September 15, 2010 • 25 mins
When it comes to shedding pounds, men have an advantage: They lose weight faster and more easily than women do. Why? In this episode, Molly and Cristen examine the many variables that affect weight loss in general -- and female weight loss in particular.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told
you from house Stuff Works dot Com. Come on, welcome
to the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen
(00:20):
one of our old episodes and dealt with the question
is living together before marriage a good idea? I recall
that one yes, and it was all about you know,
if your ultimate goal is marriage, well, living together ruin it?
Will it make a marriage stronger? So on and so forth.
But one thing that often comes up. You'll see studies
(00:41):
about it all the time, headlines designed to scare you,
in my opinion, that say that when two people move
in together, they are destined to get fat. Yeah, it's
kind of like the love weight, and if you will
once you start, you know, you start dating someone, you
want to look really good first few dates, you know,
(01:02):
then then you become bf GF and then all of
a sudden you can't fit into your jeans right, And
they imply that, especially once you're living with someone and
you know, instead of going out for you know, dinners
and the like, you're ordering pizza every night. You're getting Chinese. Yeah,
(01:22):
you're coming front of the television. You're not out and
about doing dates anymore. Yeah, you're in a routine. You're cute.
Friday dress turns into Friday's sweatpants, Friday's moon moo Friday. Yes,
but okay, So let's say that you have been living
with someone, you've gained all your love weight, and now
you and your beloved are going to go on a
(01:44):
joint diet. Yeah, his HER's diet. You can lose weight together, right,
and we're saying we're saying his hers because the question
of today's episode is doo men lose weight faster than women?
Because there may be two women to living do other
there might be two guys let me together. But the
question of the day concerns men and women. And this
(02:05):
let's say these boyfriend girlfriend are going on the love
diet together. Yeah, ladies, you might get a little frustrated
if you try to go pound for pound with your BF,
because statistically speaking, he has a much better chance of
losing not only more weight than you, but more weight faster. So, yes,
(02:30):
today's podcast is going to be really frustrating for you
women out there. But before we get into the men
versus woman thing. I think it's frustrating to compare yourself
to anyone when you're trying to lose weight exactly because
we all lose weight differently and it's not always within
our control. Despite the fact that we think that weight
is something that you know, we can take off if
(02:51):
we just eat right and exercise, it's not true. And
that was highlighted by an article we found called why
Can't I Lose Weight? By Elaine McGee from web MD.
So let's talk about people who just can't seem to
take it off. Yeah, I mean, they're just gonna be
individual differences with how everyone loses weight. And I mean,
I think we should also preface this by saying, you know,
(03:13):
this is not everyone has to Well, this isn't me
and Molly saying that everyone needs to go out and
get on a treadmill or hop on, uh, get on
some kind of new fangled diet or anything like that.
But I think when you know when you want to
shed some pounds, I think it is important to arm
yourself with this kind of knowledge and know what to
(03:34):
expect from your body because everybody is a little bit different,
like snowflakes, like snowflakes, for instance. Um, some people have
low resting metabolic rates and some people have high resting
metabolic rates. In other words, some people's bodies simply burn
calories more efficiently than others. And according to one researcher
(03:55):
in this article from a m D, differences in those
metabolic rates can't explain up twenty two pounds of weight gain. Wow,
that's that's like three babies. I think here you birth
weights just from metabolic right, it's pretty significant. Um. And
then of course there are differences in how everyone experiences hunger, satisfaction,
(04:20):
and stress, because all those things are interrelated because you can,
you know, be on the treadmill or lifting weights or
doing whatever kind of exercise all day long. But of
course you've got to feed your body, you know. And uh,
and some people just have an easier time sticking to
a healthier diet than others might some people just have.
(04:42):
We did an episode on food cravings a long long
time ago, and as you'll learn if you listen to it,
food cravings are a pretty um intensive neurological thing that
happens to us that can be really really hard to silence.
And if you throw stress into that mix. It's just
(05:03):
you know you're gonna go running for those cupcakes or
those uh pizza roles, you know pretty pretty fast. Well,
and just stress in general, even if you're not stress eating,
it can it can take weight off, it can put
weight on seemingly by magic magic. Um, here's another thing.
Did you know that exercise and your desire to do
it might be controlled by a gene? Yeah? That this
(05:26):
was interesting, right. According to this researcher at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill of an individual's propensity
for voluntary exercise might be due to a gene. And
the reason they know that is because in their labs
they have these mice that they genetically bred uh to
like running on wheels as myce myce doom creatures in
(05:48):
the mice family. And uh so they say that this
might be a new emerging field of research to see
if we can tinker with that gene and people to
get them to like exercise in And it's interesting you
say that because, for instance, uh, my sister and I
we are completely opposite in terms of exercise. I I
(06:09):
really enjoy exercise and I needed to to keep me sane,
whereas it's bit's pulling teeth for her. She just doesn't
doesn't like it. So maybe I don't know, maybe that's
that's some kind of genetic difference between us. I don't know.
