The Unique Difficulties Women Face With Weight Loss
If you are a woman who has tried to lose weight, you may have noticed something: it is difficult. Much more difficult than just cutting calories and watching weight loss.
Disclaimer: This article is for women, but as you can tell from the name Dick, I am not a woman. I base the following on the hundreds of women I’ve trained and the models I’ve seen. I sympathize with many of these challenges and have thought deeply about them as a coach, but I’m never going to claim that I survived them. However, I hope I can use my experience to help you.
There are complexities that go beyond simple mathematics; emotional, physical and social barriers that simply cannot be addressed in a male-dominated fitness industry. This became apparent to me when I was working with my client Jane (name has been changed):
I have been on a diet for 15 years. I’ve always felt good for a month, two, even six months on various detox, juice cleanses, and loads of cardio. Then I’ll have a day off and I’ll get out of hand. I would gain all the weight I lost and more. Fast-forward to last year, I gained 311 pounds after suffering with the yo-yo diet. I felt guilty and self-loathing all the time.
I have always felt that I treat my female clients better than my male clients. Having spent most of my life with obesity, I have struggled with problems related to overeating, the yo-yo diet (fast weight loss and gain), and a lack of self-compassion.
Even then, my experience probably pales in comparison to the specific set of difficulties women face when it comes to losing weight. If you are a woman, highlight these issues, not to discourage you, but to empower you. Knowing the scale of this battle will help you be kinder to yourself when you stumble.
Losing weight is biologically harder for you
Before we talk about why it is more difficult for women to lose weight , we first need to understand how your calories are burned on a particular day.
Total calories burned per day = resting metabolism + thermal effect of deliberate activity + thermal effect of food + thermal effect of non-exercise activity
Resting metabolic rate (RMR) : The number of calories needed to maintain normal body functions, hormones, etc.
Thermal effect from deliberate activity : Activity burns away from movement throughout the day.
Thermal Effect of Food (TEF) : Calories burned during a meal are converted into beneficial substrates.
Physical Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) : Calories burned as a result of spontaneous activity in your body. Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do to directly impact NEAT, so we’re going to postpone that for another day.
In the average person, resting metabolism accounts for about 70% of the total calories burned in a day. Yeah, that means most of your calories are wasted just to “survive”, even if you’re just lying in bed all day. Of the calories required by RMR, the vast majority (85%) can be attributed to lean mass, as more energy is required to maintain muscle than to maintain fat. Accordingly, people with more muscle mass have a higher resting metabolic rate, and this explains most of the explained differences in RMR between people.
So what happens when people consume excessive calories without extra exercise? Most people know that your body stores most of these calories as fat. However, you may not be aware that your body is sharing some of the extra calories in the form of muscle – even without additional exercise. Yes, some people gain muscle mass simply by overeating, as one study found in which participants overfed 1,000 calories a day for 10 days.
Hooray! Cici’s Pizza Buffet is for everyone, right? Not so fast. These are the lucky few, and if you are a woman, this is probably not the case for you. This is because the amount of muscle you gain from overeating seems to depend on theamount oftestosterone you have, and in women, roughly 10% of the testosterone in men.
This is why women physiologically get the short end of the stick.
You are less compassionate and more self-critical.
I have written before about the importance of self-compassion and how it is a common trait of my successful clients. Research has confirmed this observation; Self-compassionate people are less likely to make the same mistake again .
Unfortunately, according to Dr. Christine Neff , one of the pioneers of self-compassion research, women tend to be less compassionate and more self-critical :
Women tend to be slightly less compassionate and more self-critical than men. From an evolutionary point of view, this is due to the fact that women are more focused on threats – focusing on dangers in order to keep their children alive and pass on their genes. Women are also much more compassionate towards others than men. The discrepancy between how women relate to themselves and how they relate to others is greater than with men.
This is not in the least fueled by our social values, which unfairly (and somewhat arbitrarily) place more emphasis on the appearance of women than men.
This is detrimental to progress. Self-criticism instead of self-compassion hinders positive progress. This leads to overly aggressive diet and exercise , and then to self-punishment and guilt after realizing that this is not rational – the classic mentality of the yo-yo diet.
You must deal with monthly hormones
Menstruation and diet aren’t much talked about, but they need to be talked about because they can affect your progress in many ways.
The first problem is water retention. Unlike men, a woman’s body weight usually fluctuates several pounds up and down over the course of a month due to the ongoing endocrinological storm .
Aside from (I was told) unwanted discomfort, this phenomenon also causes immense frustration and confusion. Imagine that you are on a strict diet and training religiously only to find that you have not only gained weight, but also “look and feel fatter.” (I use quotes because this is what clients often say.) It makes it difficult to create positive feedback , and the feeling of being back to baseline takes a huge psychological toll.
Additionally, appetite control tends to get worse as a symptom of PMS. The putative reason for this is serotonin, the “happiness hormone”. Studies have shown that serotonin levels are lower before menstruation . This causes depressive symptoms and emotional overeating, exacerbated by strong desire and weaker self-control.
You have more decisions to make throughout the day.
As a guy, the hardest decision I make in the morning is whether or not I hit sleep after the alarm goes off. On the other hand, things are not so simple for women. I interviewed my good friend Julie, who explained to me:
Before I even walk out the door in the morning, I made dozens of decisions. What to wear, what makeup to use, am I going to reapply makeup throughout the day, how to style my hair, etc. And you wonder why sometimes we need hours to get ready. Men don’t need to deal with these issues.
