All Episodes

January 23, 2019 • 25 mins

Sure, men and women have different exercise motivations -- but which group exercises more? Just in time for resolution season, please enjoy this classic episode.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've never
told you. With now under way, I see more and
more people out and about exercising, trying to stick to

(00:26):
those New Year's resolutions. I think I've mentioned before. Back
when I was a regular Jim goer, one of my
favorite things was the influx of people in the gym
in January that would pretty much die out by mid February.
I'm a terrible person. I should take pleasure in that.
I used to live with this guy who was a
runner like me, but he had such an easier time

(00:47):
losing weight and getting in shape than I did, or
at least that's what it seemed like, And it wasn't
just me saying that to him. He would often say
things to me like it sucks that it's harder for
women to lose weight, and it sounds passive aggressive, but
he was being pretty genuine. This got me thinking about
differences between men and women in exercise. So in the

(01:08):
spirit of the season, please enjoy this classic episode. Welcome
to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff Works
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and since it is the start relatively

(01:29):
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 seems I do not have
much room for my son's salutations. I am a little irked,

(01:49):
and I feel like it's all provoked because of the
New Year's resolution. Got to lose the quote unquote holiday pounds,
New Year, new body, and it's everybody is trying to
fulfill those New Year's resolutions. I, however, am going to
the gym to quit cancel my membership. Oh nice, Yeah,
I'm I'm going the opposite way because my resolution is

(02:10):
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 daylight outside of a building. Uh But
enough about that. The question that came to my mind
probably because I do take yoga. That's the only kind

(02:32):
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 to recover from all

(02:54):
that cake and pie and turkey we eight over the holidays,
unnecessary body standards, body stands. 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 happens on the playground. Yeah, it starts

(03:17):
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. And according to Dr Nicky Rodgers at Liverpool University,

(03:40):
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. Women be shopping, so basically
while we're playing mash they are. Yeah. Boys are in
larger groups, which she says, lens themselves to physical games

(04:01):
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 and girls are exercising
even less some boys because by age eleven, thirty of

(04:21):
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 you could
be contributing to this problem of obesity, childhood obesity. UM.
And that you know, maybe we should try to have

(04:44):
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 the this gender difference seems to carry over throughout

(05:07):
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 attributes this to traditional gender roles, where

(05:28):
the men might be getting out and cutting the lawn
and being more active, whereas women might have a lower
intensity activities indoors right, like like chores like biscuit making, yes, crocheting, yes,
both of which I like doing. I have never crocheted.
I tried to learn a knit one time from a
kit and I I All I did is kept nodding

(05:51):
the yarn. It wasn't working. I went through a croucheing phase.
IM not gonna lie. I'd like to I'd like to
restart that that it didn't get you out of the
house though it didn't 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

(06:12):
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,

(06:35):
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 single men. Always always single men
reported that they put in eight hours and three minutes

(06:57):
of exercise in the last two week aread 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 should point out,

(07:22):
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 them
right after New Year's maybe everybody is 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 a
pretty start difference and also a start difference between those

(07:45):
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 eyes than
single men. Yeah, they controlled also for married men's parental
status and hours put in at work, just in case like, Okay, well,

(08:08):
it could 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

(08:29):
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 going to go
get on the StairMaster. I wonder what the what the

(08:50):
deal is. I feel like I'm just imagining just a
woman juggling balls, and it's just another another ball to juggle. Um,
So basically, we're an exercise not mutually exclusive for women.
But yeah, single folks were leading the pack some of us.
So some of us are leading the pack and others

(09:12):
of 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 for a segue. Yeah, here's

(09:32):
the thing. Exercise 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

(09:56):
recreated male only experiments to include women, they have found
that women react much differently. For instance, Um, they've discovered
that estrogen 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

(10:19):
complete a strenuous 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 burn 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

(10:41):
before and endurance exercise that 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 Massive University in New Zealand did a
study also a cycling an extreme cycling session and had

(11:02):
the male participants carbo load and 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

(11:23):
on the fat burn to fuel their exercise. 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 during
another cycling study apparently it's very easy to study. Well,

(11:43):
this is the one that David Rowlands at Massey recreated, right, Yes,
because you know, women were like, hello, we're different, We're
not the same. Can you not? 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 kinase,

(12:06):
a biochemical marker of trauma in 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

(12:29):
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 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, and
she's on this treadmill and still can't match him in

(12:50):
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, our body actually switches more into
a survival mode and holds onto energy storages were slowly burning.
Fatch makes exercise sound terrified, I know, because we you know,

(13:14):
we're evolutionarily protecting ourselves to uh, I guess to take
care of our offspring. About some babies. Whereas men just
go and they have those fast stores of energy from
carbohydrates and 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, folks.