But there's also UM preliminary, preliminary research on whether or
(06:29):
not UM your mother's diet while uh she was pregnant
with you has an impact on your weight if she's supposedly,
if she ate a high fat diet while she was pregnant, UM,
it might predict weight gain or excessive weight as you age.
And then also the food you ate as a toddler
(06:51):
might affect how you gain weight as an adult. Basically,
the healthier the diet that you were raised on than
the healthier the adult you emerge, supposedly, So thanks for
reading all those crispy cream donuts mom, you when you
were so yeah, I mean, the the what we're trying
to stay here is that we have all of these
(07:13):
variables already tossed into the mix. And now let's talk
about gender, the heart of our argument and in fact
makes up one of the largest sections of McGee's article
on web Empty. And you know it's not I don't
think these any of these will come as a shocker
to anyone, But I think that when you're on a
diet or when you're trying to lose weight, you can
(07:35):
get so tunnel focused on that number on the scale
that it's important to remember, Like, just don't don't compare
yourself to other people. We're all different. First of all,
men have more muscle mass. Yes, men naturally have more muscle.
They're built to be larger and leaner than us women,
who have more fat tissue on our body. And since
(07:57):
men have more muscle us, that means they simply burn
more calories faster, right, It just burns, burns more calories
at all times, at rest and exercise. And so you know,
one tip that they do give women over and over
again is don't be afraid to do weight training. Don't
(08:17):
be afraid to lift really heavy weights, because your body
is not designed to get that muscular but building up
your muscle will help you get more of that resting
calorie burn. Right, because even even at rest, men's metabolic
rates tend to be a lot higher than women's just
because of that difference in ratio between muscle tissue versus
(08:38):
fat tissue. Now, when we get into the fat tissue,
men and Women store their fat in different places and
burn it differently when they're drawing on energy from their body.
And this is where we come to something I like
to call apples and payers. Um. Basically, men tend to
gain their weight in the mid section, in their belly
(08:59):
and they form shapely little apples when they when they expand,
and women tend to turn into pairs because we deposit
our extra body weight in our hips, on legs and
are behind. Christie, if you could be described as any fruit,
what fruit would you want to be described as? Um? Papaya? Okay,
(09:20):
I just want to know, just a fun fact I
wanted to I wanted to find out about you. And
the reason it matters whether you're an apple or a pear,
according to one researcher at you See Berkeley, is that
fat around the gut is more actively recruited during times
of energy need, so it's gonna be easier to lose
than fat on the legs and hips. So if both
(09:40):
of you are out on a jog together, a side
by side jog, the lady is pulling her fat from
her thighs, man is pulling it from his abs. He's
burning more of it. It's not fair, but also to
go into as long as we're talking about exercise, because
men usually way more to start with, they can burn
(10:03):
more calories in the same same time to run than
a woman can. Right. Researchers from Syracuse University compared men
and women walking and running the same distance at the
same speed okay, to see how many calories they burned,
and they found that men burned an average of a
(10:23):
hundred and twenty four calories when we're running and eighty
eight calories when walking, whereas women who going the same
distance at the same speed burned in average of a
hundred and five calories when running and seventy eight calories
when walking. So it's not an astronomical difference, but it's
a difference, but it is a difference. So let's talk
(10:47):
about diet, Kristen. One of our resources for this podcast
was from the U s d A a piece of
work called Gender Differences and Body fat Utilization during weight gain,
loss or maintenance. And another one of the gender differences
that they pointed out, which I found really interesting, is
that the type of food being eaten by women is
(11:07):
more important when it comes to weight loss than it
is for men. So this is another place where cohabitation,
for example, can really mess you up if you're a
lady on a diet. Because according to them, and I
was kind of surprised by this, I think that, you know,
this is one of those things you just kind of
have to find out for yourself what works. The more
fat women eat, the more likely they are to have
(11:28):
too much body fat. Whereas the more carbro hydrates women eat,
the less likely they are to have too much body fat.
So that seems to suggest a high carb diet. I
know a lot of women who have had success with
low carb diet, so that's why I'm sort of caveat there.
But basically, the way our bodies process these foods, it's
much different than the way the guys are processing these foods. Yeah,
(11:49):
it seems like women's bodies might just be more sensitive
to the macro nutrient ratios as the US D terms it.
But those kind of you know, fats versus carbs, whatever,
um than than men. You know, men just might be
able to they can just eat eat more of what
they kind of want to eat. I mean, and I
(12:11):
think we've all seen that in action. Well sure, And
and and this isn't to say that they can go
and just eat whatever junk food they want to. They want.
Men want to go eat and and be fine. No.
I mean, the the USDA clearly states to eating too
many calories is going to make anyone become fat. But
women's bodies are just a little more sensitive to all that.