Of course, these are social problems, but they are there. How is this related to weight loss? This is because decisions affect your available willpower. From The Serious Pony Blog:
In 1999, Professor Baba Shiv (now at Stanford) and his co-author Alex Fedorikhin conducted a simple experiment on 165 graduate students: they asked half to memorize a seven-digit number and the other half a two-digit number. After completing the memory task, the participants were told that the experiment was over, and then were offered a snack of their choice: a chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit.
The participants who memorized the seven-digit number were almost 50% more likely than the other group to choose cake over fruit. Researchers were amazed at the mass of experiments that led to one bizarre conclusion: Willpower and cognitive processing come from the same pool of resources.
As a coach, it hurts me when people go off their diet and then think: “This is a moral flaw, but I’m just lazy.” But you’re not lazy. You kick your ass, you work hard, and you bring home goods. In fact, willpower is a limited resource . Forgiving yourself for past mistakes and then learning how to manage them can be critical.
* There are relatively recent studies that suggest that the concept of willpower may just be in your head . This is just one of a plethora of data from a multitude of studies on this topic. However, it still makes sense to believe that willpower is finite .
Your surroundings are working against you.
Some of the (unsuccessful) patriarchal design of society seeps into health and fitness: almost everything related to health and fitness is optimized for men.
Take serving size, for example. Most people already know that portion sizes have increased over the years . But you probably didn’t think how much more pronounced this is for women. This 3,000-calorie pasta dish at the Cheesecake Factory might be the calorie of a day for a man, but for many women it is almost two days because women require fewer calories a day . Think you know when to stop? Unfortunately, the amount of food on your plate determines how much you eat , and for women this means a higher percentage of their daily calories. When it comes to weight loss workouts, there is a difference between cardio and strength training. Cardio tends to burn more calories in the short term, but strength training increases muscle mass, which we know increases your metabolism. Cardio is like paying on a credit card, and strength training is like paying a mortgage. With the latter, you create an asset.
Everyone benefits from strength training, and while cardio is great for your health, it does n’t help much for weight loss . However, look at how fitness is marketed to men and women: men have to lift weights, while women are forced to engage in stereotypically feminine activities such as jogging, rotating, and pink three-pound dumbbells . Sure, fitness marketers are shitty about everything, but at least they get men to do something better.
Marketers aren’t the only ones holding back women from strength training. A typical gym environment does the same thing as well. My friend Alexa, a former bodybuilder and now a national powerlifter, explains:
I would not call the gym the most attractive place in the world, so most women gravitate towards the Soul Cycle, TRX and other groups, because they feel comfortable with “like” people. Plus, men in the gym can scare you by attacking you in less than favorable ways, potentially interrupting your workout and making things more uncomfortable than they are.
Detoxes, cleansers, and other types of scams are also generally targeted at women.
Where to go from here
What happened to Jane, my client from the example at the beginning? Well, she became kinder to herself:
I began to be, breathlessly, PLEASANT for myself. I have forgiven myself. I adapted my meal plan to fit my life, not fit my life into my diet. When I fell off my horse, I returned to my accomplishments and reminded myself that I had come this far and all I can do is try again. Since then I have lost almost 40 pounds. I had times when I put on a few pounds, but I didn’t feel the shame I did before. Having a good attitude towards myself allowed me to forgive myself and stay on a positive path. Also, when I eat well, I feel more positive than punished. I really see myself continuing this journey.
Using simplistic assumptions such as eating less, moving more can easily lead to feelings of unsuccessful weight loss when difficulties arise. But to say that the solution to weight loss is “eat less, move more” is like saying that the solution to depression is “stop being sad.”
As a woman, you face a unique set of challenges. Accepting and understanding this will allow you to value progress, be realistic about expectations, and most importantly, be kind to yourself.
The following tips can help:
- It’s okay if you are only losing 0.5-1 pounds per week . Women need fewer calories than men, so any reduction in calorie intake makes up a large portion of your daily needs. Therefore, weight loss should be slower. Take your time with aggressive cardio training or diet. Remember that even at this rate, you are still losing 30-50 pounds in a year.
- Measure your weight compared to the previous month. This will take into account your hormonal effects on water retention. At the very least, don’t step on the scales knowing that water is retained for hormonal reasons.
- Focus on ROI . You are already making many decisions every day. Discard all decisions that do not have a tangible impact on your results.
- Strength training. Beware of the “tips” that dictate completely different fitness protocols to women. For the most part, women would do better lifting relatively heavy weights than anything resembling Tracy Anderson’s routine.
- Follow other women who are successful in fitness. They will understand some of your difficulties. I highly recommend the video FitNGeeky on the YouTube, for example,about women and strength training , or the reasons for which it was engaged in fitness . Communities like xxfitness on Reddit or Girls Gone Strong are also worth seeing .
Finally, if you need to lose weight, understand that you are not your weight. Erase the phrase “I’m fat” from your dictionary. You are not fat. You have fat. The presence of biologically essential fat cells, even if there are many of them, should in no way be associated with your personality.
Treating weight loss as an issue in the most objective and unbiased way will allow you to keep making progress. If you are a woman, losing weight will be more difficult and take longer, but overcoming difficulties is not alien to you. Besides, time will pass anyway.