going jogging. So for those of you exercising while
you're listening to this right now, kudos because you are
in the minority, and don't be embarrassed about your panting.
You have smaller lungs as a woman, and I get
red faced. I get so red anyway. Yeah, people people
(18:40):
would get have concerned looks when they pass me on
the sidewalk. I I'm jogging. But according to these Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, more than sixty of American
adults are not regularly active, and of us aren't active
at all. How it's those you get those Law and
(19:01):
Order marathons going, and it's hard to go. Yeah, and
especially I mean, I'm now to down to nabby every
episode like an hour and a half and it's for
for one more. Kind of frightening statistic. This is coming
from an American Time Youth survey that was recorded from
two thousand three to few thousand and eight. Amongst eighty
thousand people twenty years old and over, only five percent
(19:24):
of respondents reported any vigorous activities on a day to
day basis, and the most common of moderate activity that
everyone reported was food and drink preparation. The most calories.
Take that in, people, The most calories that we're burning
during the day is when we are microwaving that hungry
(19:45):
man XXL dinner before we tuck in for a Law
and Order marathon. That's awful. So so the calories were
burning are immediately um added back and probably double or
triple or quadruple. Yeah, well that is scary. Um that
(20:05):
makes me want to do push ups. I think I
think hard about it, I really do. I just it's hard.
I don't have time. I'm tired, and it's hard. Yeah,
and our our constant work cycle is completely tiring, and
commute times and hello, child rearing. I can't imagine that
I have none of those things to blame it on.
Just laziness, just podcasting, just podcasting. So I think we
(20:28):
can take away that men and women are different in
every single possible imaginable way. But then you do exercise
more than we do. Yeah, you do, so kudos. Try
to get your female friends, girlfriends, wives, whoever, sisters, mothers
into the gym with you. Yeah, so that we can
all be so healthy, exactly healthy and live long and
(20:51):
productive lives. Yeah. So so, ladies, I'd like to know
if we have listeners, female listeners out there who are like, what,
this is ridiculous. I'm at the gym every day, I
read marathons every weekend, so I want to know about
the the extreme Now, people, who exercise regularly out there?
What keeps you motivated? Please tell me something, anything, because
it's easy to go on the New Year's kick of
(21:13):
getting in the gym or the yoga class of the
boot camp every day for I don't, well, not every day,
but regularly for a couple of months, and then it
slowly tapers off. So what do you do? Let us know?
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address. And on a much lighter note, I have
an adorable email from a listener named Julia, who writes,
(21:36):
I was listening to your perfume podcasts from way back
when I was listening to your Perfume podcast earlier, and
you said that a woman might like perfumes similar to
what her mother had worn. I'm fourteen years old, and
my mom and I each have a perfume motion from
Bath and Body Works. I recently secretly stole hers perhaps
she's not listening, and replaced it with mine because it
(21:56):
smells so much like her and it makes me happy
when I wear it. So I agree with you that
a girl would like a perfume similar to her mom's.
Sweet This is an email from Allison about our Imaginary
Friends podcast and she said, you mentioned something about the
number of imaginary friends, and I wanted to tell you
that I had seven imaginary friends. They were all named Katie,
(22:19):
and they were about seven inches tall with wings. One
would say bad words like poop, and I would immediately
have to rush in and tell my mom that Katie
had said that word. Another one used to fly out
of open car windows, forcing my family to spend more
than one car ride with their hands flinging out the
window trying to help me catch Katie as she tried
to fly away. I just like to interrupt her and
(22:40):
say that my parents never would have participated anyway. She says.
At one point, I was at dinner with my family
when suddenly I stood up on the booth, raised my
hand above my head, snapped or tried to my fingers,
and cried, waiter more napkins please, because Katie. Because different,
Katie had put her face in her food, as she
did often. I'm an I'm an only child and have
(23:03):
always been told that I have great verbal skills. I'm
not sure what all this says about me now, but
the podcast is one of my favorites. Thank you. I
have been really Alison and all of your Katie's Yeah,
and to all of you who have been sitting in
stories about imaginary friends, they are a delight. We still
haven't heard anything about Cucumber Boy. I know you're out there.
Send us an email Mom Stuff at how stuff Works
(23:25):
dot com or hey, head over to our Facebook page,
or you can follow us on Twitter at Mom's Stuff Podcast,
or you can check out the blog during the week
It's stuff Mom Never told You at how stuff works
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
(23:46):
we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
The House Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it
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