(12:33):
And speaking of food and sensitivity to it and sensitivity
to it, women, as we discussed way back when with
the food Cravings episode, are more susceptible to giving into
food cravings. And we've got to talk about this article.
It was from Time magazine or reports on a study
done by Dr Jean Jack Wang at Brookhaven National Laboratory,
(12:58):
and it's about a study that I just I don't know.
If you could pay me money to be in the study, Kristen,
I just would have to fail. I would fail to
study so hard. Yeah. Dr Wayne took a group of
male and female volunteers, all of whom were in they
were in good health, um average weight, average weight, yeah,
and they told them first to fast for seventeen hours
(13:23):
failure point number one for Molly. Yeah. So they're fasting
for seventeen hours, okay. And while they're fasting, the researchers
interviewed them about their favorite foods and had them rank
each of their favorite foods on a one to ten
scale to find out they're absolute. The heal in terms
(13:45):
of food was um and so then um. Then when
the seventeen hours of fasting, we're up. The volunteers were
then placed in a pet scanner and we're then present
did with the food they craved, so that the researchers
could see how their brains reacted in the presence of
(14:08):
this food, because not only are they being presented with
this this food that they adore, but it's after seventeen
hours of fasting. After seventeen hours and it's not just
like you know, they're holding a plate of unappetizing like
tacos in front of you. They're saying, oh, here are
these tacos, and we we made this guacamole fresh, and
(14:28):
that this pico we flew in straight from Mexico. It's
the best pico to gayo in the world. And uh,
if it had a smell like say you said that
you loved ribs, you can smell that barbecue sauce. Yeah.
They actually warmed the food in microwaves to to get
a wafting wafting scent of the food, so they couldn't
They couldn't even avoid the smell. And just to make
(14:50):
matters worse, they gave I thought this was the cruelest
part of the study because people still haven't eaten, and
the researchers gave them a cotton ball with a bit
of their favorite food on it, just for the tiniest taste,
just just a tiny piece of that greasy taco me
(15:12):
that you still desire. So they can see the people's
brains in these pet scanners just going crazy. Yeah, they
people want the food. Um, you know it is time
to eat. And then here's where it gets awful. Dr
Wayne says, you know what, you need to think about
something else. You can't have this food for the next
forty minutes. I'm gonna keep this food right here. You're
(15:35):
gonna look at it and uh, you can smell it,
but you can't have it think about something else. And
they had to keep their eyes open. They couldn't just
close and close it off. Failure point number two for myself.
And so what they did find was that these people
were able to actually lower their feelings of hunger. Um.
(15:55):
It was like their brains would get used to that
feeling of being hungry for seven hours, and they could
sort of desensitize themselves from the fact that they had,
you know, cotton balls with barbecue sauce so nearby. But
what they found was that the women would think about
the food much more than the men, who could really
(16:16):
suppress these desires for their favorite foods. Yeah, the way
Time described it was that the women continued having emotional
cravings for the food even if their hunger had gone away,
whereas the guys were able to just kind of shut
it off. And that's something that we we kind of
highlighted in that that Food Cravings episode where um, women
(16:40):
do have a much more uh kind of emotional I
guess attachment to food in that way, like our our
Amygdalah's get involved a lot this you know, are very
like energetic center, a little pocket of our brain um
that gets really upset if we can't have this food
that we're craving. UM. So Dr Wang saw similar results
(17:04):
in this pet Scanner study. That also indicates that yeah,
if if if you're if you're dieting with your husband
or your boyfriend, like there's a decent chance he's going
to have an easier time sticking to that than you might. Yeah,
because I know that once I started thinking about tacos,
which I am now thanks to this podcast, it's it's
gonna be a long day. Yeah, well day nick me
(17:27):
about taco And then again, you know, there are individual differences.
Some people are just you know, have amazing wellpower when
it comes to those sorts of things. But I mean,
if we're just talking in gender generalizations, which we specialize
in which we do. Uh yeah, women, we we we
got a hard road this. But I mean, you know
(17:50):
one thing, if Kristen I can't tie it back to hormones,
we like to tie it back to evolution. And there
is some evidence that it was because we need did
to be nice and hearty for when there were times
of starvation in our past. Now as if we haven't
discouraged women enough molly against any sort of weight loss
plans or goals, aspirations, etcetera. Here's the final kicker, ladies, Um,
(18:20):
we gain weight over our lifetimes about twenty years longer
than men anyway. And uh and men. This is according
to a health overview in the New York Times, men's
b m i's tend to increase until they're fifty and
then it kind of levels off. Their weight sort of
plateaus now and women our b m I tends to
(18:43):
increase until seventy, so it is one reason to look
forward to getting older. Until we had seven d your
weight will level off and then wed, your weight is
leveling off this year. Yeah, we can eat what we want.
And not only that, we also have three ad your
risk periods and risks I say risk and with air quotes.