(13:40):
According to Leslie Rochford, she's the executive editor of Women's
Health magazine. 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
having an easier time, And Rochford said that men have
more natural muscle mass, which fuels metabolism, so they lose

(14:00):
weight faster and easier. Those jerks um. And she suggested
that 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,
I think. But she suggested that women try to lift
weights now and again, and you know, in exchange for

(14:23):
their fat burning muscle mass, we have shapely curves. There
you go, glass half 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

(14:45):
we tend to perceive the outcomes of exercise differently. And
I think this has to do possibly with more of
socialization factors. But men are really motivated to or more
motivated at least a quarter two studies to want to
you know, do the rigorous exercises and build the muscle

(15:06):
and see it as a way to feel better and
feel stronger, whereas 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 exactly, drink a
glass of one. It's kind of that means to an end. Yeah,

(15:29):
and uh, weight watchers did a study and chief scientists.
Their chief scientists, Karen Miller Cova 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 going to add all
this weight, so I'm gonna be huge and musclely, whereas
women are going like, oh, I'm just gonna lift this

(15:51):
three pound wait, because I'm so terrified of looking like Madonna.
So but but as we've heard you, you should lift
more weight as a lady. Right. But that dry 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 age

(16:15):
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 um hooked and

(16:37):
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 to exercise,
and we have to actually work harder to keep our

(16:58):
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 is produced

(17:19):
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, ugly heavy

(17:43):
breathing thing and turning bright red, and then the trainer
comes over and he's like, are you all right? 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 were that women were allowed to compete in
the Olympic marathon. Crazy, that has only been twenty seven years. Yeah, yeah,

(18:07):
I mean, we're actually better suited to long distance running
marathons because we've got fat, all that wonderful fat that'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 might not might not
necessarily burn the same amount of calories as guys, but hey,

(18:31):
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 bam, fat gone, and they weren't
relying their bodies, weren't relying so much on proteins and carbohydrates.
You'd think like, oh, well, then why do we have
the harder time losing weight. But you know, several studies

(18:52):
that we looked at showed that women just have to
work harder because to lose that fat that we're holding onto,
because our fuel is perhaps in a way you could
think of it as a gas tank premium because it
burns slower and longer. UM. Yes, But for all of
our gender differences in motivations for exercise and how our

(19:16):
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 needs more exercise.
What are you talking about unless a lot of people
have written in UM and say that they listen to

(19:38):
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. Just you have
smaller lungs as a woman, and I get red, face
get so red and anyway, Yeah, people people get have
concerned looks when they pass me on the sidewalk with

(19:59):
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 at all. Well,
it's those you get those Law and Order marathons going
and it's hard to go. Yeah, and especially I mean,

(20:21):
I'm now to down to Nabbey. Every episode is like
an hour and a half and just 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 two thousand eight amongst eighty thousand people twenty years
old and over, only five percent of respondents reported any

(20:42):
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 into people,
The most calories that we're burning during the day is
when we are micro waving that hungry man XXL dinner

(21:03):
before we tuck in for a Law and Order marathon.
That's awful. So so the calories were burning are immediately
added back and probably double or triple or quadruple. Except well,
that is scary. Um that makes me want to do
push ups. I think I think hard about it, I

(21:35):
really do. I just it's hard. I don't have time.
I'm tired. It is 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 can take away that

(21:55):
men and women are different in every single possible imaginable way.
But men, 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

(22:16):
and 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 run marathons every weekend, So I want
to know about the the extreme. Yeah, people exercise regularly
out there. What keeps you motivated? Please tell me something, anything,

(22:36):
because it's easy to go on the New Year's kick
of 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,

(22:56):
I have an adorable email from a listener named Jewel Leah,
who writes, 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 perfume 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

(23:19):
she's not listening and replaced it with mine because it
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.
M That's very sweet. That is sweet. This is an
email from Allison about our Imaginary Friends podcast, and she
said you mentioned something about the number of imaginary friends,

(23:40):
and I wanted to tell you that I had seven
imaginary friends. They were all named Katie, 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

(24:01):
me catch Katie as she tried to fly away. I
just like to interrupt here and 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

(24:23):
face in her food, as she did often. Katie. I'm
an I'm an only child and have always been told
that I have great verbal skills. I'm not sure what
all this says about me now, but the podcast was
one of my favorites. Thank you. I have been Rickie
Allison 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. If we still haven't heard anything

(24:45):
about Cucumber Boy, I know you're out there, Send us
an email mom Stuff at house stuffworks 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

(25:07):
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The how
Stuffork's iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.

Stuff Mom Never Told You News

Advertise With Us

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Anney Reese

Anney Reese

Samantha McVey

Samantha McVey

Show Links

AboutRSSStore

Popular Podcasts

24/7 News: The Latest

24/7 News: The Latest

The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.

Crime Junkie

Crime Junkie

Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.