(19:05):
She just needed air quotes. Risk periods for weight gain
um according to the New York Times, which the first
one is the onset of menstruation, and then we have
after pregnancy and then right after menopause. So every milestone
our woman's life you can can you eagerly away to
(19:26):
weight gain. We celebrate it with adding adding more pounds.
Men don't have these kind of high risk periods in
their lives like we do. So, uh, what what is
all this to say, Molly? Should we just throw our
hands up and stop, um, you know, fretting so much
over our bodies and just given to these high risk
(19:46):
periods in our lives and wait for seventy wait for seventy. Um,
that's for me. The title of my new book. Wait,
it's seventy. Um no, I think that you know, the
whole reason we want to do this podcast was just
to show women that you can't come pare yourself to others.
And you know this, it really speaks to all sorts
of comparisons you can make. We've talked before about not
(20:06):
comparing yourself to women in magazines because they've been airbrushed,
and now you can't compare yourself to the men you know,
and don't compare yourself. So let me you know, because
as we're talking about being in the podcast, maybe those
women have different genes that are acting in different ways
and we don't even know about yet, so different maternal
diets exactly. You can just walk around and blame your mother. Well,
(20:28):
but here here's one thing though that we need to
take a queue that we need to take from men
in terms of weight and perception and all of this.
All right, there was a study from Harvard about how
men and women judge their own body weights and it found,
not surprisingly that women are a lot harsher on themselves
(20:49):
in terms of how they how they view their body
in terms of whether they're overweight or average. Right, Um,
we actually have a more accurate perception of our own weight,
whereas men just kind of tend to think that there
they look fine, whether they're overweight or are not. Um
(21:11):
And I think it's kind of interesting that that men
are just kind of all together, kind of happy, go
lucky in terms of their own bodies. Well, I think
it speaks to confidence. And I think that that's a
factor that a lot of women, right. And you know,
the point of the podcast was not to say, you know,
you can't control this. Eat whatever you want, don't exercise whatever.
(21:34):
We're all for healthy exercise, a healthy diet that and
you know you can indulge in moderation and love in
the skin you're in. Exactly. It's it's our three step,
three step plan. I'm sure no one has thought of
these three steps before. But just again, don't compare yourself
to other people. It leads to no good. And well
(21:56):
it might sound like that, you know, the last fifteen
minutes or so was just a laundry list of of
negative bullet points about being a woman and trying to
maintain a healthy weight. The point is, you know, to
as a you know, as a woman and as a guy,
as anybody, Uh, to arm yourself with with this kind
of knowledge. So if you can be realistic about your expectations,
(22:21):
uh for losing weight and being healthy and um, you
know how fast you can expect those kind of changes
to occur. And for women, you know what, it might
just take us a little bit longer. And that's okay exactly,
So there you go. Well on that note, shall we
read some mail from our listeners. I would love to.
(22:46):
I have one here from Chelsea and it's about our
episode entitled why Don't Boys Play the Harp which was
about musical instruments and gender and Chelsea rights. I've been
playing the trumpet since I was ten. In grade five,
when the school took us on a field trip to
the middle school most of us would be attending. We
got to choose our instruments for band. I tried every instrument,
but like trumpet the best. I didn't think it was
(23:08):
a big deal until we got back to school and
my music teacher told me that the trumpet is too
difficult for girls to play and that I should try
the flute. The next year and band I got the
highest grade in the class. The year after that, I
got asked to join the senior jazz band and played
just about every solo and band class with the trumpet.
My former music teacher was shocked that I did sit well.
I never told her. Yes, it was a woman who
(23:29):
told me that that she was the reason that I
practiced every day for two hours after school. My male
trumpet counterparts over the years haven't been very excited over
the fact that I can play music that they can't,
but that just gave me more reason to improve. I
joined both Junior Jazz band and Senior Jazz band, concert band,
and played in the pit band for our school's musical productions.
I'm eighteen now, and although I haven't picked up my
horse since I graduated this year, is still feels good
(23:51):
to know that I beat that stereotype and all the
people who didn't believe in me way to go well.
I got an email here also about our episode on
why Don't Boys Play the harp? And it is from Michael,
who is twelve years old and he is a seventh
grader in Kenya. He said, I'm in the advanced band
(24:11):
in my school, and I've noticed a lot of the
stuff you guys said was true. I'm sure if I
decided to play the flute. My friends would never talk
to me again. One thing different here is that both
guys and girls almost equally play the clarinet in my band,
seven guys to seven girls, to be exact. I wanted
to mention this because Kristen, I think, made a comment
(24:32):
about just giving a girl a clarinet, and I thought
I'd just say that those stereotypes aren't always true, as
with most stereotypes, Michael um So, thanks so much for
the emails. Keep him coming mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com. And of course you can always friend
us on Facebook or fan us. I guess I should
(24:53):
say us or like us. Just do whatever on Facebook.
Do something with us on Facebook, please um And then
you can follow us on Twitter It's mom Stuff podcast.
And then finally you can read our blog during the
week It's stuff mon Never told you and it's how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
(25:16):
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are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told
you from house Stuff Works dot Com. Come on, welcome
to the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Kristen
(00:20):
one of our old episodes and dealt with the question
is living together before marriage a good idea? I recall
that one yes, and it was all about you know,
if your ultimate goal is marriage, well, living together ruin it?
Will it make a marriage stronger? So on and so forth.
But one thing that often comes up. You'll see studies
(00:41):
about it all the time, headlines designed to scare you,
in my opinion, that say that when two people move
in together, they are destined to get fat. Yeah, it's
kind of like the love weight, and if you will
once you start, you know, you start dating someone, you
want to look really good first few dates, you know,
(01:02):
then then you become bf GF and then all of
a sudden you can't fit into your jeans right, And
they imply that, especially once you're living with someone and
you know, instead of going out for you know, dinners
and the like, you're ordering pizza every night. You're getting Chinese. Yeah,
(01:22):
you're coming front of the television. You're not out and
about doing dates anymore. Yeah, you're in a routine. You're cute.
Friday dress turns into Friday's sweatpants, Friday's moon moo Friday. Yes,
but okay, So let's say that you have been living
with someone, you've gained all your love weight, and now
you and your beloved are going to go on a
(01:44):
joint diet. Yeah, his HER's diet. You can lose weight together, right,
and we're saying we're saying his hers because the question
of today's episode is doo men lose weight faster than women?
Because there may be two women to living do other
there might be two guys let me together. But the
question of the day concerns men and women. And this
(02:05):
let's say these boyfriend girlfriend are going on the love
diet together. Yeah, ladies, you might get a little frustrated
if you try to go pound for pound with your BF,
because statistically speaking, he has a much better chance of
losing not only more weight than you, but more weight faster. So, yes,
(02:30):
today's podcast is going to be really frustrating for you
women out there. But before we get into the men
versus woman thing. I think it's frustrating to compare yourself
to anyone when you're trying to lose weight exactly because
we all lose weight differently and it's not always within
our control. Despite the fact that we think that weight
is something that you know, we can take off if
(02:51):
we just eat right and exercise, it's not true. And
that was highlighted by an article we found called why
Can't I Lose Weight? By Elaine McGee from web MD.
So let's talk about people who just can't seem to
take it off. Yeah, I mean, they're just gonna be
individual differences with how everyone loses weight. And I mean,
I think we should also preface this by saying, you know,
(03:13):
this is not everyone has to Well, this isn't me
and Molly saying that everyone needs to go out and
get on a treadmill or hop on, uh, get on
some kind of new fangled diet or anything like that.
But I think when you know when you want to
shed some pounds, I think it is important to arm
yourself with this kind of knowledge and know what to
(03:34):
expect from your body because everybody is a little bit different,
like snowflakes, like snowflakes, for instance. Um, some people have
low resting metabolic rates and some people have high resting
metabolic rates. In other words, some people's bodies simply burn
calories more efficiently than others. And according to one researcher
(03:55):
in this article from a m D, differences in those
metabolic rates can't explain up twenty two pounds of weight gain. Wow,
that's that's like three babies. I think here you birth
weights just from metabolic right, it's pretty significant. Um. And
then of course there are differences in how everyone experiences hunger, satisfaction,
(04:20):
and stress, because all those things are interrelated because you can,
you know, be on the treadmill or lifting weights or
doing whatever kind of exercise all day long. But of
course you've got to feed your body, you know. And uh,
and some people just have an easier time sticking to
a healthier diet than others might some people just have.
(04:42):
We did an episode on food cravings a long long
time ago, and as you'll learn if you listen to it,
food cravings are a pretty um intensive neurological thing that
happens to us that can be really really hard to silence.
And if you throw stress into that mix. It's just
(05:03):
you know you're gonna go running for those cupcakes or
those uh pizza roles, you know pretty pretty fast. Well,
and just stress in general, even if you're not stress eating,
it can it can take weight off, it can put
weight on seemingly by magic magic. Um, here's another thing.
Did you know that exercise and your desire to do
it might be controlled by a gene? Yeah? That this
(05:26):
was interesting, right. According to this researcher at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill of an individual's propensity
for voluntary exercise might be due to a gene. And
the reason they know that is because in their labs
they have these mice that they genetically bred uh to
like running on wheels as myce myce doom creatures in
(05:48):
the mice family. And uh so they say that this
might be a new emerging field of research to see
if we can tinker with that gene and people to
get them to like exercise in And it's interesting you
say that because, for instance, uh, my sister and I
we are completely opposite in terms of exercise. I I
(06:09):
really enjoy exercise and I needed to to keep me sane,
whereas it's bit's pulling teeth for her. She just doesn't
doesn't like it. So maybe I don't know, maybe that's
that's some kind of genetic difference between us. I don't know.
But there's also UM preliminary, preliminary research on whether or
(06:29):
not UM your mother's diet while uh she was pregnant
with you has an impact on your weight if she's supposedly,
if she ate a high fat diet while she was pregnant, UM,
it might predict weight gain or excessive weight as you age.
And then also the food you ate as a toddler
(06:51):
might affect how you gain weight as an adult. Basically,
the healthier the diet that you were raised on than
the healthier the adult you emerge, supposedly, So thanks for
reading all those crispy cream donuts mom, you when you
were so yeah, I mean, the the what we're trying
to stay here is that we have all of these
(07:13):
variables already tossed into the mix. And now let's talk
about gender, the heart of our argument and in fact
makes up one of the largest sections of McGee's article
on web Empty. And you know it's not I don't
think these any of these will come as a shocker
to anyone, But I think that when you're on a
diet or when you're trying to lose weight, you can
(07:35):
get so tunnel focused on that number on the scale
that it's important to remember, Like, just don't don't compare
yourself to other people. We're all different. First of all,
men have more muscle mass. Yes, men naturally have more muscle.
They're built to be larger and leaner than us women,
who have more fat tissue on our body. And since
(07:57):
men have more muscle us, that means they simply burn
more calories faster, right, It just burns, burns more calories
at all times, at rest and exercise. And so you know,
one tip that they do give women over and over
again is don't be afraid to do weight training. Don't
(08:17):
be afraid to lift really heavy weights, because your body
is not designed to get that muscular but building up
your muscle will help you get more of that resting
calorie burn. Right, because even even at rest, men's metabolic
rates tend to be a lot higher than women's just
because of that difference in ratio between muscle tissue versus
(08:38):
fat tissue. Now, when we get into the fat tissue,
men and Women store their fat in different places and
burn it differently when they're drawing on energy from their body.
And this is where we come to something I like
to call apples and payers. Um. Basically, men tend to
gain their weight in the mid section, in their belly
(08:59):
and they form shapely little apples when they when they expand,
and women tend to turn into pairs because we deposit
our extra body weight in our hips, on legs and
are behind. Christie, if you could be described as any fruit,
what fruit would you want to be described as? Um? Papaya? Okay,
(09:20):
I just want to know, just a fun fact I
wanted to I wanted to find out about you. And
the reason it matters whether you're an apple or a pear,
according to one researcher at you See Berkeley, is that
fat around the gut is more actively recruited during times
of energy need, so it's gonna be easier to lose
than fat on the legs and hips. So if both
(09:40):
of you are out on a jog together, a side
by side jog, the lady is pulling her fat from
her thighs, man is pulling it from his abs. He's
burning more of it. It's not fair, but also to
go into as long as we're talking about exercise, because
men usually way more to start with, they can burn
(10:03):
more calories in the same same time to run than
a woman can. Right. Researchers from Syracuse University compared men
and women walking and running the same distance at the
same speed okay, to see how many calories they burned,
and they found that men burned an average of a
(10:23):
hundred and twenty four calories when we're running and eighty
eight calories when walking, whereas women who going the same
distance at the same speed burned in average of a
hundred and five calories when running and seventy eight calories
when walking. So it's not an astronomical difference, but it's
a difference, but it is a difference. So let's talk
(10:47):
about diet, Kristen. One of our resources for this podcast
was from the U s d A a piece of
work called Gender Differences and Body fat Utilization during weight gain,
loss or maintenance. And another one of the gender differences
that they pointed out, which I found really interesting, is
that the type of food being eaten by women is
(11:07):
more important when it comes to weight loss than it
is for men. So this is another place where cohabitation,
for example, can really mess you up if you're a
lady on a diet. Because according to them, and I
was kind of surprised by this, I think that, you know,
this is one of those things you just kind of
have to find out for yourself what works. The more
fat women eat, the more likely they are to have
(11:28):
too much body fat. Whereas the more carbro hydrates women eat,
the less likely they are to have too much body fat.
So that seems to suggest a high carb diet. I
know a lot of women who have had success with
low carb diet, so that's why I'm sort of caveat there.
But basically, the way our bodies process these foods, it's
much different than the way the guys are processing these foods. Yeah,
(11:49):
it seems like women's bodies might just be more sensitive
to the macro nutrient ratios as the US D terms it.
But those kind of you know, fats versus carbs, whatever,
um than than men. You know, men just might be
able to they can just eat eat more of what
they kind of want to eat. I mean, and I
(12:11):
think we've all seen that in action. Well sure, And
and and this isn't to say that they can go
and just eat whatever junk food they want to. They want.
Men want to go eat and and be fine. No.
I mean, the the USDA clearly states to eating too
many calories is going to make anyone become fat. But
women's bodies are just a little more sensitive to all that.
(12:33):
And speaking of food and sensitivity to it and sensitivity
to it, women, as we discussed way back when with
the food Cravings episode, are more susceptible to giving into
food cravings. And we've got to talk about this article.
It was from Time magazine or reports on a study
done by Dr Jean Jack Wang at Brookhaven National Laboratory,
(12:58):
and it's about a study that I just I don't know.
If you could pay me money to be in the study, Kristen,
I just would have to fail. I would fail to
study so hard. Yeah. Dr Wayne took a group of
male and female volunteers, all of whom were in they
were in good health, um average weight, average weight, yeah,
and they told them first to fast for seventeen hours
(13:23):
failure point number one for Molly. Yeah. So they're fasting
for seventeen hours, okay. And while they're fasting, the researchers
interviewed them about their favorite foods and had them rank
each of their favorite foods on a one to ten
scale to find out they're absolute. The heal in terms
(13:45):
of food was um and so then um. Then when
the seventeen hours of fasting, we're up. The volunteers were
then placed in a pet scanner and we're then present
did with the food they craved, so that the researchers
could see how their brains reacted in the presence of
(14:08):
this food, because not only are they being presented with
this this food that they adore, but it's after seventeen
hours of fasting. After seventeen hours and it's not just
like you know, they're holding a plate of unappetizing like
tacos in front of you. They're saying, oh, here are
these tacos, and we we made this guacamole fresh, and
(14:28):
that this pico we flew in straight from Mexico. It's
the best pico to gayo in the world. And uh,
if it had a smell like say you said that
you loved ribs, you can smell that barbecue sauce. Yeah.
They actually warmed the food in microwaves to to get
a wafting wafting scent of the food, so they couldn't
They couldn't even avoid the smell. And just to make
(14:50):
matters worse, they gave I thought this was the cruelest
part of the study because people still haven't eaten, and
the researchers gave them a cotton ball with a bit
of their favorite food on it, just for the tiniest taste,
just just a tiny piece of that greasy taco me
(15:12):
that you still desire. So they can see the people's
brains in these pet scanners just going crazy. Yeah, they
people want the food. Um, you know it is time
to eat. And then here's where it gets awful. Dr
Wayne says, you know what, you need to think about
something else. You can't have this food for the next
forty minutes. I'm gonna keep this food right here. You're
(15:35):
gonna look at it and uh, you can smell it,
but you can't have it think about something else. And
they had to keep their eyes open. They couldn't just
close and close it off. Failure point number two for myself.
And so what they did find was that these people
were able to actually lower their feelings of hunger. Um.
(15:55):
It was like their brains would get used to that
feeling of being hungry for seven hours, and they could
sort of desensitize themselves from the fact that they had,
you know, cotton balls with barbecue sauce so nearby. But
what they found was that the women would think about
the food much more than the men, who could really
(16:16):
suppress these desires for their favorite foods. Yeah, the way
Time described it was that the women continued having emotional
cravings for the food even if their hunger had gone away,
whereas the guys were able to just kind of shut
it off. And that's something that we we kind of
highlighted in that that Food Cravings episode where um, women
(16:40):
do have a much more uh kind of emotional I
guess attachment to food in that way, like our our
Amygdalah's get involved a lot this you know, are very
like energetic center, a little pocket of our brain um
that gets really upset if we can't have this food
that we're craving. UM. So Dr Wang saw similar results
(17:04):
in this pet Scanner study. That also indicates that yeah,
if if if you're if you're dieting with your husband
or your boyfriend, like there's a decent chance he's going
to have an easier time sticking to that than you might. Yeah,
because I know that once I started thinking about tacos,
which I am now thanks to this podcast, it's it's
gonna be a long day. Yeah, well day nick me
(17:27):
about taco And then again, you know, there are individual differences.
Some people are just you know, have amazing wellpower when
it comes to those sorts of things. But I mean,
if we're just talking in gender generalizations, which we specialize
in which we do. Uh yeah, women, we we we
got a hard road this. But I mean, you know
(17:50):
one thing, if Kristen I can't tie it back to hormones,
we like to tie it back to evolution. And there
is some evidence that it was because we need did
to be nice and hearty for when there were times
of starvation in our past. Now as if we haven't
discouraged women enough molly against any sort of weight loss
plans or goals, aspirations, etcetera. Here's the final kicker, ladies, Um,
(18:20):
we gain weight over our lifetimes about twenty years longer
than men anyway. And uh and men. This is according
to a health overview in the New York Times, men's
b m i's tend to increase until they're fifty and
then it kind of levels off. Their weight sort of
plateaus now and women our b m I tends to
(18:43):
increase until seventy, so it is one reason to look
forward to getting older. Until we had seven d your
weight will level off and then wed, your weight is
leveling off this year. Yeah, we can eat what we want.
And not only that, we also have three ad your
risk periods and risks I say risk and with air quotes.
(19:05):
She just needed air quotes. Risk periods for weight gain
um according to the New York Times, which the first
one is the onset of menstruation, and then we have
after pregnancy and then right after menopause. So every milestone
our woman's life you can can you eagerly away to
(19:26):
weight gain. We celebrate it with adding adding more pounds.
Men don't have these kind of high risk periods in
their lives like we do. So, uh, what what is
all this to say, Molly? Should we just throw our
hands up and stop, um, you know, fretting so much
over our bodies and just given to these high risk
(19:46):
periods in our lives and wait for seventy wait for seventy. Um,
that's for me. The title of my new book. Wait,
it's seventy. Um no, I think that you know, the
whole reason we want to do this podcast was just
to show women that you can't come pare yourself to others.
And you know this, it really speaks to all sorts
of comparisons you can make. We've talked before about not
(20:06):
comparing yourself to women in magazines because they've been airbrushed,
and now you can't compare yourself to the men you know,
and don't compare yourself. So let me you know, because
as we're talking about being in the podcast, maybe those
women have different genes that are acting in different ways
and we don't even know about yet, so different maternal
diets exactly. You can just walk around and blame your mother. Well,
(20:28):
but here here's one thing though that we need to
take a queue that we need to take from men
in terms of weight and perception and all of this.
All right, there was a study from Harvard about how
men and women judge their own body weights and it found,
not surprisingly that women are a lot harsher on themselves
(20:49):
in terms of how they how they view their body
in terms of whether they're overweight or average. Right, Um,
we actually have a more accurate perception of our own weight,
whereas men just kind of tend to think that there
they look fine, whether they're overweight or are not. Um
(21:11):
And I think it's kind of interesting that that men
are just kind of all together, kind of happy, go
lucky in terms of their own bodies. Well, I think
it speaks to confidence. And I think that that's a
factor that a lot of women, right. And you know,
the point of the podcast was not to say, you know,
you can't control this. Eat whatever you want, don't exercise whatever.
(21:34):
We're all for healthy exercise, a healthy diet that and
you know you can indulge in moderation and love in
the skin you're in. Exactly. It's it's our three step,
three step plan. I'm sure no one has thought of
these three steps before. But just again, don't compare yourself
to other people. It leads to no good. And well
(21:56):
it might sound like that, you know, the last fifteen
minutes or so was just a laundry list of of
negative bullet points about being a woman and trying to
maintain a healthy weight. The point is, you know, to
as a you know, as a woman and as a guy,
as anybody, Uh, to arm yourself with with this kind
of knowledge. So if you can be realistic about your expectations,
(22:21):
uh for losing weight and being healthy and um, you
know how fast you can expect those kind of changes
to occur. And for women, you know what, it might
just take us a little bit longer. And that's okay exactly,
So there you go. Well on that note, shall we
read some mail from our listeners. I would love to.
(22:46):
I have one here from Chelsea and it's about our
episode entitled why Don't Boys Play the Harp which was
about musical instruments and gender and Chelsea rights. I've been
playing the trumpet since I was ten. In grade five,
when the school took us on a field trip to
the middle school most of us would be attending. We
got to choose our instruments for band. I tried every instrument,
but like trumpet the best. I didn't think it was
(23:08):
a big deal until we got back to school and
my music teacher told me that the trumpet is too
difficult for girls to play and that I should try
the flute. The next year and band I got the
highest grade in the class. The year after that, I
got asked to join the senior jazz band and played
just about every solo and band class with the trumpet.
My former music teacher was shocked that I did sit well.
I never told her. Yes, it was a woman who
(23:29):
told me that that she was the reason that I
practiced every day for two hours after school. My male
trumpet counterparts over the years haven't been very excited over
the fact that I can play music that they can't,
but that just gave me more reason to improve. I
joined both Junior Jazz band and Senior Jazz band, concert band,
and played in the pit band for our school's musical productions.
I'm eighteen now, and although I haven't picked up my
horse since I graduated this year, is still feels good
(23:51):
to know that I beat that stereotype and all the
people who didn't believe in me way to go well.
I got an email here also about our episode on
why Don't Boys Play the harp? And it is from Michael,
who is twelve years old and he is a seventh
grader in Kenya. He said, I'm in the advanced band
(24:11):
in my school, and I've noticed a lot of the
stuff you guys said was true. I'm sure if I
decided to play the flute. My friends would never talk
to me again. One thing different here is that both
guys and girls almost equally play the clarinet in my band,
seven guys to seven girls, to be exact. I wanted
to mention this because Kristen, I think, made a comment
(24:32):
about just giving a girl a clarinet, and I thought
I'd just say that those stereotypes aren't always true, as
with most stereotypes, Michael um So, thanks so much for
the emails. Keep him coming mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com. And of course you can always friend
us on Facebook or fan us. I guess I should
(24:53):
say us or like us. Just do whatever on Facebook.
Do something with us on Facebook, please um And then
you can follow us on Twitter It's mom Stuff podcast.
And then finally you can read our blog during the
week It's stuff mon Never told you and it's how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
(25:16):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
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